Tuesday, June 17, 2014

Goosebumps #33 - The Horror At Camp Jellyjam Review

So, it's been a while. Far too long, actually. I took a couple weeks off of reviewing stuff because to be honest, the horror world has been at kind of a standstill lately. The only theatrical horror releases as of late were Oculus and The Quiet Ones back in April, which I didn't go see in the cinema because I'm too poor to go see movies in the cinema. Plus, the only horror releases that we have to look forward to are Deliver Us From Evil in July, which promises to be more of a cop drama than a horror film, and the found footage-filled As Above So Below in August, which I'm actually excited for, but that's for another article. We're not here for horror movie predictions. We're here because this childrens' horror book isn't scary at all and I want to make fun of it. Here's R.L. Stine's magnum opus, The Horror At Camp Jellyjam.

Why don't you have a seat right over there, sir?

This is gonna be a very short review because to be honest, there's really not much to say about this book. I'll start by explaining the plot: two unathletic 12-year-old white kids get sent to sports camp for the summer even though they hate sports. While they're there, other kids start to mysteriously disappear and they must work together to find out what's been happening to their fellow campers. Simple enough, right? 

God bless Kevin Spacey

This mystery story takes a side role to make room for the much more interesting main story of how these two kids play various sports with the other campers. Because it's a sports camp. Because the kind of kids who would willingly buy and read Goosebumps books are obviously more interested in sports than they are in reading scary stories. Because R.L. Stine was probably high on pot when he wrote this book, like Stephen King was when he wrote Cujo. So basically, when you pick up this book, you can expect an introduction and a climax like any other book, but those other 80-something pages? 

Touchdown! Home run! Ace! Hole in one! GOOOOOAAAAAALLLLLL!

Pretty much. Oh, don't get me wrong. The main characters still do their investigating, but they don't do much of it before something comes up and they have to call it quits to go play another match of badminton. Here's how the sports work: You win a game, you get a special coin. You get 6 of these bad boys and you get to take part in the special winner's ceremony held nightly in a run down shack outside of camp that nobody else besides the counselors is allowed in. So, they basically find the most physically fit children at camp and then take them to a rape hut. Terrific.  
The main characters eventually figure out that the kids who are going missing are the ones who go to the shack and they go there to find out just what's lurking inside of it. They enter the shack and find themselves face to face with.....

OH MY GOD, IT'S ROSIE O'DONNELL!

King Jellyjam. King Jellyjam is a giant purple blob that constantly needs to be scrubbed and washed by the "winners" so he doesn't choke on his own gross blob stank that's always spewing out of every pore of his gross blobby body. The main characters tell the scrubber kids to all lie down on the ground, and when they do, King Jellyjam realizes just how bad Chipotle can be for your body and he dies in a danky fog of his own purply armpit stench. All of the kids escape the shack and are just about to be killed by the counselors before the cops show up and arrest all of the counselors. 

Hopefully, not the same cop

This book is really bad. Like, really bad. There are some bad plots and monsters in the Goosebumps series, but this has to be one of the absolute worst. No character development, no interesting plot scenarios, a boring and overdone setting, and WHAT KID WANTS TO READ A BOOK ABOUT OTHER KIDS PLAYING SPORTS ALL DAY?! Nothing about this book works as a horror novel, and it definitely shows. If you ask anybody what they think of The Horror At Camp Jellyjam, they'll either laugh at your face or ask you what Disney Channel Original Halloween movie that is. It's a goopy, purple stain on the already soiled underwear that is the Goosebumps franchise. I give The Horror At Camp Jellyjam a measly 1 *insert sports reference here* out of a possible 10. Sorry for the hiatus, but I'm back now and better than ever. Just you wait. 


Thursday, June 5, 2014

Horror Games: Dead Space 2 (2011) Review

So remember how I said that Dead Space was one of my favorite horror games of all time? Well, this is one of those times where the sequel is far superior in every way, like Star Wars Episode IV or Terminator. If you haven't played this game series yet (which I don't know why you wouldn't have since it's amazing), be prepared for

SPOILERAMA: IN SPAAAAAAACE!


So in case you missed the big reveal at the end of the first game, Isaac's girlfriend Nicole, who he had been trying to help escape the ship with him throughout the game, was dead the entire time and whenever you saw her in the game, it was all a hallucination caused by the Marker. So awhile after the events of the first game, Isaac is in a psychiatric hospital in a cityscape called The Sprawl, which is located on Saturn's moon, Titan. After some shenanigans with Necromorphs on the Sprawl, it's revealed that Unitologists on the Sprawl have the Marker and apparently they want Isaac to take his knowledge of it to make copies of it for them so they can spread the glorious Necromorph infection throughout the universe. Isaac ain't havin' none of that, so he bounces and meets a survivor named Ellie who is willing to help him find and destroy the Marker on the Sprawl. They have some quarrels with the head of the Government Sector, Tiedemann, who doesn't want them destroying the Marker because I don't remember why. It's been awhile since I last played this game. On their way to the Government Sector, which is apparently where the Marker is being held, they meet another escaped patient of the psychiatric hospital, Nolan. Nolan and Isaac were both experimented on in the hospital and it's revealed that they both have information about the Marker, but it's locked away in a part of their brain that's inaccessible except by means of a machine that pokes a needle through your eye's pupil, thus allowing your brain to access the locked up info. So, Isaac and Ellie (Nolan turns out to be a psycho freak who tries to kill Ellie and Isaac is forced to gun him down) go to the Government Sector and get separated until the end of the game. Isaac uses the eye poke machine (seriously, that's it's actual name) to find out the Marker's exact location and kills Tiedemann before proceeding to blow up the Marker. Isaac and Ellie ride off into the sunset in their spaceship and live happily ever after....that is, until the next game, when it all goes to hell again.

