Honestly, I would love something that takes this concept and approaches it in a way that couldn't have been done back in the 90s. Imagine having all the enemies in the game only be visible through their influence on the environment. Don't even have any models, just track where they are and have a physics simulation imply their presence. If there's a puddle, show splashing as they move through it. If there's a set of crates, have them move a bit when the monsters are passing them. That sort of thing. Different areas would have different giveaways for the things you're trying to evade and the last area could be a homage to this game: lots of long, dark corridors with barely any objects for the creatures to bump into, with only a tiny little beep to keep you updated on where you are relative to anything else until you're close enough to hear them breathing.
Closest thing to that I can imagine is Prey. Shapeshifting aliens that can transform into anything and leave you paranoid about things like mugs and chairs.
@@svperuzerIndeed, it’s like living in The Darkest Hour universe but this time around you have an Alien: Isolation tracker and a really powerful gun to kick some-🫠
Closest thing to this is a level in the first The Evil Within. Completely invisible enemy is introduced, but they fill the level with puddles, stacks of books, wheelchairs, medical trays, gurneys, etc. It was terrifying and fantastic, I couldn't believe no other horror games followed up on the concept (including its sequel). So check it out if you're looking for a modern example of this!
Criminally underrated. The sound design in the game is fantastic. It goes from low drone sounds to loud pounding & screeching outta nowhere. I remember that cutscene where the Enemy ambushes Laura in the elevator. 💩‘ed my pants just from sounds. What Eno got right was that with monsters; the more you see them, the more they become comical. So making them invisible creates horror in the mind. The pinging & monsters screeching just fans the flames. It’s an unforgiving game, but what it gets right, it nails. Really unique.
You’re totally right. Tight sound design and minimizing how much the audience actually sees of an enemy can have a huge impact on a horror game. It was really clever how he combined these two elements. Unfortunately, it does seem like the game suffers a bit from its own difficulty. When you start getting annoyed or wandering around too much, you lose fear.
When I first played Alien Isolation it reminded me a lot of Enemy Zero - it’s a really special game and the only Saturn game I still have in my possession
I agree with you, I hate those people who say, “oh, that? That’s soo easy! I beat it on my first effort!” Even if I don’t have problems with something, I understand that my circumstances might’ve been different than another player’s.
for a year or so after any fromsoft rpg comes out, the related subreddits are flooded with people like this. folks who seems to have no other way to give their self-image tangible value than by comparing themselves to the struggles of other people. to me it seems like a similar impulse as the one that drives susceptibility to conspiracy theories or unjustified belief systems. that desperate need for the illusory power that comes from pretending you know super special secret things that other people don't, or are specially chosen by some magical force. interestingly they're no where to be found in the intervening years, during which the souls subreddits become one of the most warm and supportive and tolerant places on the internet. someone about a shared journey and a shared struggle just leads to kindness and tolerance.
Yeah, it reminds me of the part where Dallas enters the ventilation ducts with the camera shutter gates. Nothing on the sonar detector thingy for ages, then suddenly a blip heading right for him. That absolutely terrified me as a kid...
Since you asked, and since I work as a deputy coroner: severed fingers really don't sound like anything - but given how limp they are, that likely indicates that Marcus died within the past 6-9 hours or so (depending on the ambient temperature) since rigor mortis would start to become apparent after that. And now you know!
@@courierz9451 Of course! Actually, the more I think about it, rigor might not be as apparent if it's just the fingers. Your fingers themselves are all just fat, bone, and tendons - the actual muscles are in the central part of the hand, which pull on the tendons like a system of pulleys. Completely detached like that, they might not be as rigid as you'd expect; hard to say since you typically encounter amputated fingers after car/motorcycle crashes and thus still fresh by the time of the scene investigation.
