games

It's pretty great if you're into PS2 survival horror. It's a spiritual successor to the Clock Tower series and also said to reuse a few abandoned concepts for Resident Evil 4. From Clock Tower the game takes its emphasis on evading and hiding from stalkers that hunt you throughout the course of the game, and it contains no traditional RE-style combat. You play as a young woman stuck in a creepy castle with a dog companion whom you can command to do various things, like attack enemies or get items and there's a mechanic where you need to train him to make him obey your orders better by praising/scolding him when appropriate. The game is influenced by Italian giallo films so there are creepy sexual undertones running throughout with the villains and their interactions with the protagonist, with them all essentially wanting her body for different reasons. Tonally, it's over-the-top in an extremely entertaining way and the villains are all delightfully weird. Haunting Ground looks incredible for a PS2 and there are no loading screens, with new rooms loaded seamlessly as you enter them so it's impressive on a technical level too