PLEASE REMOVE YOUR SPOILER GLASSES NOW

So, that's the plot. Pretty deep, but still simple enough to understand. Now, what about the gameplay? Everything that was good about the first Dead Space is vastly improved here. The control scheme is more fitting for a third person shooter, the new guns are all creative and fun to use, the enemies are never too challenging, but still put up a good fight, and this game is has a lot more content than the first. 

It's like the cover of a bad goregrind album.

My one and only complaint about this game is that there is almost nothing scary about it. For being a horror game, the only things even remotely scary are how the enemies look. There's barely any creepy atmosphere, no suspense, and cheap jump scares that you can see coming from a mile away. You can really tell that they were aiming for more of a shooter experience this time around. Think of it as the last game, just with an updated story, more guns, more enemies, and an all-around more enjoyable experience. Dead Space 2 gets 9 hallucinations of your dead girlfriend out of a possible 10. Now, let me show you the best part of this game: the death scenes! 


Tuesday, June 3, 2014

Horror Games: Dead Space (2008)

So, I've been away for a while and unfortunately, I haven't seen anything close to a horror movie in these past 2 weeks. Unless you wanna count A Million Ways To Die In The West because that movie was definitely terrifying to sit through. However, it's not like I don't have content prepared. If you ask anybody who knows me, they'll tell you that I love three things: heavy metal, horror movies, and video games. That's just what I like. So when a video game has horror elements integrated into it? I'm all about it. Here's one of my all-time favorite horror games, Dead Space.

Yeah, it features a guy getting torn limb from limb by hideous monsters, but 18+? Nah.

Dead Space is a simple game: Monsters come after you, you shoot them, you win. Easy enough, right? Well, sir, that's where the ingenuity of this game comes in. Let's look at the plot first. A three man crew consisting of Isaac Clarke, Zach Hammond, and Kendra Davis gets a distress signal from an interplanetary mining ship, the USG Ishimura. The Ishimura has just finished up a project that involved it drilling into the core of an uninhabited planet in order to harvest resources. However, they dug up more than just resources as it seems that a deadly race of aliens has invaded the ship, killing all the crew members and setting off the distress signal. So, Isaac's team is sent to investigate. What follows is Isaac shooting his way through alien zombie monsters in an attempt to escape the ship with his life and make it back to civilization. 


What're you doin' in my basement? Get outta here. GET OUTTA HERE!

Now, for anybody else, that plot would've been more than enough. But no, EA (before they turned into money-grubbing corporate animals) had big plans for this game. The game is still mainly about Isaac trying to escape the ship, but there's a major subplot that carries over to the next 2 games as well about a giant alien artifact that the Ishimura dug up known as The Marker, which controls all of the aliens, known in the series as Necromorphs because the way they reproduce is by bringing dead corpses back to life and mutating them with their alien DNA. The Marker is the source of the Necromorphs' power and through audio logs found throughout the game, as well as one of the few surviving crew members (who is a dick that creates the gayest enemy in the series), you find out that there are a few survivors of the Ishimura attack who worship the Necromorphs and The Marker as gods. They call themselves Unitologists, and they seek to unify the universe under the rule of the Necromorphs by taking The Marker to other planets and spreading the Necromorph outbreak. So now, not only is Isaac tasked with escaping the ship alive, but he also must stop this cult before they achieve their goal of eradicating all life in the universe. The Unitologists aren't brought up much in this first game (like I said, only in collectibles and that one guy), but their presence is still touched upon. They play a much bigger role in the sequels, which we'll get to eventually. 

Hooded robes means it's a cult.

Okay, there's the plot, but how's the scary factor? Honestly? Meh. It's okay, I guess. Most of the scares come from the monsters popping out of unexpected places, accompanied by a stinger sound effect for maximum jump scareitude. There's a couple of spots where the atmosphere is nice and creepy, especially when you're in the labs and you know that there's an indestructible monster behemoth created by that Unitology guy chasing after you. Oh, did I mention that while that indestructible killing machine is chasing you, the ship's oxygen reserves go out and you're left in a race against time to turn the oxygen back on before your spacesuit's tank runs out? Yeah, that's pretty freaking terrifying. Other than that, the game doesn't have much in the way of scare factor. 

EXCEPT FOR THAT! JESUS!

The combat in the game is your basic 3rd person shooter mumbo jumbo. Aim your gun, shoot your gun, and if your aiming reticle was over the enemy, you kill it and win. Except for the added bonus of the dismemberment system! Yessir, this game takes conventional shooter combat and throws it out the window! You're used to shooting things in the head to kill them? Well, screw you, here's a bunch of enemies that need to have their limbs sliced off before they die! In order to kill the enemies in this game, you're required to cut off their arms and legs. The reasoning for this is that the limbs are the connecting points where the Necromorph DNA can interact with the human corpse. Cut off the power source, the whole machine stops working. On top of that, you can also use telekinesis to pick up and throw objects, you can use stasis to freeze enemies in time, and you can.......

CURB STOMP THE EVERLOVING CRAP OUT OF EVERYTHING IN SIGHT!

Overall, Dead Space is a terrific game, even if it's not as scary as I'd like it to be. The gameplay is smooth, I never experienced any glitches, and the combat is extremely satisfying. I give Dead Space 8 dismembered alien limbs out of a possible 10. I'd say go get yourself a copy if you love shooting alien zombies and you have a pension for over the top death scenes. OHMYGODIFORGOTABOUTTHEAWESOMEDEATHSCENES! LOOK AT THIS, YOU GUYS!