Haunting Ground [2005] for the PS2
Haunting Ground (Demento in Japan) is a spiritual successor to Clock Tower, the survival horror series created by Human Entertainment's Hifumi Kouno. These games belong to their own survival horror sub-genre as they - for the most part - don't allow the player to directly defend themselves from monsters via guns or any other weapons. At best you could push the enemy away from you or use the environment to slow your chaser down. They also don't follow the RE blueprint insofar as controls were concerned - after all, these games pre-dated RE. They play like point 'n click adventure games - only with
supposedly more responsiveness/mobility which is key to deal with the real-time assaults from the monsters chasing you. I say supposedly, because they still feel way too sluggish.
That's how the original Clock Tower on the SNES as well as the two installments on the the PS1 play. I played the original game to completion and
tolerated the controls because of the pixel eyecandy, thrilling music and thick atmosphere. However, I didn't bother much with the 2 games on the PS1 due to the eyecandy having been replaced by dull early 3D graphics and possibly suffering from even slower controls. Whatever the case, Clock Tower II: The Struggle Within ended up being the first entry in the series without Hifumi Kouno working on it and a commercial failure. A couple of years after its release, Human Entertainment went out of business and Capcom acquired the IP since apparently they needed yet another horror franchise in their lineup.
In 2003, Capcom co-developed Clock Tower 3 with Sunsoft. They even had Battle Royale's director, Kinji Fukasaku, directing the game. Finally, the clunky point-'n-click interface was abandoned in favor of typical survival horror tank controls. The main character still had to run away from monsters the entire time, but at the end of each chapter she had to confront her chaser in an actual - if gimmicky - boss fight. I played it, it was
alright. Still didn't do too hot in sales.
Eventually, Capcom decided keeping the 'Clock Tower' series going was doing more harm than good, evidently not pleasing the original fans and failing to win over new players. So, they used their fully 3D new RE4 engine, put back their old-school fixed camera angles and developed Haunting Ground. Some important changes were made, but I should point out that Clock Tower 3 and Haunting Ground have a
lot more in common than Clock Tower 3 and the games that came before it. Capcom might've as well called them Haunting Ground and Haunting Ground 2.
In Haunting Ground you play as Fiona Belli, a girl who had a terrible car accident with her parents and then awakens inside a cage in some mysterious castle. There seem to be three servant around the castle. Unfortunately, they're either creepy or downright hostile towards her. Luckily, there's also another prisoner in that very same castle, a German Shepherd named
(C)Hewie. She frees the dog and together they start to 'fight back' and try to find a way out of the castle. Hewie can find hidden items and reach places you can't. You can also order Hewie to go somewhere or follow you. Sometimes he obeys, other times he acts lazy and trails behind. Depending on how the dog behaves, you can either scold or praise him (yes, she pets him and says 'Good boy!'). This makes him more obedient throughout the game - it's a decent mechanics, but it's debatable whether the micromanagement is worth it. In Rule of Rose, the dog just followed you and you didn't have to bribe him with treats. It's not a big annoyance though.
In broad lines, there are three major areas and three pursuers you have to deal singularly with throughout the game. The last one is actually a 3-in-1 character of sorts. It's worth mentioning there are also defensive items to ward off your opponents. The game's is all about occult magic and alchemy, so you can even craft your own defensive and recovery items. I didn't use the crafting system myself as the items I found around as well as Hewie were more than enough to deal with the enemy. The game doesn't have a health system per se, but a stamina and panic 'meter'. Running too much will deplete your stamina and receiving damage or experiencing 'traumatic events' increases your panic. When you panic, Fiona will start to run like crazy and trip over herself, eventually crawling on the ground. The screen also changes, the colors turning pastel (almost cel-shaded) and darker. The music reacts to the panic as well, becoming distorted and high-pitched. I'm usually not a fan of 'panic states', but this was very well done and I can't really complain. Each pursuer comes with their own chase theme, here's my favorite:
So what's not so good about the game? Well, Haunting Ground starts off great, very intriguing, tense and mysterious. The castle is almost as iconic as RE's mansion and it's a joy to explore. The first couple of pursuers are also unsettling and interesting characters - Debilitas and Daniella. They make the first half of the game, I was ready to give this game the
green light by that point.
Unfortunately, the second half is altogether weaker - weaker in terms of story, villains and gameplay. The mystery was great, finding out what's really going on... a bit underwhelming. The villains, well, Debilitas is a giant man with the brain of an immature child and has a doll fetish. Daniella is the most disturbing character in the game, she just looks like a beautiful maid, but she's actually much worse than Debilitas. She's prone to schizophrenia, apparently has a dissociative identity disorder, as at times she cooly cleans the place and prepares you meal, other times she wants to murder you and... is jealous of Fiona's womanhood? I mean, just look at this
cutscene. Anyway, interesting characters. Then there's the third villain, Riccardo aka cloaked dude with a gun who can't aim. That's him -
very unsettling. Eventually the game makes him invisible, so he's not just uninteresting, but also annoying. Then there's the mastermind behind all this, literally just a 'mad scientist' trope. As for the gameplay, hiding places become a rare commodity in the second half of the game, so it's all about running around for 5 minutes until the enemy stops giving chase.
While this happens, the game throws a lot of puzzles at you - yet I can't complain, because the puzzles were fine and not frustrating. Oh well. I had fun with Haunting Ground for the most part, but after such a great start, I was expecting more. The first half promised a creepy and unsettling psychological horror masterpiece, the second half was a cheesy horror b-movie plagued by weak villains with weak motivations.
As a bonus, here's Hewie starring as
that dog in RE4: