Corpse Party: Blood Drive (wherein I rant, a lot)

Well, this is the final chapter in what has been dubbed the Heavenly Host Saga and, well, it was kind of a disappointment.  Now I’m not saying the game was bad, not by a long shot, but compared to its predecessors, especially the original PSP remake that started the trilogy, it’s rather lackluster.  From gameplay issues to story and character problems, Corpse Party: Blood Drive, while occasionally very inspired, often feels less like a chapter in the Corpse Party storyline and more like an episode of this year’s most popular teenage aimed anime.

Before we get to the stuff that really, really hurts the game, I’ll just focus on getting gameplay out of the way.  It’s essentially the same as the original PSP title, but in 3D, complete with: an impressive lighting system, a slowly draining flashlight, a hiding mechanic, roaming enemies, traps and obstacles and a stamina meter.  Now this sounds all well and good, and it could have been, but the mechanics are underdeveloped at best and pretty much broken at worst.

The issues with the underdeveloped mechanics are most present during Chapter 4 and Chapter 5, when the game decides to throw a number of enemies at the player, while the player is expected to roam around the school, aimlessly looking for progress items.  It’s typical survival horror, sure, but unlike superior titles like Resident Evil, or even the more recent Alien: Isolation, you have, very, very limited offensive and defensive abilities.  More often than not, your best option is to run and hope you outpace your pursuer or you hit a progress point and the game resets the enemy.

Now this could be good, Alien: Isolation is completely built on running from and hiding from an enemy that is endlessly stalking you.  Difference is, the developers of A: I understand that they need to walk a fine line between terror and frustration, so you have options, ways to distract the creature, to cause it to flee or to hide from it momentarily.  Blood Drive, just doesn’t have this.  You’ve got one defense item, a Talisman, which exorcises a ghost from your immediate vicinity, being survival horror, these items are, of course, in rather limited supply.  Now this could be a cool mechanic, like all survival horror games, conserve your items only when you need them most.  Problem is, they’re used automatically if a ghost gets too close, so it’s very easy to unintentionally use all your offensive items.  Oh, and all collected offensive/defensive items are re-set after each subsequent chapter, meaning if you ended Chapter 3 with shitloads of Talismans, you’ll be starting Chapter 4 with none.  Worse still, in a strange way, the Talismans actually make the game less terrifying.  Yes, they’re limited, but they guarantee such absolute safety that having them on your person practically makes you feel like Isaac Clarke, circa Dead Space 3, in other words, shit aint scary.

“But you have closets, you said there was a hiding mechanic” I hear you say.  Don’t think I forgot about that one either.  Oh yes, the wonderful hiding mechanic.  In similar fashion to Alien: Isolation and other modern horror titles, you can run into closets and chill until the enemy passes by and it’s safe to come out.  Problem is, 95% of the time the enemy is so completely up your ass, as to render the hiding spaces useless.  You have to be out of site in order to hide and in most instances that’s just not the case.  Enemies do a pretty fine job of keeping pace and your limited stamina only helps make it easier for them to catch up to you.  Oh, and hiding doesn’t mean an enemy is gone, it will stay in your general area in perpetuity, thus rendering the mechanic absolutely useless, as you’re forced to push past them anyway.  The only time I found myself using any closets was to check the area for ghosts.  You see, when hiding, the game has a little indicator that tells you when a ghost is nearby.  Blue means they’re far off, green means they’re a pretty decent distance away, yellow means right around you and red means right in your fucking face.  Anytime you’re in a new area and you’re unsure of ghosts, just run on over to a closet, hop on in and see if the distance indicator is running.  If it isn’t you’re safe, if it is, be prepared to spend the next ten minutes in pure frustration.

Now hiding from ghosts and stuff would be fine, if stealth mechanics were implemented in any way.  There just aren’t any though, you can’t sneak past ghosts, you can’t distract them to make an area safer to travel through, if you lose them after being chased through several rooms, they just reset at their original location.  I hate to mention SIREN’s broken mechanics in a positive way, but I’d even take SIREN’s broken fuck stealth system over this.  At least you can hide from enemies in that, at least you could distract them and sneak past without being noticed, in Blood Drive, you just can’t do that.

I know it sounds like I’m being absolutely negative and that the game itself sounds like a fuck awful time, but, these instances are, thankfully, an exception rather than a rule.  Sans Chapter 4 and Chapter 5, much of the game is focused mostly on puzzles and exploration, with the occasional encounter to break things up.  Plus, the series has always been more focused on being something of a visual novel/adventure game hybrid, so a good portion of the game will be spent in visual novel styled cutscenes, with a great deal of graphic and very well written descriptions and, of course, lots of dialogue and first person narration.  For me I absolutely love adventure games and visual novels, so this is a high point, however, I do understand that for some, this may just add to the list of reasons not to play this game.

Okay, long winded crap about gameplay aside, now we get into the meat of it, the part of the game that really, truly counts and, it’s good… I guess.  Well maybe not that, it’s, it’s okay, passable.  The characters and writing are top notch, but as a Corpse Party game it’s, well to be honest, it’s really a major disappointment.

