Oh Lord, My Heart! P.T.

It's not every day that you can write a whole article about a teaser. Most demos aren't worth the space you download them on. But, it is with great pleasure and much anxiety that I write this. Something new has come along. Something so revolutionary and new that it has warranted me writing an entire blog on it. I can not remember the last time that I felt so excited for a game as I have for this. 7780 Studios has released the world's first playable teaser. The demo is called P.T., a teaser for the new Silent Hill game.

My face after the news.

If you haven't figured it out by now, I am a huge Silent Hill fan. By far it is my favorite game series ever, so hearing about a new game in the series made me almost cry with excitement. I feverishly jumped onto my PS4 and found the teaser. The picture seemed a little bland to me. A tree stump in the middle of the forest? Really? Whatever, it's Silent Hill, so I'll play it regardless. You start out in a small room with nothing. You can't press any buttons, all you can do is zoom in, which means that if anything attacks me, all I can do is look at it closely while it kills me. I stepped out the door into a long hallway. Little did I know that I opened the door to my own doom.

Just wait. It gets better!

The teaser alone looks amazing. P.T. uses the Fox Engine, which makes it look as real as it possibly can. Strange sights and sounds illuminate the hall as I walk towards my destination. I found a radio blaring in a corner, spouting out what seemed like random gibberish about a murder with random numbers and information.  There are doors all throughout the hall, but I can't open them. All I can do is walk to the end of the hall to another closed door. Luckily, this one opens up to reveal…the room I started in? What the heck?

And now there's this thing to greet me.

Every time you loop back to the beginning room, the hallway gets more and more terrifying. From crying children, spooky messages on the walls and a crazy ghost lady randomly twitching in the hallway, P.T. keeps the scares and uneasy feelings close to the chest. On top of all that, P.T. is filled with references to previous Silent Hill games. Oh, there is something big I'm forgetting about the new Silent Hill: it's being made by Hideo Kojima and Guillermo Del Toro.

This scared me so bad I couldn't  even think of a stupid caption.

If you don't know who Hideo Kojima is, you've probably still played his games. Kojima is responsible for arguably the best stealth-based espionage game series of all time; Metal Gear. It's been around since the NES and is still going today. Guillermo Del Toro of course is an acclaimed writer, producer and director, probably most known for Hellboy and Pan's Labyrinth(and Blade 2, but we won't hold that against him). This guy has had his hands in everything; from producing kids movies to writing part of the Hobbit trilogy. He even produced The Orphanage, one of the most intense horror films I have seen in a while. So the teaming up of these two; one who knows video games and one who knows horror so well as these two…can you imagine what Silent Hills will be like?

"Excuse me, ma'am you have a boogey."

I'm not gonna lie to you guys. I almost had a panic attack playing this game. My palms got sweaty, I was running short of breath. I even got a tension headache. But, will all that being said, I am super excited for the next Silent Hill. We have two capable and awesome storytellers at the helm of it and I can only hope that they will bring their A-game. Let's just hope that we get "Pan's Labyrinth" Del Toro and not "Don't Be Afraid Of The Dark" Del Toro. If you are a fan of the horror genre, this is one you should get excited for.

Are You Kidding Me? 5 Infuriating Game Moments

If playing video games has taught me one thing about life, it's that life is not fair. Just because you got though one hard part, it doesn't mean that there won't be another hard part just around the corner. So what do we do? Do we give up, hoping that the problem will just go away? Or do we take the logical approach by stepping back, calming down and go at it with a cool and collected head? Ok, this is getting too philosophical. We're here to talk about games!

I took a selfie just for this entry.

Most games are(for the most part) pretty easy to get through, but there are some that have parts in them that make you want to throw your console or PC out the window and pledge to become amish so you won't ever have to deal with technology ever again. Now, I'm not great at games. As much as I love them and want to make a career out of something to do with gaming, I probably need to practice more at them. These are in no particular order, as they were all infuriating at one point in my life.

1. Blood Line Jumping-Max Payne

Behold: the bane of my teenage years.

