Halloween Update #2 - 10/30 - Alone in the Dark, Project Firestart, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Clive Barker's Undying/Jericho, Shadow of the Comet/Prisoner of Ice, Zombie Raid, Parasite Eve 1, Braindead 13, Folklore, DreamWeb, Fright Night

In case our last update didn't disturb you enough, we're continuing our coverage of the macabre with a second, massive batch of articles. The largest of them is Alone in the Dark, widely considered the originator of survival horror and the game Resident Evil very deliberately copied its concept from. But there is actually an older game that fulfills all criteria for survival horror, and that is the C64 cult classic Project Firestart. This is an expanded reprint of a Making Of that originally appeared in Retro Gamer, so it includes a lot of quotes from co-designer Damon Slye and other people involved with the production. Amnesia: The Dark Descent on the other hand is a much more modern examples of the genre, and certainly one of the best in recent years since both the Resident Evil and Silent Hill series have more or less jumped the shark.

Not survival horror but first-person shooters are the two games made with creative input from renowned horror writer, director and producer Clive Barker, Undying and Jericho. Another duo, Shadow of the Comet & Prisoner of Ice are two Call of Cthulhu-based point & click adventures by Infogrames. The article has previously appeared in The Guide to Classic Graphic Adventures, and now finally makes its transition to the site. We couldn't get a House of the Dead article this time, but we're running Zombie Raid by Sammy, which might as well have been a long-lost precursor to SEGA's series. We don't have that much lightgun shooter coverage on HG101, so this is gonna redeem that a bit.

We usually tend to cover only complete series, but we made an exception for Parasite Eve 1, in an entertaining analysis by Pat R, author of our humorist retrospective on the Final Fantasy series. Contuing towards even brighter tones, Braindead 13 is a very cartoonish FMV-based game in the vein of Dragon's Lair and Space Ace. Folklore might also seem a bit misplaced on first looks, as it's set in a phantastic world vaguely influenced by Celtic mythology. But so is Halloween in a way, and Folklore revolves around the pagan festival of Samhain, which used to take place on October 31st, and many consider the originator of modern-day Halloween.

For our spotlight we've dug out the disturbing psycho thriller DreamWeb, since it's been recently made available as freeware after its addition to the list of games playable in ScummVM. Your Weekly Kusoge this time is Fright Night, a crappy, movie-licensed Amiga game where you run through your house as a suburban vampire and suck the blood from dozens of intruders into your home. And of course our iOS shooter coverage continues with page 20.