October seems to have become the month of Corpse Party for me, although I didn't really plan it to be. I completed several different Corpse Party titles throughout the month of Halloween in anticipation for the latest English release in the series, Corpse Party: Blood Drive. After all the spin-offs, pre-sequels and adaptations, Blood Drive was finally the direct sequel that I had been pinning for since finishing the first game back in 2011. I had no idea what to except but, after playing Corpse Party 2: Dead Patient, I had high hopes that Blood Drive would be at least as good as the franchise's previous outing into polygons. However my expectations were not exactly met. Blood Drive unfortunately turned out to be quite the mixed bag and the bag was mostly full of garbage. But before we jump into the details lets me explain what Blood Drive is all about.
Game Details
Corpse Party: Blood Drive is the continuation of the final chapter from Corpse Party: Book of Shadows, which combined serve as a direct sequel to the first game. It is hard to explain the story without getting into spoilers for multiple titles but the gist of it is that the Heavenly Host Elementary School is still around. Ayumi once again returns to the school's haunted halls as part of a dangerous plan to resurrect her friends that died in Corpse Party 1. The game plays similarly to the first with the player navigating one of the characters through the school while solving puzzles to accesses new areas and proceed with the story. Nothing is too different but what little changes Blood Drive does make to the formula do nothing but hinder the gameplay experience.
Horrifying Gameplay
Heavenly Host feels much more dangerous in Blood Drive thanks to a dramatic increase in obstacles that can harm the characters. Broken glass, floor tentacles, booby traps, and phantoms all make exploring much more tense. The school is also surrounded in darkness making it almost impossible to see traps unless the player uses the character's flashlight, which can run out of batteries. However, while I thought the traps and darkness added a interesting sense of danger at first, I quickly grew annoyed with them when I began having to backtrack through old areas. Being chased by relentless phantoms while tripping over every little trap, because my flashlight had run out of batteries, was insanely frustrating. And that frustration only intensified when I was in the same situation while looking for the next story point or trying to find the solution to a puzzle.
I say "puzzles" but no actual brain power or deductive reasoning goes into solving any of them. The solution to every problem in Blood Drive is to click on every object in every room and hope you find the item needed to proceed in the game. This becomes a monumental task later on when you have access to large parts of the school. To make matter worse, sometimes even clicking on everything still doesn't work! One time I needed a key to continue to the next area but I had already checked every room and didn't know what else to do. I later discovered that the key was in a cabinet I had already checked earlier but for some reason, after watching a cut-scene, it just suddenly appeared there. Nothing in the game implied the key was in the cabinet and nothing happened during the cut-scene to suggest a key would appear there when only a moment ago there was nothing in it. Even when a puzzle didn't involve going on a click-fest through the whole school the solution was often so opaque that I had to just use trial and error to find the answer.
Blood Drive also has a mechanic where the player can hid from the phantoms that chase the characters at random times. Hiding doesn't help much though since the phantom will still be wandering nearby and will likely start chasing you again moments after leaving your hiding spot. I found it better to just run around until I found a talisman to permanently destroy my pursuer, making the whole hiding mechanic useless.
The gameplay in Corpse Party 1 was not perfect by any means but it was never so frustrating that it got in the way of enjoying the game's stronger elements. The same cannot be said for Blood Drive.
Blood Drive vs Corpse Party 2
Corpse Party: Blood Drive is unique from most games in the series in that it is fully polygonal. Characters are rendered in stylized chibi designs while the environments look more realistic. Technically it doesn't look that impressive but I liked the style and the 3D presentation gave some of the cut-scenes a more cinematic feel that I enjoyed. However, while playing through Blood Drive I couldn't help but compare the game to the other polygonal entry in the series, Corpse Party 2: Dead Patient. The first chapter of Dead Patient was released a year before so I thought Blood Drive would have expand upon the innovations introduced in that title, but that is not the case.
Inventory management in Corpse Party 2 was simple and elegant. You would just click one button, the inventory would appear in a Secret of Mana style ring, and then you'd highlight the item you wanted equipped. The system allowed the player to manage items without having to go to another screen which really helped the pace of the game. Blood Drive, however, hides its inventory behind several layers of menus, with loading screens between all of them, and feels like a less intuitive version of how inventory was handled in the first game.
One of my biggest complains with the original Corpse Party as well as Blood Drive is that it is very unclear sometimes on where you are suppose to go next. Dead Patient fixed this problem with a "goal" pop-up that would appear after certain cut-scenes, making it so I was never lost or confused on what to do next. I found it surprising that Blood Drive didn't keep this feature especially since there were many moments when the game would have benefited from just spelling out what it wanted the player to do. Sometimes Blood Drive would do something smart to guide the player, like having the bell tower ringing to indicate that you should check it out, but the rest of the time I would just have to wander around until I ran into what I was supposed to do.
On a smaller note, Corpse Party 2 had the other members of your party follow behind the player, kite-tail style. I missed having that in Blood Drive. It made me feel like I was alone even when I had three other people in my party.
All in all Corpse Party 2 felt like a game that the developers carefully constructed with a lot of nice details and a well thought out interface. Blood Drive feels like a clumsy mess in comparison. However, these comparisons and my issues with the gameplay are far from Blood Drive's biggest flaw.