Max Payne is such a great game. It introduced us to bullet time and gave us a fun and fresh storyline. However, periodically throughout the game you had to endure flashbacks of your wife and child dying, making you relive the reason behind your vengeance-filled shooting spree. It's not bad, not until the walls and floor fall away, leaving just a trail of blood for you to follow. This wouldn't be so bad, except you have to jump from one line to the next. Still doesn't sound bad? Oh, did I mention that if you move one inch to the left or right you fall off and have to start all over? Or did I tell you that if you don't land perfectly from your jump you fall off, die, and have to start all over? Or that the controls are so loose, Max ends up skating off the edge before you even think about jumping? Yeah. Infuriating. As much as I love the Max Payne series, I have only beaten the first game once, for fear of having to play those horrible levels and ripping my hair out all over again.

2. Hoverbike Level-Battletoads

Spoiler Alert: He won't make it.

No one, and I mean NO ONE beat this game. Ever. Every single kid who played this game got to the third level, lost all your lives at the second or third jump, started the game over, got back to the third level, lost all of your lives again, tried this about 3,784 times, gave up, broke your controller, then took your copy of the game and buried it deep in cement so you would never have to experience this level ever again. I've often wondered what the rest of this game looked like. Just another unanswered question from my childhood.

3. The Piano Puzzle-Silent Hill

By far the most evil thing in all of Silent Hill

I'm going to put the puzzle on here for everyone to see:

 A Tale of Birds without a Voice.

First flew the greedy Pelican,

eager for the reward.

White wings flailing.

Then came a silent Dove,

flying beyond the Pelican,

as far as he could.

A Raven flies in,

flying higher than the Dove.

Just to show he can.

A Swan glides in to find a peaceful spot

next to another bird.

Finally, out comes a Crow,

coming quickly to a stop, yawning and then napping.

Who will show the way?

Who will be the key?

Who will lead to the silver reward?

Did you understand the riddle? Did you figure out that you were supposed to play the keys that don't work? Are you sure that you got the order in which you're supposed to play them in right? No? Of course you didn't. Don't worry, no one got this right the first time through. The Silent Hill series is by far my favorite set of games, but GOOD LORD was this annoying. In fact, I would dare say that this part caused more grief and anxiety than any monster you may encounter in the depths of Silent Hill.

4. Meteor Defense-Dead Space

Pew! Pew!

Hey I've got an idea! Let's make a completely original, genuinely scary game, with great controls, plenty of jump scares and mind-scarring visuals. THEN, let's stop everything about halfway through the game and put in a missile defense simulator with the controls of a steam roller! If you haven't guessed by now, I love horror games. The more scary stuff I can get, the better, so you can see why this would frustrate me so much. I must have done this part four thousand times. It just doesn't make sense to throw this part into such a good game.

5. Hide and Seek-Indigo Prophecy

"I blend right in with my mustard-colored shirt."

Once again, I have only played through Indigo Prophecy, a game that I actually really, really liked once because of one bad part. That may sound ridiculous to you, but this part is so bad that it absolutely KILLS the rest of the game. The story for Indigo Prophecy was kind of confusing anyway, but then to add a completely broken stealth mission about three-quarters into the game was downright pull your hair out bull crap. 

Honorable Mentions:

Knife Fight with Krauser-Resident Evil 4

Cue the Star Trek fight music!

This will be blasphemy to some of you, but RE4 is my favorite installment of the Resident Evil franchise. Smooth controls, good action, and some genuine freaky parts make it a classic that fits right in with the next generation of console horror games. Aside from the God of War series, no other game has utilized the quick time event quite like RE4. The boss fight with the charming Mr. Krauser is nothing but one big quick time event and man, is it frustrating. One wrong button on your controller and you're cursed to play through the entire thing all over again. Did I mention that it's about 15 minutes long? Imagine getting to the very last prompt and failing.

Crossing the Bridge-Half Life 2

"Oh goody. Something else to kill me very quickly."

