Beware the Bloggedy Man!

So, October rears its intentionally ugly head for another disappointing build-up to a dying holiday. Shame about that, too. You know I received no trick-or-treaters last year? Not one, which was how many I received the year before. I provide the good shit, too. I mean, I love candy corn and Smarties, but I understand that they're unpopular. Instead, I buy name-brand candy bars, M&Ms, Skittles, and even Reese's cups, though I run the risk of being left with them at the end of the night. (I'm not a fan of peanut butter.) Disappointing turnouts are actually the third sign of decline that I've noticed, following a lack of enthusiastic home decorations and decent television programming. Christmas still airs all of the classics. Halloween now settles for b-rated horror films, straight-to-shelves sequels of popular horror franchises, and television specials that shows everybody doing all the great stuff that no longer happens, because "it's not safe!" Basically, they're rubbing it in and that pisses me off a little, with exception to It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. That one's a sad tale, if not a strange Christmas special.

Many years ago, I indulged in Monsterfest on AMC, and that felt amazing. Classic horror followed by classic horror, and even a few that I had never seen before would just line up to remind me of how enjoyable this season could be. It took my mind away from shows like The Halloween Tree, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow...

I love listening to Bing Crosby sing about the Headless Horseman, too.

...and even Witch's Night Out, which I used to search for through television guides in hopes of planning my days around them. The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror became a tradition, along with any sort of historical programs about Halloween, haunted locations and attractions, and the origins of various well-known monsters. Television used to bring me so much joy. Now, Monsterfest has been watered down to Fear Fest, featuring pure garbage surrounding the Halloween films (most of which are just as awful); obligatory Halloween specials for regular cartoons and sitcoms are commonly aired in standard rotation all year round; and genuine seasonal specials, such as the Great Pumpkin, continue to dwindle. I'll still watch a historical/educational piece, but those are not enough to bring back my enthusiasm. I had to find a new outlet of celebration.

In 2009, or maybe 2010, I tried thumbing through horror anime. That was a total bust, since the only shows to illicit any sort of tension were either ruined with halfhearted explanations, or were just plain dumb from the get-go.

The first arc of Umineko no Naku Koro ni did a magnificent job of unhinging me, but this quickly turned to shit as things were repeated for different, incoherent scenarios. Then, I checked out Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, and it took things one step further with an entire season of terrifying occurrences that left viewers unsure of what was going on.

This is terrifying in a different way.

After earning itself a follow-up, along with another memorable opening, that scare factor was completely obliterated with an unfulfilling explanation that included time manipulation and a horned loli. OVAs were eventually created to rub salt to that wound by dropping the suspense and horror altogether in favor of catering to the otaku bunch with all of the trite ecchi nonsense one might expect.

Other attempts at horror included Hell Girl, which also suffered from additional seasons of unnecessary explanation, though it did so with far more dignity; Gantz, a stunning anime that was too busy being badass to properly live up to its horror tag; and Kakurenbo, a one-shot with eight masked children running through a bunch of ruins to convey the negative effects of technology and development upon their games and happiness. It's a specific message, certainly, and one that I believe is skewed by the creator's nostalgia. Regardless of the environment, kids will find a way to have fun and make up their own games doing so... unless that environment kills them. That's the obvious exception I must still point out lest somebody else does so, because we can't be fucking adults who simply understand that common-knowledge exceptions exist in life, can we?

"There’s nothing special about being born. Not a thing. Most of the universe is just death, nothing more. In this universe of ours, the birth of a new life on some corner of our planet is nothing but a tiny, insignificant flash. Death is a normal thing. So why live?"

There is one overall decent attempt at anime horror, and that's Monster, a fairly long series that revolves around the potential consequences of making the "right" decision to save the "wrong" life. The setting is about as close to reality as a cartoon is going to become, and the possibility of something similar to this happening does a fair job of causing unease in the viewers (including myself). Go check it out, if you haven't already.

With Monster being the only exception, I realized anime was clearly not the way to go. Still, if you're curious, I will recommend Shiki, Yami Shibai, and Shinsekai Yori. They likely won't give you many chills, but each represents the horror genre in an interesting manner.

Since then, I've spent a few years casually looking around for tracks to add to my Halloween playlist, because I know Halloweenradio.net won't always be around to satisfy that craving, and I've started indulging in a handful of video games with appropriate themes for the season. Last year, I squeezed in Bioshock, though I never got around to typing about it, and, if you remember (or cared), I blogged about Dead Island the year before that. This time around, I've managed to complete a small assortment of games, despite having to run myself ragged trying to maintain the deli/bakery that currently lacks a department head. Six-day work weeks? Yep. Eleven-hour shifts? Twice, and neither with a moment to rest. Call-outs galore? Oh, most definitely! Still, I have found the time to not only play, but to provide you all (Me. Only me. I'm the entire audience of this site) with this needlessly lengthy post about them! You're welcome. I'm sorry.

To start off, I installed SOMA, a title I received through the Humble Monthly bundle, but I can't get it to properly run on my PC. After I made sure to update everything, I was finally able to get it to STILL NOT DO A FUCKING THING! I settled for a silent, single-video playthrough on Youtube, and it was... rather boring. How am I suppose to feel scared when the protagonist, Simon, is more annoyed than frightened by his situation? Also, the guy's pretty dense. Like the main character of a harem, he never really connects the dots until the very end, and I wonder if that's suppose to be part of the impact I'm expected to feel with the game's conclusion, because it's sad, and I guess it kinda made me think, but I had already experienced similar thoughts while watching Ghost in the Shell on Adult Swim, and, again, I find it to be quite annoying that Simon doesn't "get it" until then.