Horrifying Tech
Corpse Party: Blood Drive is plagued with a multitude of technical problems. I'm not sure what happened during the development of this game but something obviously went very wrong. There are loading screens everywhere. Even when the game first starts it has to spend half a minute setting up trophies and initializing the game followed by a loading screen before and after all the company logos. All together it takes almost two minutes just to get to the title screen. There are also loading screens whenever you open the option menu, click on anything in that menu, go to a new room, start a cut-scene, etcetera, etcetera. Whenever the game does anything there is going to be a lot of waiting which really screws up the game's pacing and makes game-overs a huge hassle since you'll need to reload everything again. And even when everything is loaded, the game is constantly hitching and dropping in framerate. Even the text appearing in the dialogue boxes chugs at certain points. The only time anything runs smoothly is when you are in a small area with your flashlight off but even then that only works if you are not running.
The game's audio is also very compressed, often sounding like it was recorded off a cheap Wal-Mart microphone. This was partially disappointing to me since the biggest selling point for the whole series had been its soundtrack, fantastic voice acting and effective "3D" sound design. Beyond just technical problems with the audio, Blood Drive's sound design feels sort of lazy in general. For example, there was a moment in the story where the game was playing a happy song during a calm scene. Then the camera cuts to someone attempting to commit suicide but the game just keeps on playing the same happy track. There were many times where I excepted the music to change or a sound effect to play during a dramatic moment but nothing would happen, making certain scenes feel flat. Characters footsteps also don't make any noise and the game seems to glitch a bit whenever the player walks up to something in the environment that makes a sound, such as the bucket surround by flies in the hallway.
There are also many visual inconsistencies such as a character having an eye patch during a cut-scene but then not having one during gameplay. Or the text describing how someone has a bunch of burns on their body when the image shows the character with smooth perfect skin.
Blood Drive feels like it was thrown together. How could anyone have let this game ship with so many technical problems is beyond me, especially when everything the title is doing graphically is relatively simple. The game was made using Unity and I believe this was the first title the development team had created using that engine. So maybe they were just inexperienced with the engine's tools and didn't know how to optimize it correctly. Whatever the reason, it still does not excuse Blood Drive's technical hiccups, lazy design and many other problems that make the game almost unplayable. I say "almost" because despite all my grievances with Corpse Party: Blood Drive I still sort of enjoyed some aspects of the game.
Staying Positive
The soundtrack by Mao Hamamoto continues the Corpse Party tradition of being spooky and rocking. Voice acting is still very strong and a lot of the returning actors really put in some great performances, especially Asami Imai as Ayumi. And of course the story, Corpse Party: Blood Drive is an actual continuation of the Heavenly Host saga. Book of Shadows contained a prologue to Blood Drive but I found that game to be disappointing because it mostly consisted of retellings of the events from the first game. The story in Blood Drive is an actual full-on sequel and it was fun to finally see the old cast in band new scenarios. I felt the story started strong, showing how the characters were trying to recover from the deaths of their friends and by "recover" I mean suffering alone or being consumed with guilt. Those beginning moments were actually pretty emotional for me and the chapter where Ayumi investigates the abandoned apartment really made me excited to see where the story was going. Unfortunately the story is not without its problems.
Back to Being Negative
Blood Drive is one of the longer games in the series and its story suffers from bad pacing issues during the middle chapters. The game just sort of ignores some of the bigger mysteries for a while and the characters do random things that don't feel like they move the story much, like hanging out at a god damn hot spring. The game could have benefited a lot from being a few hours shorter or by cutting a chapter or two. A lot of the new characters aren't that great either. I thought the Niwa sisters were interesting, even if they were super over the top, but a lot of other new cast members were not partially memorable. The plot also becomes very convoluted very quickly after the apartment investigation and by the end of the game the stakes are raised so high that I found it difficult to be invested anymore.
There are also a surprising number of references to Corpse Party 2U, a comedic spin-off that has not been translated officially or otherwise. There are characters and organizations, that I assumed first appeared in 2U, that barely get introduced in Blood Drive even though they play a large part in the game. I had to look up details about these characters in the ingame encyclopedia to figure out what their deal was and even then I was still sort of lost. While most of the references to 2U are minor in the grand scheme of things there was still one major plot point that went over my head entirely. I only later found out the plot point's significance after doing research on Corpse Party 2U. Although these are not technically problems with Blood Drive, since the only reason I didn't know these details is because I can't play 2U, but it was still really strange to me that the game didn't spend more time reintroducing this stuff. How can you expect all of your fans to have played a comedic spin-off to a series that otherwise has nothing to do with the franchise's continuity?
A Mixed Bag Indeed
My write up of Corpse Party: Blood Drive has become a reverse compliment sandwich but there is simply much more to criticize about this game than praise. The gameplay only serves to make the game frustrating, it is a technical pile of garbage and the story raises the stakes to such ridiculous levels that characters are practically throwing Kamehamehas at each other by the end. I loved hanging out with the original Corpse Party cast and seeing characters like Ayumi develop throughout the story. Again the music and voice acting is also great but these are but small lights in a dark, dark tunnel. If nothing else this game has finally ended the Heavenly Host saga. Now, just like the characters in the game, maybe fans and the developers of Corpse Party can move on to something new.
Like Chapter 2 of Dead Patient...
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