#splatter chatter

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123: Campfire Tales 5

For the end of summer we're gathering around the campfire once more for some spooky tales.

Hello Chatters,

While the first chilly breezes of autumn are starting to creep in, Miss Mel and Mr. Craiggors are here with another set of Campfire tales. This time Miss Mel tells us about The Valley of the Headless Men. Here is a picture of the Nahanni National Park Reserve in Canada.

Join us for this chilling tale!

[bughead-in-the-comics]

From Splatter Chatter, Archie Giant Series #155 (1968).

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(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWS9Zl__PO0) Justicar and Paint are the best at bomb defusal! The very best. No bombs have ever exploded in their presence.* Time’s ticking, chop chop!

No Justicars were harmed in the making of this video.

*There were a few bombs.

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Mr. Craiggors Top 10 of 2021

As always, our intrepid hosts looked back on this year in horror and picked out their top 10 movies. If you are interested in Miss Mel’s list, you can find that (here). Wondering why Mr. Craiggors picked these ten? Want to know honorable mentions? Find those on the blog 10 - Boys from County Hell

9 - Candyman

8 - There’s Someone Inside Your House 

7 - The Power

6 - Censor

5 - Caveat

4 - Werewolves Within

3 - The Boy Behind the Door

2 - The Vigil

1 -  Malignant

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ICYMI: Miss Mel and Mr. Craiggors put up their best of 2019 lists on the Twitter today. Here are Mr. Craiggor’s picks 

1. Tigers Are Not Afraid 2. Midsommar 3. Doctor Sleep 4. Ready or Not 5. Us 6. It Chapter Two 7. Happy Death Day 2U 8. Crawl 9. Satanic Panic 10. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark Agree? Disagree? Let us know!

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ICYMI: Miss Mel and Mr. Craiggors put up their best of 2019 lists on the Twitter today. Here are Miss Mel’s picks 

1. Midsommar  2. Us 3. Castle Rock 4. It Chapter Two 5. The Field Guide to Evil   6. Happy Death Day 2U 7. In the Tall Grass 8. Haunt 9. Pet Sematary 10. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark 

Agree? Disagree? Let is know!

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Man of Medan: A game that’s lost at sea

If you listened to Splatter Chatter’s horror video games episode, you’ll know that we were all huge fans of Until Dawn, which was developed by Supermassive Games and published by Sony. Well, after a lot of anticipation, their next horror game, Man of Medan, was released on August 30th, 2019. As horror video games are the one area of the horror genre that I enjoy (thank you Let’s Play Youtubers for making it not too scary for me with your commentary) I sat down and watched the story unfold without any of the anxiety of having to play myself and have pixelated lives in my hands. A win-win situation. The one word that I would use to describe my feelings toward Man of Medan is disappointment. Now, take this review with a grain of salt as I only watched two versions of the single-player mode of the game. Perhaps the cooperative modes added bits to the story that would have changed my overall feelings, but if you are going to have a single player in a game, it needs to be just as engaging as the multiplayer. Man of Medan’s story makes close to no sense if you make certain choices resulting in character deaths or not exploring certain avenues of the game. Also, the overall ‘mystery’ is easily deduced in the tutorial section so while there is some good atmosphere and scares in the game, the main parts of the story felt rushed. 

Now I am not going to go into detail about the plot of the game as it will change due to the player’s choices. What I will say is that Man of Medan tackles the mystery of the SS Ourang Medan. However, no matter what choices, there are still major problems with the plot, character motivations, and characterization in general that make the game feel almost unfinished. While there were cheesy moments to Until Dawn, the game flowed in an understandable way and while the numerous times of splitting the party didn’t make much sense, you could see a bunch of scared twenty-year-olds doing that. The conversations also, while having some hiccups, were believable. Yet, in Man of Medan, almost every interaction was cringe-worthy or made no sense. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought they were released in reverse order. While the atmosphere was well done once they made it to the Medan and there were some spooky moments, mostly the game felt unfinished and it lacked the love and attention that were obviously given to Until Dawn. One of the biggest problems with this game is that none of the characters felt real and neither do their relationships. Julia and Alex have apparently been together for a while and are now in a long-distance relationship, but that is only mentioned once in the beginning. There is exactly zero chemistry between the two of them and Julia seems to know more about Brad, who apparently she has never met before, than about her boyfriend. Neither pair of siblings act like siblings and all of the dialogue is stilted and unbelievable. In Until Dawn, you care about relationships and the characters, so the threat of getting someone killed was heightened. Man of Medan missed that mark, which really took the anxiety out of the life or death situations. The plot itself went the long way around to get to its main stage for the events of the story. At first, there is the dive that apparently they shouldn’t be going on because undiscovered wrecks need to be called into the authorities. However, Fliss knew that they were looking for a wreck to start with, so why didn’t she make her objections known earlier? Did she think there wasn’t a wreck there? Did she really need the money that badly? Also, how did Brad even find out about this wreck? Moving past that, Alex and Julia find the coordinates for the Manchurian Gold in the plane, so why were the worst kidnappers on the planet even introduced into the story? We learn absolutely nothing during the hostage scene on the Duke of Milan and if you just wanted more bodies for gore, you could have had the national guard see the Duke of Milan next to a huge ass military ship and come on board to check it out. Why do I have such a problem with the kidnapping storyline? Well because nobody acts like they are kidnappers/kidnapped. There is no sense of urgency in this entire game from anybody, which doesn’t raise the stakes for the player. From a video game perspective, there is a lot less gameplay than in Until Dawn and many choices that you make don’t have any real consequences. It doesn’t engage the player when there are long periods of inactivity, then quick-time events that could end up in a character's death. That just feels as if you are setting the player up for failure as well as frustration. Now to the actual horror aspects of the game, the beginning focuses mostly on jump scares, but once the group gets onto the SS Ourang Medan, the real spooks start to happen. There are things that move just on the corner of the screen or a body getting up from a bed as the character moves past a doorway. It is subtle things like this that I find very effective in setting the atmosphere and dread you lack when a game relies only on jump scares. I think they had a good concept, but the lackluster mystery, framed as such by the Curator even though the player knows the answer, and awkward characters take the punch out of what could have been a fascinating and chilling four-hour game. One last critique now that I have mentioned him, the Curator doesn’t really have a purpose. In Until Dawn, the therapist both moved the story forward, recapped events, gave hints to what was going on, and ended up being part of the twist. In Man of Medan the Curator gave “hints”, but it wasn't anything the player couldn’t figure out themselves. Mostly it was a save point and a hint that this was a larger world and more stories to tell as this game is part of an anthology, but nothing more. Everything that made Until Dawn interesting is lacking in this game. Overall, this is a classic ghost ship story with a not too original twist, partially because it is based on a well-known myth. There are a lot of threads that are presented to the player that are never explored or explained. I am hoping that the developers will learn from the less than favorable feedback I have seen other people giving to the game as well. While there are some good scares, I would have been disappointed if I had paid money for the game. Maybe the multiplayer version adds something that is lacking from the single-player, but if you are going to provide both options, both need to stand up, and that’s not the case. If the rest of the anthology has the same rushed feeling and unbelievable characters, it is going to be dead in the water.  Do you agree? Disagree? Want to talk about it? Send me an ask or drop a message. I would love to discuss this.  Keep up the Creep! Miss Colleen

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(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wiazFydN84c)

@inktail is gonna get us killed.