My interest really gets poked by random things, and I guess this is one of those things.
I found out about ghoul forest 3 purely by accident on Youtube in a video where someone was freaking the fuck out playing it, and ultimately last night i got our friend Shigoto to play and stream it for Zach and myself.
The game itself isn't that interesting, however, the concept of it oddly is, and there is some controversy around it as well.
Story
The story is rather simple.
You're a hunter hero that's proven his worth time and time again, but crave for a greater challenge. Hearing the rumor of a monster in the forbidden forest, the hunter decides to investigate. The hunter searches all day, but finds no trace of the so called monster, and as night falls, he decides to setup camp for the night. A few hours into the night, he's awaken by a strange noise. He quickly grabs and readies his bow, and realizes that what started out as a hunt for glory, may now have become a fight for his life.
That's the background story that leads up to the start of the game. As you start, the hunter's camp fire dies out and one of the ghouls will start hunting you down. 4 ghouls will attack you one at a time to feed on your soul and there's nowhere to run or hide.
Now, you very VERY retro gamers out there may know that this game makes reference to Forbidden Forest which was for the Commodore 64 and Atari 8-bit, in fact, the concept is the same. Hunter in the woods killing monsters. apparently, this mod is a tribute to Forbidden Forest.
Gameplay
It's a Doom 2 mod, which by itself implies what the gameplay is like, but your only weapon is a bow and arrow, which is the only thing different from normal doom 2.
The bow has a rather slow fire rate as anyone could guess, and the arrow count is the difficulty level, it's honestly not what I'd pick to go fight ghouls in the night, but it adds to the ambiance.
The Ghouls
Until i saw Shigoto play on livestream, i didn't actually know that the order of the first 3 ghouls is random, which is actually really dangerous because you may not b prepared at all for when the creeper shows up.
The creator has on his site backstory and comments on each of the ghouls, but those are rather long, so I'll type shorter ones:
Once a normal girl, she was murdered by her own parents. It's unknown what exactly happened but her soul could not rest and her rage caused her to become a vengeful spirit with unholy powers. She just wanted to be left alone with her baby (I'll get to that), however, rumors about her attracted more and more people to the woods. So she raised undead minions to serve her and guard the forest killing any intruders who dare enter her forest.
This ghoul is a very obviously Samara from The Ring, the author makes no attempts to hide it. Personally i see no problem with him using her as long as he's honest about her being a rip off. Also i think "Yurei" is meant to translate to scary or spooky, something along those lines.
However, this boss is 1 of the reasons for the controversy around this game: When this boss kills you, she flashes pictures directly into the screen, mostly horrors pics, and among those are pictures of dead babies.
Once a baby floating down the river, it died of starvation. The Yurei found it while she was still a normal girl, and mistook the dried up corpse for a doll (just go with it). Once the Yurei became a unholy being, she revived the baby as a zombie baby which she raised by feeding it souls from it's victims until it could hunt on it's own.
I'm gonna say this right now, from all the backstories, in my opinion this is the dumbest one because of all the things wrong with it:
Unless the baby was mummified, how would anyone think it's a doll? and a baby zombie? that's really what you going for? alright, fine, it's a baby zombie, so why the crap are your feeding it souls? zombies eat brains or at least humans flesh. It's especially odd where the Yurei slaughters a human, and basically has the brains and flesh there, but instead gives the zombie baby a soul to feast on. And when it's an "adult" it hunts by becoming a shadow on the ground and killing you by jumping at your face and scaring you to death, you know, like zombies do.
Why would you bother making/calling it a zombie if it's NOTHING LIKE A ZOMBIE!
Surprisingly, the Creeper is the another reason people stop playing this game, cause his kill move is a jump scare and some people may not even notice him coming so comes at even more of a surprise.
Once a very dedicated court jester, Sjas was a huge perfectionist that spent most of his time coming up with new material. One night one of his gags didn't get as many laughs as he expected, so he told the same joke again and again but louder and louder. As the crowd becomes disturbed by this, the king orders Sjas to be removed from the court. With that, Sjas snaps and starts attacking people. The next day he's executed while swearing revenge. He was revived by the Yurei but only his face revived.
Sjas has a rather simple backstory, but simple works best sometimes. Sjas was reused from Ghoul Forrest 2 where he was the only ghoul, he's rather fast and very noisy, you're meant to use sound to figure out where he'll come from.
Really not all that scary, which is a shame. feel like he could had been better.
In the era of giants (just go with it) Jitterskull was a respected and popular member of the giant community, however he had a odd problem with his mouth that just constantly kept twitching. upon his death it was his wish to be buried alongside his brother (Choke, the ghoul from the first game). The Yurei revives Jitterskull as a giant mindless floating head, but his twitch is still present which greatly affects his movement in his new form.