This isn't so much infuriating as it is nerve-racking. I'm not one for heights, so being suspended 80 feet high, trying to cross a bridge on very thin platforms while being shot at by Combine soldiers and gunships? Fun! My controller was literally dripping with sweat after I was done with this. 

Well, that's it for this edition. Do you have any moments in gaming that really get your goat? Let me know! Leave a comment below and let's talk. Also, don't forget to check out The D-Pad Podcast on Facebook, Blogger and Twitch. Come say hi to us and if you have any recommendations for games you wanna see played or blogged about, drop us a line and we'll let you know. Thanks for tuning in!

Infamous: Second Sundae

I do online classes with Full Sail University, hopefully to get a degree in game design. I only take one class a month and this month is a math class. Math and I do not get along well. In fact, we are not friends. If math was a real person, it would be that guy that borrows money from you all the time and when you actually need something from him, he's nowhere to be seen. Anyways, since I have had my fill of a horrible thing, it's time to talk about something fun: video games!

This about sums it up.

As an early birthday present, my wonderful wife got me a Playstation 4. I opened it up, plugged it in and immediately started to play around with the features. The dashboard is way different than what I am used to. Instead of everything in row by row selections, there's a bar at the top that gives you access to all of the options and profile information. I like that all being on the top. It seems to give everything a nice, tidy feel.

Such a funny word. Tidy.

I picked up Infamous: Second Son on a whim. Dying Light has been delayed (again!), so I went for a type of game that I have not tried in a long time: a platformer. I love platforming games, but alas, my gaming interests in the last few years have been in the horror and RPGs, so I figured, why not go back to what brought me into the gaming world in the first place? If it wasn't for platformers like Mario and Mega Man, I wouldn't be writing this right now.

Glorious.

Second Son turned out to be way more fun than I had anticipated. Seeing as how I did not play the first two, I had no idea what to expect. You play as Delsin Rowe, a young whipper-snapper who finds out that he is a conduit: one who can absorb the powers of other super-powered whipper-snappers. Using your new found abilities, you go on the hunt for Brooke Augustine, the leader of a government-funded tactical squad with the sole purpose of rounding up other conduits. In catching her, you hope to fix the damage she has done to your town and your family.

Boo!

I'll admit it, I didn't know what to expect out of Second Son, seeing how it is an open-world platformer, but I was pleasantly surprised at how good this game actually is. the controls are very well done, the graphics are amazing, and the story is quite compelling. It's not the deepest game I've ever played, but it's also not afraid to poke fun at itself. The karma system is well done also, allowing you to only purchase certain abilities with different karma. However, it was REALLY easy to get to the top of the bad karma ladder. Kick a few pedestrians and you will pay for it.

Pictured above: Karma Ladder

I have to admit, my absolute favorite thing about Second Son is the stenciling. You can find locations all over the map to spray paint and tag, and what you decide to stencil will affect your karma. It may not mean anything to anyone else, but I loved doing this. It really made me feel like I was in Delsin's shoes, showing my disdain for the man.

Fight the power!

All in all, Second Son is a really fun game and a great kickoff to the PS4. Hopefully, Infamous will be the start of a trend of great games for the Playstation. If Dying Light ever gets to see the light of day(heh), we might get to see how great horror games will look on this amazing next-gen console. If you happen to find yourself in a position where you have a PS4, and you don't know what game to buy; pick up Second Son. It's a purchase you won't soon regret.

Crimson Butterface: 5 Scary Games

Everyone loves a good scare. Well, mostly everybody. I know some people that would punch you in the face if you tried to scare them. Regardless, there's nothing like the feeling of a good jump scare. Your heart skips a beat, you take that sharp, short breath and for that split second your brain screams at you that you're in danger. And then, there are scares that stay with you. I remember the first time I read Stephen King's IT. I don't find clowns scary in the slightest, but IT kept me up at night, paranoid that I would hear that raspy, grating voice penetrate the dark silence of my bedroom.

Where will you be diarrhea hits you?