SOMA is well made, which puts it several notches above the bulk of indie horror. Most of those don't even have you interacting with other characters. At best, you'd end up with Spooky telling you a few things before floating away and having you run from a chasing enemy for another fifty, same-ish rooms. More often, it's just a terrible-looking monster whose only scare factor is to create a Game Over screen when you turn around. I'll give SOMA credit for creating real interest in playing. I just wish there was more to do than wander around empty locations and solving puzzles that seem out of place, simply because... well, would researchers realistically set something up like this?

Maybe I'm overthinking it.

I wanted to know what happened next. I was enthralled with the storyline gradually being fed to me, yet I would sit here for long periods of time yawning, because it was only gradually being fed to me. I'd recommend the game if the pacing was better, or if you haven't seen GitS. Of those two options, I rather watch the anime again, but that's just me, and I'm not worth giving a shit about, amirite?

Pony Island became my second choice, and it's totally about ponies. And Satan. You're trapped in an arcade limbo of terrible programming, and the only way out is the rework the coding in your favor. It's not a challenging game. It's short. The achievements are not all that difficult to obtain. Pony Island is a strong, intelligent example of comedy horror. I didn't enjoy playing it enough to retrieve all of the achievements, but that's primarily because I had two more games I want to finish, along with this post, before October 31st, and there's also a pair of neglected handheld titles that I really oughta wrap up shortly after this. (Not making any guarantees!)

I finished up the month with two titles from Double Fine. Well, it's a title and a sequel to that title, so it's technically, TECHNICALLY, two games that are not all that different from one another, and the story between them is shared. One could bundle them and call it a single game, and there would be no hiccups in the transition, BUT this is two games, which is fine. It's fine x 2, so it's double fine, and there's the full circle. Not a moon circle, because I haven't finished Castlevania yet, but that's down the road... and it's not really a lot of fun going back and forth between rooms, killing the same worthless bunch of trash mobs to collect their souls, and realizing that the strong majority of those souls, even some of the extremely challenging ones to obtain, and fairly worthless. Konami really made that series into a grindy shit experience during the early 2000s, didn't they? A lot of people enjoy doing that. Those same people also enjoy collecting all 700 and something Pokemon repeatedly, earning the reputation of pirates by killing NPCs through the course of several months, and pooping into an empty snack bag they were too lazy to properly throw away. To each their own, even if it's wrong by definition of what I believe to be right, because that's the only definition that matters, so fuck you.

Plugging my ears to the sorrowful aria emanating from the cartridge of my damaged DS, I finished up this month's spooktacular and terrifyingly great... game stuff with Costume Quest, a turn-based RPG adventure that specifically centers around Halloween (and some time during the winter, too, but that's an expansion, and you still do all the Halloween stuff during that time Shut up). Apparently, the idea of granting super powers to children based upon what they dressed up as was something thought up by Tasha Harris, who left Double Fine roughly a year after finishing CQ to return to Pixar. Through my limited experience, I credited the idea to Witch's Night Out, since the children are actually changed into what they were dressed as, because their masks alone were unable to scare the neighbors. It's a concept I saw again in an episode of Rugrats, The Fairly Oddparents, The Simpsons, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Goosebumps, Kid Chameleon, Majora's Mask, and, obviously, playable characters in the Super Mario universe commonly inherit abilities based upon the outfits they wear throughout the game, though that's not really Halloween-themed, but this shows that the concept of Costume Quest is far from being an original one. It's definitely the most focused effort on the subject, however, and embodies several other aspects of the holiday along with it.

The game begins with you choosing between the twins Reynold and Wren, embarrassing the non-playable as candy corn, while you go out stylin' as a robot. Monsters kidnap your candified kid, because they're idiots, and you gain the ability to turn into an actual robot with chest rockets. You go door-to-door and are greeted by either a monster or a treat-giving resident, with a slow-opening front door sequence to really put you on edge, or kinda put you on edge, or to just have your quietly wishing for it to be a normal person, because battles do become rather boring in each section of the game, though obtaining new costume powers and dealing with new enemies now and then help to keep things somewhat interesting. There's plenty of humor, the achievements are easy to get, and bobbing for apples is a simple mini-game that does just enough to help change things up. There's even a bit of self-promotion in the DLC, though I had played and typed about that long before touching this.

With the sequel, our heroes now get to work together. There's a time-traveling dentist, borg versions of the old enemies, an improved battle system, and, my favorite, age progression in the forms of a super hero costume and getting to see your friends in the future. Don't judge me! There's even some challenge to it, as one of the achievements requires having candy corn participate in every battle. It's a passive costume that absorbs hits. A delicious shield. I strongly recommend giving both games a try. They're certainly the highlights of my October gaming, and one of them even offers an achievement for playing it on Christmas, so it's not even a bad idea to put these on your December playlist. If there's a third game in the series, it'll probably just end up revolving around a pair of morbidly obese children surrounded by a bunch of lazy adults standing near their cars in a local church parking lot to celebrate Trunk-or-Treat with slow-opening car doors revealing either a trove of sugary delights or a spoopy clown promoting the latest flop by a musician turned director.

Looks like this adult chose 'Trunk'.

Ok, so, yeah, I know that neither CQ, nor its successor have even the slightest ounce of horror worth mentioning, but if that's all you're wanting, stick to something like Fatal Frame, Eternal Darkness, or Alan Wake. I wanted a nice blend of fear and fun, which better represents my viewpoint on the significance of Halloween. No need to concern ourselves with the pagan roots of the olde days, unless it's to satiate your historical curiosity (and I support that 200%). Just use this time to be something different for a change. Maybe do something to playfully confront your fears. At the very least, use it as a flimsy excuse to have fun with your friends, family, or whomever, because once Christmas rolls around, that's when things get really scary.

No wonder everyone else hates you.