I'm not a big fan of skulls, they're overused on all medium and don't feel spooky at all to me, the backstory is rather plain for this one, and negligible. However as a ghoul, this guy is rather unnerving in the sense that his movement is all over the place and is really hard to hit, also he takes the most hits to kill and will kill you in one hit.
At least like Sjas, there's no cheap jump scare involved
Atmosphere
The words "I can't see shit captain" come to mind. The little visibility you have from your camp fire is quickly done as the game starts, it's easy to not see an enemy that is directly in front of you because of how it is simply so damn dark around.
Sound is the main way you'll find the ghouls, more on some than others, but in general, you'll hear them coming, which is neat, creates a sense of anxiety and anticipation.
If you look really really carefully, you can see Jitterskull in the back.
The giant forest map is really not that detailed at all, but because of the intense darkness, it's really not important. Although since the goal of the game was to scare people, you'd think he would had added glowing eyes in the dark, corpses around the forest, and things like that.
Final thoughts
I sort of liked the concept of the game, some of the background stories of the ghouls, and the atmosphere. But it just sounds better in theory than when actually playing or watching someone playing it.
Shigoto did really short work of all those ghouls, the game lasted 10 mins tops and that's because it was the first time Shigoto played it. I'm thinking he would b faster if he tried again.
Jitterskull seemed to easily be the hardest one to deal with due to his erratic pattern, the Creeper and Sjas were easier to predict and deal with. The Yurei is hard, but maybe for the wrong reasons, she requires twitch reflexes and that you hit her between teleports.
The controversial jump scare the Yurei gives you is very very cheap and makes no sense. In a way it ruins the immersion to up until that part. Why are we being shown these random pictures taken in fucking random place? Is she showing us those on her fucking laptop? really, it doesn't fit.
Ok i get the idea that it's only meant to scare/traumatize you, but wouldn't it be scarier to have a huge close up of her horribly disfigured face with then another frame of it as she attacks you? I honestly think that would had been WAY scarier than "Here's gross some shit I found on Google" and would make sense and not ruin the immersion.
Ghoul Forest 3 gets slack for it's poor detail level but it's still better than it's predecessor as seen above.
When you look at the sprites/textures use in this mod though (seen here), it really doesn't feel like much effort was put into it aside from coding the ghouls. No really, most of this is ripped from Halloween masks or The Ring.
In the end, I was disappointed. I expected something extremely scary with amazing ambiance, and i got cheap lame jumpsacres.
Props to Shigoto for playing it though, it was fun to watch.
I found out about ghoul forest 3 purely by accident on Youtube in a video where someone was freaking the fuck out playing it, and ultimately last night i got our friend Shigoto to play and stream it for Zach and myself.
The game itself isn't that interesting, however, the concept of it oddly is, and there is some controversy around it as well.
Story
The story is rather simple.
You're a hunter hero that's proven his worth time and time again, but crave for a greater challenge. Hearing the rumor of a monster in the forbidden forest, the hunter decides to investigate. The hunter searches all day, but finds no trace of the so called monster, and as night falls, he decides to setup camp for the night. A few hours into the night, he's awaken by a strange noise. He quickly grabs and readies his bow, and realizes that what started out as a hunt for glory, may now have become a fight for his life.
That's the background story that leads up to the start of the game. As you start, the hunter's camp fire dies out and one of the ghouls will start hunting you down. 4 ghouls will attack you one at a time to feed on your soul and there's nowhere to run or hide.
Now, you very VERY retro gamers out there may know that this game makes reference to Forbidden Forest which was for the Commodore 64 and Atari 8-bit, in fact, the concept is the same. Hunter in the woods killing monsters. apparently, this mod is a tribute to Forbidden Forest.
Gameplay
It's a Doom 2 mod, which by itself implies what the gameplay is like, but your only weapon is a bow and arrow, which is the only thing different from normal doom 2.
The bow has a rather slow fire rate as anyone could guess, and the arrow count is the difficulty level, it's honestly not what I'd pick to go fight ghouls in the night, but it adds to the ambiance.
The Ghouls
Until i saw Shigoto play on livestream, i didn't actually know that the order of the first 3 ghouls is random, which is actually really dangerous because you may not b prepared at all for when the creeper shows up.
The creator has on his site backstory and comments on each of the ghouls, but those are rather long, so I'll type shorter ones:
- The Yurei - Main villain of the game and last boss
Once a normal girl, she was murdered by her own parents. It's unknown what exactly happened but her soul could not rest and her rage caused her to become a vengeful spirit with unholy powers. She just wanted to be left alone with her baby (I'll get to that), however, rumors about her attracted more and more people to the woods. So she raised undead minions to serve her and guard the forest killing any intruders who dare enter her forest.
This ghoul is a very obviously Samara from The Ring, the author makes no attempts to hide it. Personally i see no problem with him using her as long as he's honest about her being a rip off. Also i think "Yurei" is meant to translate to scary or spooky, something along those lines.
