Review: Corpse Party: High Schoolers Need To Stop Messing With The Occult

Who thought "let's say a chant x amount of times to solidify our friendship!" wasn't going to backfire? These kids, that's who.

My PSP library is made up mostly of relatively unknown games, little projects companies like XSeed picked up. As a huge horror fan, this game had a lot to live up to in my expectations. And while Corpse Party had mastery over a few elements, it was also a frustrating experience and small problems drew me out of the game, killing the horrific atmosphere the game works so hard to build.

Imagine watching a horror movie. These movies need proper pacing to entrance the viewer into the world of the movie. This can be done with cinematography, music, ambient sound, good acting, and lots of suspense. There has to be enough tension to make you snap at a scare and then immediately exhale in relief.

Games can be a bit more varied in how they do horror because of the medium. some games use cinematic techniques from movies, others are minimalist and don't need cinematography. Most important is the suspense regardless of how it's implemented. Horror games have a one-up on movies in that because games are inherently interactive, suspension of disbelief is easier when playing a game. You're not going to get very far in a game if you refuse to move forward. However, games can be much more frustrating than movies. After all, a movie isn't going to just shut itself because you weren't good enough at watching it. (And if that's the case, you have a real life horror situation on your hands -- get out of your home or the movie theater pronto.)

After spending 30 minutes building up a scenes where I had to hold my breath and run just to interact with the wrong thing, do something in the wrong order, or get stuck in a corner without an item I was supposed to pick up earlier. Bam, game over. Suspension gone. Cue frustration as I go back to my last save point. The magic is gone. This happens over and over in Corpse Party. There may be multiple endings to the game, but it's a truly linear story. Actions have to come in a specific order, and the lack of hints left me stuck in areas longer than I needed to be, killing my suspense once again. Hints don't need to be obvious. Good game design leads players to the next area without letting them know they're being led ahead. (One good example of this is the part of Portal after avoiding "your party.") The bad endings of Corpse Party are somewhat interesting in that there's a short scene in which you see how your character dies, and that death is often unsettling, but it lacks the same level of creepiness that a game like 9 Hours 9 Persons 9 Doors has. You are expected to screw up a certain number of times when playing 999 and get bad endings in which Junpei dies. A part of the story is that after going through all of these bad endings, Junpei is able to recall some of the information from earlier chapters to use in this one true ending. (999 Spoiler: It's also interesting how Akane broke out in a feverish sweat each time you head towards a wrong end as it means she will have died in the previous nonary game.)

Where 9 Hours 9 Persons 9 Doors encourages you to try again for a different bad ending, the bad endings in Corpse Party are more like a punishment for you screwing up.

The story is properly creepy in many familiar ways for J-horror. Long strands of black hair block cabinets, superstitions come into play, and a foul mystery has infected a forgotten elementary school. I've found many more instances of horror stories taking place in Japanese media than western media. Schools are supposed to be safe places, and yet they feel so eerie when empty. Back when I was in elementary school, the popular "Bloody Mary" legend had taken one of my classrooms by storm. I was told one specific bathroom was haunted, and if you turned off the lights and chanted "Bloody Mary" a certain amount of times, a scary ghost would appear. I didn't use that bathroom for the rest of the year.

After messing up a friendship charm consisting of a chant and pieces of paper, the eight students and the teacher are transported to an elementary school that existed many decades ago. After a controversy, it was shut down, and a large part of the second half of Corpse Party is learning about the truth of that controversy. Just when you think you've solved it, it turns out there's much more you don't know.

The best elements of Corpse Party are its sound and visual design. It's a PSP port of a '96 game on the PC, and it shows, but that grittiness makes it even creepier. Ultra-realistic graphics by themselves are not what scare people in horror. A small taste of something, leaving the details up to your imagination, can be so much more gruesome.

The scariest part of Corpse Party isn't what you see -- it's what you hear. I used my best headphones for this, limiting outside noise distracting me and making it feel like there was someone actually walking around me, whispering in my ear. When walking through a classroom, a disembodied voice will easily move from the right speaker to the left. Sometimes it can just be giggles. The audio being in Japanese also makes it a bit eerie. The voice actors all do a fantastic job of sounding terrified, insane, or hopeless.

Minor gripe: Pantyshots. This game definitely has some fanservice moments, and they also kill the mood whether you like them or not. For someone who had no desire to see female character's underwear, I was removed from the atmosphere of the game to say something I would echo several more times, "Are you kidding me?"

Additional minor gripe: Yuuya Kizami. This character is one of the many students from other schools transported to the school from the past, but he has no significant impact on the story other than to be scary for a bit. As a character fundamentally different from all the other playable characters, it would have been interesting to learn more about Yuuya's motivations beyond one short (and ominous!) scene presented in a flashback.

Corpse Party is a game I enjoyed playing with a spoiler-free walkthrough that helped me stay away from bad endings. This helped me stay in the moment of the game, although I still had to break away from the game occasionally to make sure I didn't accidentally read something I wasn't supposed to in-game. As a game I bought on sale and played in the spirit of Halloween, I'm happy with my purchase. At its best, the game put me on edge several times. At its worst, I was distracted by all the things that could go wrong and make me go back to a previous save.