Corpse Party on PSP. What more can you say about it? In my previous PlayStation.Blog entries, I’ve likened it to horror classics such as Clock Tower and Fatal Frame. I’ve talked about how it’s one of the creepiest, most effective horror games I’ve ever played, and how its unique visuals, its 3D binaural audio and its storytelling methods help give it an uncomfortable, unforgettable atmosphere.

And you, fair players… you agreed with me. You played it late at night with headphones on, just as I suggested, and it kept you awake. It haunted your nightmares and made you jump every time your house creaked or your neighbor’s kids smacked the wall… until you realized, wait a minute, I don’t have any neighbors!

And then you were never heard from again… Presumably because you were too busy getting every wrong end in the game, of course. It’s hard to resist the charm of those horrible, horrible deaths, after all! Call it morbid curiosity if you will, but we all know you, like Morishige, get a certain sadistic thrill out of seeing (or, more often, hearing) these characters you’ve come to know and love get killed, slowly, in the most creatively twisted ways imaginable.

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We love to be scared. There’s something so primal and universal about fear, and a good horror story can really bring out the best of it, making our hearts race and our minds veer toward the darkest recesses of the human psyche. And we just keep going back for more!

Yet by the same token, horror has become so passe that we barely even react when we encounter imagery of skeletons, zombies, witches, bats, vampires and ghouls. True primal fear is hard to come by in the modern world, and this applies to video games as well. When you hear the term “horror game,” what’s the first thing that pops into your mind? Probably “zombies” since that seems to characterize much of the horror genre nowadays. Most modern horror games assault you with wave after wave of zombies, and you can typically one-shot them back to their graves. They may look scary, but when’s the last time you were actually frightened in a zombie shooter game? Maybe you had an exciting time playing one, and jumped at a handful of startling moments, but the mere fact that you’re able to defend yourself – that you have a means of fighting back – makes just about every entry in the genre less horror than action.

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