Genre: Horror/Adventure| Developer: Team GrisGris/5pb. | Publisher: Xseed Games
Platform: Playstation Portable | Players: 1 | Rating: M (Mature)
You don’t need to be a lurker at 4chan to know how bizarre and disturbing Anime can get. There is hardly a place on the web safe from a randomly posted image, animation, or YouTube links to emphasize the weird, violent, or sexual (and more often than not, a combination of the three) content that makes up the majority of Japanese Animation. While there are a fair number of other visual media that are acceptable for mainstream viewing (typically Shōnen series, like Dragon Ball Z, Bleach, and One Piece), there is a far greater number that proudly embrace the country’s fetishes involving panties, lolis, and gigantic breasts.
But once in a while, those disturbing tropes are put to a more “proper” use. Corpse Party is one such example, an interactive doujin for PC from 1996 turned PSP adventure title by Xseed Games that takes common anime tropes and turns them on their heads (similar to When They Cry/Higarushi, which also began life as a PC game) while also featuring the same level of graphic violence and gore found in live-action Japanese films, such as The Ring, The Grudge, and almost everything by Takashi Miike).
The story of Corpse Party centers around Heavenly Host Elementary, a school which was renovated after the tragic murder of four students in the 1970s. Now called Kisaragi Academy, a group of students (and their teacher) stick around their classroom one night telling ghost stories while also performing a friendship ritual to celebrate the departure of one of their friends, who is due to transfer to a new school…all the while blissfully ignorant of the school’s dark past.
Corpse Party doesn't spare you any of the gory details.
The horror movie clichés are here in full force, and the anime clichés are even more apparent; you’ve got the cowardly-yet-good-natured male character, his tomboy childhood friend (who, naturally, is teased about her feelings for said classmate), her air-headed best friend, the gruff, older bad boy with a good heart, the bookworm, and several girls who look a great deal younger then they actually are…including the smoking-hot teacher.
As tried and true as these tropes are, however, it doesn’t take long for the game’s true nature to take effect; after a freak earthquake, the students and teacher find themselves seemingly transported to the dilapidated ruins of Heavenly Host Elementary, with every window and doorway leading outside completely barred and inaccessible. Though they are all technically in the same area, the curse of the school has separated them by a nexus in space-time, with the occasional overlap as the only instance of communication. A character may leave behind an object discoverable by another character, for example, or another character’s scream can be heard by multiple people across the different planes of existence.
Thus serves the chapter-based structure of Corpse Party; each of the five chapters focuses on a different group as they fumble around the dark hallways and destroyed classrooms, while interacting with (or running away from) the many ghostly entities cursed to roam the school. There are also notes and items left behind by previous victims of the haunted school, both of which play a role in opening up locked paths as well as further moving the story along.
Typically, visual novels from Japan are played with a first-person perspective while interacting with portraits of other characters. Corpse Party instead goes for a top-down sprite approach that should be familiar for fans of classic RPGs like Final Fantasy I-VI or Chrono Trigger. Players control the main character for each chapter (who usually has another character or two tag along invisibly, just like a party leader), moving them in four directions and interacting with different objects and entities with the push of a button. There’s even a menu screen that lists the different collected items as well as HP for each character.
Hey, you should probably look behind you, man.
But don’t presume that the game features random battles or anything resembling combat; the HP refers to certain situations where a malevolent force is chasing the character, and any physical contact will instantly drain a portion of their health. The only way to survive these moments is to figure out a way out of the current situation while avoiding contact with the apparition.
It’s easy to write off Corpse Party as a JRPG without any combat, but that would be a huge disservice to the game’s main appeal; like other story-based games like 999 or Hotel Dusk, the real draw of the gameplay is to take in the characters and setting, both of which are represented very well.
While the characters may start off as cookie cutter anime cutouts, their back-stories and inner conflicts come into the forefront in-between moments of sheer terror. While the goal of each chapter is to achieve the best possible ending for each scenario, there will be unavoidable casualties regardless, and you may find yourself lamenting the sad fates of the deceased along with the character that discovers their remains.
Don’t let the 16 bit-era sprites lure you into a false sense of security, either; Corpse Party is an explicitly brutal game that puts its cast through Hell, with each encounter resulting in traumatized fright or severe injuries. Even the stuff that isn’t shown can be incredibly unnerving… The written accounts of previous victims often describe the gruesome fates of their fellow colleagues, as well as the lengths they went through to save their own skin. Likewise, the game also takes a cue from Eternal Darkness and Amnesia by transforming seemingly normal messages and everyday school decor into haunting, otherworldly manifestations that gives question to what is real and what is not.
But the most effective method to delivering the frights lies with the game’s sound design; much like the Silent Hill series, some of the most frightening moments are made effective by the use of sound, particularly of the spoken variety. The game employs the use of positional audio, which creates a surround sound effect for anyone using headphones. One particularly memorable use of this technique occurs during a chase sequence that takes place entirely during a black screen, as your ears bear witness to the frenzied wails of the unseen monster and the panicked screams of its next victim darting across one ear to the next.
Speaking of screams, developer Xseed chose to utilize the original Japanese audio for all the voices, which is a wise move as no one screams like Japanese women (yes, I know that came out wrong). The only slight downside is that the localization, in an effort to punch up the original dialog, inserts several additional lines of dialog that are clearly not being said by the original Japanese actors; it’s a minor quibble, but it does tend to break the immersion when a voiced line finishes before the re-written translation.
The graphics aren't great, but the character art is pretty nice.
A bigger flaw is that none of the game’s text or sequences can be fast-forwarded or skipped, a feature that is essential to story-based games. This can prove further frustrating when replaying a chapter, as players are required to unlock the “correct” ending for a chapter in order to unlock the next one. Fortunately, the game also employs multiple save slots per chapter, as well as the ability to quicksave at any time. Achieving these required endings usually involve a specific action, such as reading an important document or finding a significant item, but it also only takes one wrong move in order to obtain a “Wrong End” (which usually involve creative-yet-violent outcomes that are worth seeking out intentionally).
Depending on who you are, the anime-style visuals and designs may be either be positive or off-putting, but for anyone who is a fan of horror, Corpse Party is absolutely worth a look. Turn off the lights, put on some headphones, and see how long you can last before the uneasiness creeping along your spine like a centipede causes you to shut off your PSP.
- 8 / 10
Corpse Party is available through the PlayStation Store for $19.99.
A download code for this game was provided to The Gaming Vault by the publisher for review purposes.
