Combat Complex

Twin-stick shooter against various bugs and robots with some ARPG gearing, and the action here is fantastically tight with probably three key factors:

• Enemies target you but hit each other, so you manage their attacks to help your fighting instead of just staying out of trouble.
• "Frenzy" orb pickups, which act a bit like combo meter fuel except instead of chaining hits you make frequent choices about whether an orb drop is worth chasing, keeping you close to danger.
• Instant gun switching with overheating instead of reloading, so you fight hard and switch constantly between your three guns to keep any one from overheating while getting the best out of their specific properties.

I play a lot of twin-stick and top-down shooters, and this does a great job mixing the arcade twin-stick feel of high intensity fending off a swarm with tactical top-down dungeon crawling elements, and it's just really special feeling to play. The core action feels not just well designed but like it was made just for me, and I'm genuinely glad someone made it (or is making it, since it's early access). Plus, it's extraction style instead of being a roguelite, so you're always right at the best action while still getting procedural levels, so each run is a little different.

No, at least six months is the plan.

It does have a price in a sense, but that price also gets you that exact value in premium currency, so you don't actually pay anything extra for early access, you're just required to buy that much currency to open the doors.

Week 1

• You'll Never Find Me 2023
• I am Not a Serial Killer 2016
• Ghost Mansion 2021 KOR (rewatch)
• Bad CGI Gator 2023
• Strange Darling 2024
• Terrifier 2017
• Hostile Dimensions 2024
• V/H/S/Beyond 2024
• It's What's Inside 2024
• The Corpse Washer 2024 IND
• Jakob's Wife 2021
• Beezel 2024
• Things Will be Different 2024
• Killer Condom 1996 GER

Week 2

• A Wounded Fawn 2022
• Qorin 2022 IND
• Indigo 2023 IND
• Blink Twice 2024
• Delirium: Photo of Gioia 1987 ITA
• Luz 2018 GER
• Girl on the Third Floor 2019
• Clawfoot 2023
• Post Mortem 2020 HUN
• Terrifier 2 2022
• Phantoms 1998
• It Lives Inside 2023
• Green Room 2015
• The Radleys 2024
• Temurun 2024 IND
• The Sacrifice Game 2023
• Open 24 Hours 2018
• Lavalantula 2015

Thoughts

You'll Never Find Me, A Wounded Fawn, Post Mortem, and Beezel were unexpected finds. It's What's Inside was expected to be good, and was still quite fun. Luz... was notably weird but probably workable. We'll keep that around.

Strange Darling was awful. Big disappointment there, based on talk. We didn't expect much from VHS Beyond, especially with the alien theme, but one always hopes for anthologies to pull some surprises. Like most of VHS 2 and on, at least it wasn't worse.

My partner and I found Beezel better than we were expecting based on reviews, so that was nice.

It's What's Inside was a lot of fun.

Aberrance says 2022 or 2024, so maybe it's new somewhere. It was a decent twisty horror attempt from Mongolia, so if you like the off the beaten path, check it out.

The Demon Disorder has some fun bits, though it requires When Evil Lurks levels of tolerance for nonsensical authorial hand puppeteering. Once you get past that characters just can't do anything that makes sense, it's a trip.

Yeah, but I mean, we're over 40 now, plus some shows. Such a long and random list is not really useful to anyone. Here's some season-so-far notables instead:

• Cuckoo 2024
• The Retreat 2020
• Subject 2022
• All My Friends Are Dead 2021 POL
• The Vourdalak 2023 FRE
• The Closet 2020 KOR
• Deleter 2023 PHI
• Home for Rent 2023 THA
• Contorted (The Contorted House) 2022 KOR
• Oddity 2024
• Heilstatten: Haunted Hospital 2018
• Velvet Buzzsaw 2019
• Exhuma 2024 KOR
• Satanic Hispanics 2022 MEX
• Dream Scenario 2023
• Horror Stories 2 2013 KOR
• #ChadGetstheAxe 2023

We start our horrorfest movie plowing in mid August, so the September list is quite long already. Way too many for a post per movie :(

Probably Ouija: Origin of Evil. Others we'd note in particular:

• Oculus 2014
• Dark Skies 2013
• The Veil 2016
• The Lords of Salem 2013
• The Hunt 2020
• M3GAN 2023
• Jessabelle 2014
• Dashcam 2022

Here's a couple of lists for people to use:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Blumhouse_Productions_projects
• https://editorial.rottentomatoes.com/guide/all-blumhouse-horror-movies-ranked/

I think they're sad, creatively bankrupt exercises that generally shouldn't get made, but on the other hand, it's good when they at least do different things or bring real ideas to the table. Tons of horror movies really aren't very good, so you'd expect doing a good thing better to be a slam-dunk, but it's rare for a remake to actually take that and execute. Even a frame-by-frame remake has the potential to do better and bring out the best in a proven idea, or even fix something that wasn't appreciated from the many limitations a lot of old horror worked under. That's one aspect more specific to horror that makes remakes potentially a lot more useful to do, but it's still an issue that people making remakes happen are usually doing it because they don't have something better.

Friday the 13th (2009) did a great job mixing polish, old ideas, and tongue-in-cheek series self awareness that all make it a fun way to enjoy what was good as well as what was bad about the early F13 movies. Then you have things like Shutter, where the remake is basically the same but still manages to be worse at every opportunity on top of the weird and pathetic jingoism. That was just ugly all around, and pollutes the movie space, so now we have to be forever careful to clarify Shutter (2004) instead of Shutter (2008), because the only thing seeing the remake does is reduce the impact of seeing the better movie.

Jeez, the laziness of reviewing it based just on the store page. It's been in early access for like five years, getting better every update, and not one person there can even bother to actually play the game they recommend to others?