Corpse Party review

To get an idea of what Corpse Party is like, imagine you are watching a horror film and you are getting increasingly unnerved by the way in which characters you have come to care about are meeting a grisly demise. One is stumbling blindly and you are feel content in the knowledge that this one, at least, has survived then at the very last moment he dies.

You feel confused and rewind it to see if you could have seen it coming, and are still outraged at the fact that he died when he shouldn’t have. This is how Corpse Party plays out. This PSP download tries incredibly hard to build up immense tension and it has many moments of unique, glorious horror but he sudden and unnecessary game overs come so quickly that some of this hard work is undone.

Nevertheless, despite the fits of frustration you will endure, the whole atmosphere of Corpse Party will haunt your mind and clearly demonstrated the power of how simple visuals paired with the right sounds and texts can get right inside your head and won’t leave.

We first saw Corpse Party in 1996 when the RPG Maker was used by a team of independent developers from Japan to craft the 16 bit horror game. In the years that followed many versions of Corpse Party were produced, a notable one being the upgraded remake for the PSP which took the original and added new music, characters and visuals.

This version of Corpse Party, released on the Playstation network, is a representation of that complete version, and for the first time is localised for western players. The story begins one night in a typical Japanese high school; Kisaragi Academy. A group of students are telling each other ghost stories then perform a ritual meant to ensure that their friendships endure the times to come.

Just after their incantations, an earthquake strikes and devastates their school, and the group find themselves in the ruins of the Heavenly Host elementary school, a building that was demolished decades ago. Over the next 10 years or so, your task is to keep these friends alive as they navigate the cursed halls of this dilapidated building.

Hunger, betrayal and blood threaten their sanity and any simple action could have them instantly embraced in the waiting arms of death. In keeping with the 16 bit roots of Corpse Party, the visuals are simple and in 2D, which may seem weird after playing modern games. There greatest strength of Corpse Party however is its ability to give you enough to make you shiver, yet leave the rest to your imagination.

Corpse Party also tinkers with sound and text in a way that modern games don’t, and this just adds to the essence of it all. You can’t imagine playing it with state of the art headphones. Voices echo and flicker whilst textual cues and black screens instantly ignite your senses, and even the music reacts to a death. Much time needs to be invested to play Corpse Party, but it is ultimately satisfying and time well spent.