I find that I lean more towards horror games that give a good feeling of paranoia, as jump scares will only take you so far. That's not to say that jump scares are any less effective, but they don't seem to stick with you.

Picture unrelated…OR IS IT?

I've been thinking about this particular post for a while. Horror is my favorite genre and I didn't want to try to narrow down a whole community of games by saying that these are the five best games and there aren't any others out there better than these so I'll just say this: these are five games in the horror genre that I really enjoy. Maybe you've played them, maybe you haven't. If you haven't, I suggest going and picking these up.

Amnesia: The Dark Descent

Woogity-Boogity!

Starting things off with a doozy, here. Amnesia really rejuvenated the horror genre by stripping it down to the core and bringing back a true feeling of paranoia. You have no weapons, only a lantern that will burn out VERY quickly and some tinderboxes to light candles along the way. Adding to the freakiness, you have a sanity meter that will fill up extremely fast, as in if you're in the dark (which you will be in for 99% of the game), or if you see an enemy you will lose sanity. I have never put so much preparation into a horror game as I have this one.

Silent Hill 2

"I hate it when I misplace my hole…"

A staple for any horror game fan, Silent Hill 2, even with all of the camera problems and shoddy controls is a masterpiece. The series itself has been a go-to for many who love to feel scared well after the game is over and the lights are off. Even now, after almost thirteen years, people have their own theories about the endings of the game and what all of the monsters are supposed to represent. While all of the Silent Hill games have their place in the horror genre, Silent Hill 2 sticks out as the most emotional, hard-hitting and most disturbing of the series.

Outlast

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN WE'RE OUT OF NUTELLA?!"

Hoo, boy. Outlast is, to say the least, freaking horrifying. I haven't beaten this one yet, simply because I can only play it for a few minutes at a time. Set in an insane asylum, you play as a journalist that has received information from someone known only as "The Whistleblower" about some shady doings going on at Mount Massive Asylum. No weapons (of course), you have only your video camera, which means that you are running and hiding throughout all of the game. Outlast brings a new element to games that I figured we would have seen already and that's the use of night vision. Holy cow, this makes the game ten times more freaky. Having to wade through all the crazy people while running and hiding from the hostile ones, all the while looking through that eerie, green-black screen…yeesh. There's only two words that will describe the atmosphere of the game and if you've played the game you'll understand: "Little Pig."

Fatal Frame 2: Crimson Butterfly

"Don't mind me, I'm just hanging out. HA! Get it? Hanging…out…I'll leave you alone now."

I have a love-hate relationship with Asian horror. I love the stories, the cinematography and the direction style both in their movies and their games, but great googly-moogly do some of them scare the crap out of me. That's what first drew me to the Fatal Frame series. For a horror game, Fatal Frame has some beautiful scenery. Aside from a somewhat goofy concept (beat the ghosts with a magic camera!), the second installment Crimson Butterfly offers some real gut-wrenching scares, leaving you reluctant to explore the next room.  If you're a fan of movies like The Ring, The Grudge or Pulse, check this one out. It does not disappoint.

Dead Space

Prom really got out of control this year.

Taking inspirations from movies like Event Horizon and The Abyss, the Dead Space series has brought something to the horror genre that a lot of games have tried to do but just couldn't pull it off: a great weapon system. You're given a plethora of guns in Dead Space, but that is not enough to make you feel confident enough to just blaze your way right through it. With enemies that are extremely quiet, you will be constantly looking behind you just to make sure that nothing is creeping up behind you. A fun little fact about the first game; the first letter of the first word of every level title gives away the ending. I won't spoil it for you, you'll just have to play it yourself to find out.

Honorable Mentions(yeah, yeah I know it's not a ranked list, but come on. Five games? You can't have a list of horror games without these):

Slender: The Eight Pages

"Occupado!"

Based off of a story on the Something Awful forums, Slender is a short, free PC game that has you running through the woods collecting pieces of paper to unlock the secrets of the Slender Man. This one is fun to play with a friend looking over your shoulder, so you can show watch them scream when the Slender Man shows up.