First off, while the series' art recalls traditional anime, it’s actually always been pretty grounded.  I know for Western audiences that’s probably a surprise, considering the genre stereotype is that it’s always ridiculous and over-the-top.  Anyway, the series has always had its share of strange Japanese stuff, like unnecessary panty shots, brothers and sisters showering (apparently this is pretty normal in Japan) and girls in school uniforms with short skirts, but it's far from looking like your typical anime, most importantly, none of the characters dressed in ridiculous outfits.  Nobody looked like a fucking Final Fantasy reject is what I’m saying.  That’s not the case with Blood Drive though, now we’ve got elaborate cosplay friendly costumes for the fuck of it.

We’ve got one character with damn near body length pigtails, who walks around wearing some kind of, gothic lolita outfit, complete with sexy fishnet gloves, pink stockings and a bra that literally only covers the top of her tits.  She’s also got some massive fuck anime scythe that she can apparently materialize out of thin air.  And, to top off this weird fuckery, she’s also apparently got superpowers and easily handles one of the franchise’s most physically capable characters with relative ease.   Then, we’ve got some other character, with antagonist written all over him, who is apparently dressed like the antagonist of an anime series called Soul Eater.  He too, for some reason, has superhuman strength.

These characters are just so counter to what the series had been prior to this and just makes this specific entry feel less like a twisted horror tale and more like your typical horror themed anime, especially considering how goddamned much they want to get into Heavenly Host.  A dimension, I remind you that has killed all but six of the people who ever mistakenly ventured into its halls.  A dimension that is known to slowly and methodically drive its victims completely insane, ultimately driving them to kill either themselves or their own friends and loved ones.  A dimension that, continues to torture you even after death.  In other words, it’s a fucked up place that you most definitely do not want to be.  Not anymore though, now we’ve got characters who just waltz on in like they’re heading on down to Central Park.  It’s hard to take Heavenly Host’s reputation as place of unspeakable horrors seriously, when we’ve got characters who not only desire to venture there, but who aren’t even phased by the oppressive, mentally crippling atmosphere.  Where’s the threat?  Where’s the threat and the fear when going there is apparently a walk in the park for these characters?

Not only do these impractically dressed, overly capable anime characters hurt the overall narrative, but the tension is completely shot with the introduction of a new antagonist and a sequel's general practice of upping the stakes.  Now, in order to compensate, our characters, especially Ayumi, have to have some mystical powers to help them face these new threats.  The powers get so silly and ridiculous, it ultimately reminds me of the painful final fight in the otherwise stellar Dark City.  Corpse Party is a dark, Lovecraftian/psychological horror game, I don’t think a mid-air Dragon Ball Z battle was really necessary.  And, again, like the aforementioned super powered anime characters, it kind of kills the horror when we’ve got mid-air combat, complete with energy balls.

Now, again, we’re getting really negative here, but there is honestly a great deal of good to be found in the game.  The characters are all absolutely wonderful, yes, even the gothic lolita and the stupid hoodie wearing antagonist.  There’s a great deal of strong character moments and a couple emotional sequences that are handled with extreme care and remind us why Corpse Party was ever so great in the first place.  It was never really the twisted horror at the center of the franchise that made Corpse Party such a strong title, it was the characters and their interactions.  Similar to the original Alien, these characters are far from just archetypes, they feel like real people and the writing is so damn good that it’s near impossible not to get invested in their stories.  Hell, the game even introduces one of my new personal favorite characters, not just in the series but in general, the tragic and arrogant Aiko.  She’s arrogant and foolhardy, but as the game progresses and Heavenly Host slowly peels away her confident façade, we’re treated to one of the best characters in the franchise.  Seriously, she’s just awesome.

As for the main plot, while I appreciate the world building and the extra additions to the series’ lore and I especially love the bittersweet and very fitting conclusion, I feel the game suffers from a serious case of over explaining itself.  Like all good horror, Corpse Party was better when it didn’t explain itself.  It was better when Heavenly Host, now the Nirvana, was nothing more than an alternate dimension inexplicably created by the vengeful spirit of a young girl.  It was better before spiritual magic, family bloodlines and cults became the primary explanation for pretty much everything that has happened throughout the series.  It was better when Sachiko was still the main threat rather than her allegedly more malicious, but ultimately less threatening, unborn twin sister.  Now, it’s just another survival horror cliché, like Silent Hill before it, the mystique is gone thanks to inane exposition.

Again, none of this is to say I don’t like the game, if this were any other franchise I’d probably rate this much, much higher than I am, but it’s Corpse Party, and being a Corpse Party title, I’m going to hold it to its own lofty standards.  So yes, this was quite the disappointment and it certainly does not live up to its name.  It often forgets what made the original games so great, the gameplay is jacked, the anime tendencies completely kill the tone and yeah, it’s an unnecessary finale to a story that never needed a sequel in the first place.  The journey was definitely a bumpy one, but I thoroughly enjoyed my time with it and it was great to see these characters I’d grown to love, in action one last time.