Corpse Party: Blood Covered will soon make its North American debut via the PlayStation Network. However, the game has already been available in Japan for quite some time. What started out as an RPG maker project in 1996 has turned into a multi-chapter franchise with a devoted cult following.
Less RPG and more survival horror, Corpse Party is an intense experience to say the least. Though the way Corpse Party achieves this is rather unconventional. At first it may appear to be a typical J-RPG, reminiscent of the Super Nintendo and Genesis days. However, it soon becomes apparent it has little to do with this type of game, despite running on a similar engine.
The game starts with several students inside their high school classroom after hours. They are discussing paranormal events surrounding their school. The school as they know it now was built on top of an elementary school. The elementary was closed after a tragic accident involving one of the teachers. If you know your horror, building on top of the site where something horrible happened is always a bad idea. Soon, the lights go out, the floor breaks, and the classmates are sent into a different dimension. This new dimension is a horrifying limbo where the elementary school’s students still roam the halls. Killing whoever they happen to find in the most brutal ways imaginable, of course. All the doors and windows to the outside world are held firmly shut. Their only hope of escape is to unravel the mystery of what happened to the school.
The story is your typical J-Horror premise. However, it never becomes predictable or shallow. Weaponless, alone, and hunted, you never feel safe. It instills a constant sense of dread that keeps you hooked for hours on end. When the game starts, you play as Naomi and Seiko. Later on, you will get to play as other students. Though the game is very heavy on dialog, and can become tiresome to read at times, it is essential to pay close attention to every detail. The seemingly smallest of choices can have a profound impact on whether or not you survive. When a character dies, the story changes and adapts. I met my untimely end as both Seiko and Naomi in several ways while playing through the first chapter. One of them involved scissors being put into Seiko’s mouth. You can guess what happened next. The amount of choice you get in the branching story makes you want to play through Corpse Party again and again.
Your typical objectives in Corpse Party (besides avoiding children) are to find keys/objects that allow you to pass to the next area or solve a puzzle. Careful attention to each and every item in the environment is required to find your way safely through. However, Corpse Party is more than just a scavenger hunt. Occasionally, you will have to fight for your life against apparitions or the evil spirits that haunt the school. It takes brains rather than bronze to survive these encounters.
As mentioned, Corpse Party started as a project in RPG maker. The graphics look and animate just as good as any other sprite based game the engine tries to emulate would. Hopefully the PSP version will have some higher resolution sprites and textures. The PC version does not look bad by any means considering it is an independent project. It just isn’t quite modern day standards.
Though the PSP version will be translated into English, the PC version is only in Japanese. As mentioned, the game is very dialog heavy. If you don’t speak some Japanese, the story will be lost in translation rather quickly. Though still playable, you will miss out on a good chunk of what makes the game so great. Luckily, most of the characters are voice acted for the majority of the game. This is great at bringing the horrific scenario to life. You can hear the fear in the characters’ voices instead of just reading it.
Corpse Party is a fantastic blend of classic RPG/Adventure gaming with contemporary survival horror. If you have any interest in this genre, Corpse Party is for you. Its horrific setting and unrelentingly brutal story will leave you awake at night. Corpse Party is a very scary game that affects you on a deeper level than the typical “pop-up” horror clichés so many games nowadays cling on to. This is one game you will want to play.
