Speaking of weirdness, Haunting Ground deserves to be preserved for the utter ridiculousness of its plot alone. And while evading stalkers can sometimes get more annoying than scary as you’re chased halfway across the building from the puzzle you were working on, it’s an admirable example of level design with surprisingly minimal loading screens for the time.Ĭome for the Dog, Stay for the Camp (and the Dog) It’s both different and structurally familiar to anyone who knows Capcom’s most famous franchise, setting old tricks in a new mold. Doors that require extensive furniture rearrangement to unlock? Sure! Spooky underground carousel? Why not! Room full of marionettes with pressure-sensitive needle traps? You never know when guests are coming! But more than that, it is about locking mechanisms and floor plans designed by someone snorting paint fumes in zero gravity.
Like the best Residents Evil, Haunting Ground is about getting to know a singular location that expands in weird, inventive ways over the course of the game. Fiona explores the castle and collects items in order to solve puzzles while avoiding death traps and must evade her pursuers using music cues and hiding spots. The gameplay feels like a spiritual successor to Clock Tower, the series that originated the “helpless protagonist stalked by an unkillable threat” genre in gaming, and was released alongside fellow genre entry and criminally underrated gem Rule of Rose. Unfortunately, that castle also comes with a series of servants who mean Fiona harm, and her only protection is a white German Shepherd named Hewie. In short order she finds out that her parents are dead and the spooky castle she’s in is her inheritance. Released in Japan as Demento, Haunting Ground opens with 18-year-old Fiona Belli waking up in an unlocked cage wearing nothing but a sheet. Which means one thing: the time is right for them to bring back 2005’s Haunting Ground, a game with all the mechanics of a Resident Evil and a good precious doggo to boot.
And w hile they’re riding high, the best thing Capcom can do is continue on with this trend of innovating on classic titles and straight-up remastering forgotten classics. While EA is forcing studios like Bioware to crank out “live service” games that are neither within their skillset nor their fanbase’s interest, Capcom has finally ( Street FIghter debacles aside) clicked back with what made people love them in the first place. Capcom has been hitting it out of the park recently: the series-revitalizing Resident Evil 7 became their fifth-best selling game ever, the Resident Evil 2 remake has been getting dazzling reviews, and the company dipped into their backlog to offer a beautifully polished remaster of Onimusha.
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