However, this boss is 1 of the reasons for the controversy around this game: When this boss kills you, she flashes pictures directly into the screen, mostly horrors pics, and among those are pictures of dead babies.
- The Creeper
Once a baby floating down the river, it died of starvation. The Yurei found it while she was still a normal girl, and mistook the dried up corpse for a doll (just go with it). Once the Yurei became a unholy being, she revived the baby as a zombie baby which she raised by feeding it souls from it's victims until it could hunt on it's own.
I'm gonna say this right now, from all the backstories, in my opinion this is the dumbest one because of all the things wrong with it:
Unless the baby was mummified, how would anyone think it's a doll? and a baby zombie? that's really what you going for? alright, fine, it's a baby zombie, so why the crap are your feeding it souls? zombies eat brains or at least humans flesh. It's especially odd where the Yurei slaughters a human, and basically has the brains and flesh there, but instead gives the zombie baby a soul to feast on. And when it's an "adult" it hunts by becoming a shadow on the ground and killing you by jumping at your face and scaring you to death, you know, like zombies do.
Why would you bother making/calling it a zombie if it's NOTHING LIKE A ZOMBIE!
Surprisingly, the Creeper is the another reason people stop playing this game, cause his kill move is a jump scare and some people may not even notice him coming so comes at even more of a surprise.
- Sjas
Once a very dedicated court jester, Sjas was a huge perfectionist that spent most of his time coming up with new material. One night one of his gags didn't get as many laughs as he expected, so he told the same joke again and again but louder and louder. As the crowd becomes disturbed by this, the king orders Sjas to be removed from the court. With that, Sjas snaps and starts attacking people. The next day he's executed while swearing revenge. He was revived by the Yurei but only his face revived.
Sjas has a rather simple backstory, but simple works best sometimes. Sjas was reused from Ghoul Forrest 2 where he was the only ghoul, he's rather fast and very noisy, you're meant to use sound to figure out where he'll come from.
Really not all that scary, which is a shame. feel like he could had been better.
- Jitterskull
In the era of giants (just go with it) Jitterskull was a respected and popular member of the giant community, however he had a odd problem with his mouth that just constantly kept twitching. upon his death it was his wish to be buried alongside his brother (Choke, the ghoul from the first game). The Yurei revives Jitterskull as a giant mindless floating head, but his twitch is still present which greatly affects his movement in his new form.
I'm not a big fan of skulls, they're overused on all medium and don't feel spooky at all to me, the backstory is rather plain for this one, and negligible. However as a ghoul, this guy is rather unnerving in the sense that his movement is all over the place and is really hard to hit, also he takes the most hits to kill and will kill you in one hit.
At least like Sjas, there's no cheap jump scare involved
Atmosphere
The words "I can't see shit captain" come to mind. The little visibility you have from your camp fire is quickly done as the game starts, it's easy to not see an enemy that is directly in front of you because of how it is simply so damn dark around.
Sound is the main way you'll find the ghouls, more on some than others, but in general, you'll hear them coming, which is neat, creates a sense of anxiety and anticipation.
If you look really really carefully, you can see Jitterskull in the back.
The giant forest map is really not that detailed at all, but because of the intense darkness, it's really not important. Although since the goal of the game was to scare people, you'd think he would had added glowing eyes in the dark, corpses around the forest, and things like that.
Final thoughts
I sort of liked the concept of the game, some of the background stories of the ghouls, and the atmosphere. But it just sounds better in theory than when actually playing or watching someone playing it.
Shigoto did really short work of all those ghouls, the game lasted 10 mins tops and that's because it was the first time Shigoto played it. I'm thinking he would b faster if he tried again.
Jitterskull seemed to easily be the hardest one to deal with due to his erratic pattern, the Creeper and Sjas were easier to predict and deal with. The Yurei is hard, but maybe for the wrong reasons, she requires twitch reflexes and that you hit her between teleports.
The controversial jump scare the Yurei gives you is very very cheap and makes no sense. In a way it ruins the immersion to up until that part. Why are we being shown these random pictures taken in fucking random place? Is she showing us those on her fucking laptop? really, it doesn't fit.
Ok i get the idea that it's only meant to scare/traumatize you, but wouldn't it be scarier to have a huge close up of her horribly disfigured face with then another frame of it as she attacks you? I honestly think that would had been WAY scarier than "Here's gross some shit I found on Google" and would make sense and not ruin the immersion.
Ghoul Forest 3 gets slack for it's poor detail level but it's still better than it's predecessor as seen above.
When you look at the sprites/textures use in this mod though (seen here), it really doesn't feel like much effort was put into it aside from coding the ghouls. No really, most of this is ripped from Halloween masks or The Ring.
In the end, I was disappointed. I expected something extremely scary with amazing ambiance, and i got cheap lame jumpsacres.
Props to Shigoto for playing it though, it was fun to watch.
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