Resident Evil Series

NOPE. NOPENOPENOPE.

Do I really have to go into this? If you haven't played a Resident Evil game…seriously…it would be really hard to consider you a horror game fan if you haven't played these.

Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem

"Do you beeelliieeevvee in life after love?"

A stand out on the GameCube, Eternal Darkness is an innovator for bringing us the sanity meter. No other game has used the meter as fluently or as aggressively as Eternal Darkness. From bugs running all over your screen to making your character explode, Eternal Darkness will make you think that you really are losing your mind.

SCP Containment Breach

"Let me love you." 

I'm only going to say one thing about this free PC game, but I really want you to think about what it means and how it affects the game…you have to make your character blink. You have to make them BLINK. I'll let that sink in.

White Day: A Labyrinth Named School

This is what Glee does to you.

If you have never heard of this game, you are in for a treat! A Korean made horror game, White Day is supposedly so scary that the developers had to make patches for it to tone down the scares because everyone who played it was too scared to finish it. Being a Korean game, you have to have a modified PC to play it or download the English patch version, which is unfortunately filled with a lot of grammatical errors and mistranslations. Regardless, watching videos of gameplay for this one may be enough for me…yeah right. I'm gonna download this and sleep with the lights on for the rest of my life.

So that's it. If you can't tell, I'm very passionate about the horror genre, so this particular entry is pretty long. Now, comes the fun part; I want to hear what you think. What's your favorite horror game? Did it make this list, or do you feel like I missed a good one? Drop me a comment and maybe I'll revise the list. Also, for a huge list of great horror games, take a look at TatsTopVideos on Youtube. Til next time!

Zelda: Wind Breaker

As I'm sure everyone else's holiday was, mine was hectic and I tried to fit too much into too little of a time period. But, amidst all of the chaos, I was able to play through The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds for the 3DS. I'm a little ashamed to admit this, but this is the first Zelda game I have played and beaten in a long time, the last being Twilight Princess. I know, I know, I'm ashamed of myself too, considering I really see myself as a big fan of the franchise. I was really impressed with Link Between Worlds, even thought it did kind of seem like a master quest version of A Link to the Past (not like that would be a bad thing). Playing through, I could only think of one word: legacy.

The trunk of a Subaru Legacy. You're welcome.

The Legend of Zelda series has been around for over 25 years, giving us a lifetime of memorable games that litter most of today's gamers childhoods. It has given us great action, real emotion and a bar to which all action games should be set. I'm also pretty certain that almost everyone in their twenties has the Water Temple from Ocarina of Time memorized. It hasn't always been instant classics for the franchise. Any of the thirteen people that bought a 3DO may have had to sit through The Wand of Gamelon, Faces of Evil, or Zelda's Adventure. Blech. Even though these games weren't exactly award winning or even enjoyable, they didn't even stain the legacy that is the Zelda series.

What…I don't even…WHAT IS THIS?!

The culture of gaming is split into many different points of view. Some see it as something to be done casually. Some see it as an art form. Some see it as an industry strictly for children. And of course, there are many who see it as a way of life. Whatever your reason for playing, a fact that is undeniable is that there are games that will always be remembered throughout the years: Zelda, Mario, Sonic…I could go on for hours listing all of the great games that I grew up with and what they mean to me but that would take too long and would bore pretty much all of you. The point I am trying to make is that there is a reason for their significance; their impact on the gaming industry.

If this was in your childhood, I'm very, very sorry

Of course, it's not all about mascots. Great design and playability make games what they are. Now, I want to say that a great story makes a great game, but consider this: a human princess, who rules over a kingdom of mushroom people, is kidnapped by a dinosaur. Her only hope is an Italian plumber with an unexplained hatred of turtles. Yeah…story may not be so important. Anyways, what I'm saying is that gaming has been around for a long time and will be around for a whole lot longer thanks to games like Zelda. I'm glad I was able to experience another title.