Haunting Ground – PS2 – Review

Awaking in a strange European
castle our heroine Fiona finds herself surrounded by evil. Not knowing what’s
going on or why the residents of the castle are out to get her, Fiona stumbles
around finding strange alchemic devices, traps and a hulking, deformed
admirer. But in a strange twist of fate, Fiona befriends another prisoner of
the castle, a white shepherd dog that Fiona rescues from certain death.
Teaming up, the two must now attempt to uncover the castle’s secrets and
escape a sinister demise.

Haunting Ground is Capcom’s latest
attempt at trying to scare us. Having pretty much written the book on
survival-horror games (Resident Evil series), Capcom decided to take this one
in a slightly different direction. First, the game is more exploration and
puzzle solving rather then fighting and action. Since the castle is relatively
large (over 130 rooms) and disturbingly strange, you can expect to see some
rather odd rooms and locations. Secondly, there are weapons, but not in a
traditional sense. Instead, you can find or create small devices with alchemic
bases that will do varying amounts of damage upon throwing them at the bad
guys. There’s even a cool little device that you throw on the ground and when
someone steps on it, it will cause damage to them. But probably your most
effective weapon is the dog Hewie. Once you have befriended him he will
respond to your commands to attack. Again, adding another layer of depth, you
must be smart in your attacks, don’t have him attack from the front, rather
have him sit and wait and then attack from rear. I must admit, there was some
forward thinking done in this portion of the game.

Since we all know that we’ll be
playing PS3’s by this time next year, it still is nice to know that the
graphics that the PS2 can push are still nice to look at. Don’t get me wrong,
this is not the best-looking PS2 title, but the gigantic mansion that this
game takes place in, looks really good. A gothic, monstrosity with winding
corridors, enormous rooms and strange occupants. The game does not have true
full explorability, but you can more often then not, go up to something and
use the action button. Most of the time it will give you a description of the
object of interest. Sometimes, you can even use the object to hide as this is
the best way to escape the unwanted affections of the enormous Debilitas, the
castle handyman and resident freak. Debilitas is your primary problem while
playing this game; he is actively searching for you as you explore the castle,
often finding you when you are on the cusp of discovering something important.
Since you can’t destroy Debilitas you must outrun him and hide using Hewie and
your weapons to slow him down enough for you to hide. Since the game is viewed
from a fixed third-person perspective, often it changes to the viewpoint of
your hiding place in order to heighten the sense of fear that the programmers
want you to experience. It’s another nifty trick in the game but the whole
hiding thing has been done in the "Clock Tower Series"

The voice acting in the game is on
par for your normal horror game – not that that means anything. Most horror
games have voice acting on par with a microphone in a blender set on puree.
What salvages the middle-of-the-road voice talent, is the truly creepy music
that plays throughout the game, it’s designed to lull you into a false sense
of safety but really ratchets up the scares in an environmental way. Really
well done music and my hats off to the composer.

Continuing to play, you’ll find
that if strategy is not employed, you won’t last long. Think about this, as
you run for your life in the castle, you must eat items in order to regain
your stamina. The same thing is said about Hewie the dog, you must also feed
Hewie to keep his strength up and reward/discipline him throughout the game.
If you leave a room and Hewie isn’t with you, you can call for him, if Hewie
doesn’t respond, you should go up to him and issue the command again. If he
still doesn’t respond, you discipline him. If you don’t position yourself as
the alpha dog early on, you could really regret it later. Plus, Hewie is an
essential component in the game, he can go places you can’t, he can recover
items you can’t and he can fight off the evil forces for you.

Since I am a die-hard horror movie
fan I thought I’d throw out a couple movies that this game appears to "borrow"
from.

Humongous:  A freaky little film
that involves a deformed man stalking teenagers…

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082537/

Castle Freak: Again, some heavy
borrowing, is that a castle in Italy?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112643/

Gameplay: 7.0
The hiding has been done, the
third-person perspective has been done, the dog as a sidekick has been done.
Nicely though, it comes together in a tangible gaming experience that’s not
too bad to control. More a mental survival horror game, then a physical one,
the game does have some nice things to offer.

Graphics: 7.2
Yeah, it’s got that air brushed
skin thing going for it, and the castle sure is neat to look at, but there’s
nothing really awesome here in terms of eye candy.

Sound: 7.4
Really strong background and theme
music. Debilitas has a good sounding voice as he moans and runs after you. But
the rest of the voice acting just doesn’t fit the game really as well as it
should.

Difficulty: Medium/Hard
Shaking the villains that chase
you can be a bit tougher then you think. The screen begins to show the effects
of your fatigue and fear if you get smacked around a bit. You stumble and
become difficult to control much like the movies.

Concept: 6.5
Survival horror games are going to
really need a shot in the arm before they get a good concept score. My
compliments to Capcom for pulling a couple of different ideas into one end
product, but I’m still waiting for the next big head turner.

Overall: 7.0
I need to play games like these,
for me, I can’t get enough of horror games and I gobble them up as soon as I
get them. This one is a worthy entry for the genre, but still felt like it
needed some of the elements drilled down a bit tighter. Still, it’s the only
game that’s been in my PS2 since I got it. I try to play it alone in the dark,
by myself, late at night, and I’ll be darned if I haven’t gotten scared more
then once. For me, that speaks volumes.