Hidden Gaming Gems: Corpse Party

You know those weird Facebook status questions that present silly, unlikely scenarios like "You now live in the last video game you played, how screwed are you?" that have a tendency to pop up once in a while? (Or is that just my strange group of friends?) Well lets just say that in the event that such a circumstance ever becomes a reality, I pray that the last game I played wasn't Corpse Party!

While not really a game itself (CP qualifies more as a visual novel) I have to say that for a remake of a virtually unheard of PC game, this was quite the treat.

A ritual that lets us be together forever! …in death!

Corpse Party is a weird 'torture porn' lovechild between the Silent Hill franchise and The Grudge, with a little bit of a late showing for a threesome with the SAW franchise (That description alone should be enough to either draw you in fully or have you running for the hills!) and though it's a good long while before you get any gameplay elements (1 hour - but remember this is a visual novel inasmuch as it is a game) once you're thrown into the mix its quite the wild ride.

A rough synopsis: You play as a varying group of nine people; eight Japanese students ranging from the High School to Jr. High ages, and one T.A. After performing a ritual/charm that is supposed to bind them together forever in friendship, the students collapse after the onset of a mysterious earthquake and wake up in a somewhat unfamiliar setting. Without spoiling too much, the player must, through multiple sets of characters, solve puzzles, riddles, and timed challenges in order to free yourself from your supernatural prison where ghosts and the very environment itself is determined to kill you. Sadly, not all of your party is destined to survive no matter how well you do but upon successful completion of the game and appeasing the sprits within Heavenly Host Elementary School your remaining party members return home safe and sound, with one last twist to the end that I also will not spoil because, well let's face it, you should really play this game!

Like Silent Hill, all choices matter, and different choices (or a lack of having made necessary choices) alter your endings of the game, though not in the permanent manner that Silent Hill had. Usually after a few minutes (instead of several painstaking hours) you meet a rather disturbing fate and see the "Wrong End" screen slither into view shortly thereafter. I think the longest result took about an hour, but I was able to see well before then that the ending I was working toward was not the proper one. I continued anyway just to see how things unfolded, and I was rewarded satisfactorily with some gruesome murders and some spooky ghost/possessions of my team.

Lions and Tigers and agonizing death, oh my!

Puzzles sometimes got a little contrived, and on more than one occasion I found myself consulting a (spoiler free) online walkthrough just to make sure I wasn't missing any crucial items for the story (spoiler alert: I was), but the game still managed to keep you on your toes with a changing environment and constantly resetting you with different members of your party throughout the story.  There's even a few teen romances that I was rooting for along the way as things progressed.

One of the more intriguing parts of this game is that you are not alone here at Heavenly Host Elementary. While you are here with your own group of nine people, there are in fact other students trapped at H.H. with you from varying schools (and even a few adults for their own various reasons) - however, what at first seems like a great opportunity to team up and discover/solve more mysteries to free yourself form your never ending hell turns into an even bigger nightmare when you find that prolonged exposure within the walls of H.H. actually causes people to go insane and become violent (a process called "darkening") this brings about the death of a good number of the students that you find over time at Heavenly Host, and presents an even bigger problem because now not only are you, the player, trying to avoid vengeful spirits, but you now have to be concerned about the mental stability of your allies within the game.

What Corpse Party delivered best of all for me was the mystery, and I say this because all the way up until Chapter Four, there didn't even seem to be much of a mystery. The plot seemed pretty transparent and straightforward, which isn't bad so long as the story delivers on the atmosphere (it does) but about halfway through the fourth chapter a wrench is thrown into the seeming linear-ness of the plot and I couldn't have been more pleased with the genuine horror/ghost story that bloomed over the course of the horror.

(Become) One of us! One of us!

One thing to mention is that while the spoken dialogue is in Japanese, I still found myself appreciating the voice acting in the game. Reading it along with the English text helped set the tone for how the characters spoke, and gave a great insight into their personality that a wall of text alone just can't communicate. I was particularly impressed with a horrified Morishige at the beginning of Chapter 5 after he makes a horrifying and heartbreaking discovery, and can't help but feel that it has been a long time since a voice actor had done such an impressive job of portraying such raw emotion in an almost dialogue-less scene.

Word of warning: if torture porn makes you squeamish, or if eyes being pulled, tongues being cut out, or any sound effects that are remotely gross or squishy bothers you in any way - this game will not be for you. Where they got lazy with English translation (only for not dubbing the thing) they made up for in atmospheric tones. Blood drips actually made drip noises, death wails had gurgles and choking, crying and chokes, hiccups, sobs, and sniffy noses, etc. You hear it all, and its amazing!

If you want a decent idea of what you might be getting into before purchasing a $20 game off of the PSN store (available for both Vita and PSP), you can check out the Corpse Party anime which I believe can be caught on YouTube for free at the moment. The anime plays out fairly accurately up until the last two episodes where they took some creative liberties so as not to render playing the game useless for the viewer.

Overall the game took me about 10 hours to complete over the course of a few evenings, but I failed to obtain all of the student ID tags which would have likely resulted in more gameplay. There are also between chapter extras that can be opened up if you finish the levels with one or more stars that…I'm honestly not sure how they needed to be obtained. These were nice little tidbits as you get to see members of your party, and also found victims, before being spirited away to Heavenly Host Elementary. It's not necessary to the storyline, but its still a nice happy touch to give you perspective on the school's victims.

If you haven't played Corpse Party - remedy that sorrowful notion right now and head over to the PSN store on your Vita! It's available as a ROM for the PSP emulator for your PSP as well, but I've beard that there are audio issues with those files. There's also a remake due for the U.S. soon that will be a Vita release. It features the same story with additions, and a 3D environment as opposed to the 2D top-down imagery that the original Corpse Party games featured. Let me know if you've played this game, if you agree or not!

Happy gaming!