Alien references: 1- Alone in a ship 2- The 'transport enemy as the highest priority regardless of crew safety'' directive 3- David being an android 4- Android being called ''David'' this is a coincidence tho, prometheus came out like 20 years after 5- ''Enemy'' plants baby on main character 6- Spaceship selfdestruct at the end Not complaining tho just pointing similarities
Also, "mission to send androids into alien planet to collect specimens" and "falling in love with an android and only finding out after he's ripped apart by an alien" is straight out of a series of comic books that came out after the second Alien movie and served as sequels. It told what happened to Newt and Hicks, but got retconned after the third movie came out and the names of the characters were changed in future reprints. They were honestly amazing and the story they tell is very gripping. I have a edition with the original names still that I luckily got in a Blockbuster clearance sale
Retro-Future, especially the hopeful utopian future of gaming, compared to what we actually got in real life nowadays. (Even the early to mid 2000s was full of that as well, not just the 1990s and 1980s).
I'm glad you did this wonderful video covering this interesting game because man, the combat was just too intense and difficult for me, I had to shut it down and go cry in the corner. I really love the aesthetic of these old Saturn games and I'd love to see some retro throwback games adopt this style in the same way other games have adopted the style of SNES and Playstation games.
If I wasn’t making this video, I might have given up. It’s a frustrating game for sure. Saturn is such a cool system. I have some other Saturn games I want to cover in the future
Dude, you’re amazing! These kinds of games don’t get nearly enough love, so it’s totally awesome to see people like you giving them the attention they deserve. Much love 😁
David being an android who didn't know he's an android and confused about how he could feel may be another reference to "Aliens" universe, but this time to Dark Horse's comic series
Enemy Zero was one of those first horror games I played outside the most popular horror games like Resident Evil and Silent Hill. When I first read about the game mechanics, I became absolutely interested with the invisible enemies and spatial-sound tracking. I was expecting difficulty after a background check on it, but what I never knew was the recorder that uses batteries. The recorder has the most terrifying mechanic in this game, because it is absolutely a permadeath system when you run out of battery life. It’s game over when it reaches 0 and I have to restart the entire game again from the beginning. It also doesn’t matter that whether you load or save the game, the battery will continue depleting either way. And that is even harder than classic Resident Evil games that only deplete ribbons when you save, not when you load. The last parts of the game were the most terrifying and most difficult. Even if accompanied by a pistol with infinite rounds, the complex maze of same corridors can easily make you lost and knock off your sanity, and will make you panic for your recorder battery life every load. It’s a little close to being a YOLO scenario. Regardless of all that, I am one ridiculously stubborn player, and I finished the game at last. With only 2% recorder battery life remaining, Laura Lewis was able to escape the ship safely. My eyes welled up a little bit from almost getting permadeath, and I was cheering her on as the shuttle cutscene was running. A very difficult experience indeed, but a game that is possible to beat with effort. The horror, gameplay, the lean plot and the puzzles were the peak of this game. Being able to beat it is a rewarding experience. D and D2 (which really was fine storywise but I love the soundtrack especially the ending) I played right after Enemy Zero just to get something good from all of them. Even if they now pale in comparison to the games we have today, I love the innovative mechanics that Kenji Eno put in them, makes them more engaging to play if we go back to the 90s. When I compare the 3 WARP games, Enemy Zero is the best. I had a good time playing it for a week, and include the fact that I just played it on February 2020, which was the time that lockdown seriously started in our country.😂 Just the perfect time to play an “isolation” space horror game :> Now, to add more challenge in the game, I’ll be replaying it again, but this time around I’ll be recording it and upload my gameplays (I just dunno when). You mentioned this was the Saturn version, right? I played the PC port, and it was mentioned the PC port includes 2 additional monster types in the game, hence even more masochistic in my situation LMAO. But what I’m not sure about both versions is the resolution. The game display only occupies 1/4 of my PC screen, and I don’t know how much it occupies from the TV screen of the Saturn version, if it’s in fullscreen or more like windowed as well.
I played this game, blind, for a Halloween event a group of friends do online, and whooo weee you hit the nail on the head with this review! I loved this game, even though it was hard as shit, and kept me nervous as hell throughout. Subbed because of this and the Cosmology of Kyoto video. Keep up the great work!
Alright phew theres a lot of stuff in my mind atm but I hope I can communicate it clearly. When I watched that intro about the invisible enemies and the audio ping used to locate them, the first thought that crossed my mind was about Death Stranding's BTs. They actually feel very reminiscent of the enemies in Enemy Zero, as they are only able to be located thanks a direction and and approximative distance given to you by that little funky arm on Sam's back. Now what gets even more interesting is the parralel between Enemy Zero and Alien and how that actually relates to Death Stranding. From what I remember from the first movie, Alien deals with a lot of themes surrounding motherhood (the central computer being named Mother, Ash bleeding what looks like milk while emitting baby cries, the Xenomorph gestating inside its host etc...), motherhood themes which can also be found in Death Stranding (Bridge Babies being harvested from still mothers, BTs literally having an umbilical cord floating around them, Sam having a C-Section scar on his belly...) Now idk what the fuck you can do with this information other than deducf that Kojima probably played and was influenced in some measure by Enemy Zero and its definition of motherhood and femininity for the making of Death Stranding but its a pretty fun thing to consider.
Really interesting connections there. D2 also has a lot of motherhood themes. Man, I really need to finish Death Stranding. I played about half of it, and I really liked the gameplay and story. Just got distracted and left it unfinished.
Games like this where you die over and over stop being scary and start being frustrating. Horror, more than most other genres needs to strike a balance. You need to fear death, death has to be POSSIBLE, but if it's too frequent players will just become annoyed and the fear wears off
Well said. When i did alien isolation, and amnesia dark descent there was serious scares in it but some of the puzzles required such a stretch of logic that dying repeatedly and failing to understand a segment just destroys the fear factor completely.
Huh; That tumor creature thing on Laura's neck does remind me of the time I had a lateral cyst on the left side of my neck some years ago. Ended up getting my first surgery experience. It was some primordial remnant organ thing back from when all life was in the water, gill-related or whatever.
Eno's three Laura's may have been inspired by Osamu Tezuka's "cast" of characters with the same design and similar personalities that populated his works.
Great review. I have owned it for ages and have been meaning to play it beyond disc 0. Had to skip the spoiler section so I can discover it for myself.
I really love the games Kenji Eno made that I have played: D, Enemy Zero, & D2. Since he has passed, I wonder who owns the rights to the three games. I would love a nice collection of his works to be made available on current platforms.
Gosh I remember this game back from like one of my first game magazines. I didn't know Sega Saturn was a thing back then but I remember being so into the 3d images of games I would re-read the captions and stare at the pictures several hours into the night (I was like seven and ADHD hyperfixation HO) and I remember being slightly spooked by Enemy Zero preview as it showed Laura in the cutscene seeing the butterfly and the sliced fingers. Oooh creepy for me back then. Nice to finally be able to put a name to the game.
This game kind of reminds me of Robotica, with the maze-like corridors in a space station and aliens, but that was a FPS shooter, this is more survival horror. I think the tension of hearing beeps as invisible enemies get closer to you would drive me batty, but I think there would also be a bit of a thrill in being able to shoot them correctly. Another one I missed out on. This Kenji guy, I like his style. Especially the tentacle stuff. I wonder where that comes from? Because that goes back pretty far to ancient scrolls having women attacked by octy.
Learning how to use the guns is what kept me going. As for the tentacle thing, maybe Japan being an island nation, having a big fishing culture could be a reason. That’s just my guess, though.
Kim's self game end makes sense. She was in on the mission and the thing she was knowingly transporting killed the most important person to her. He's probably feeling very guilty and very alone in San incredibly stressful situation. It does suck, though.
Was way too hard for me back then. I couldn't get anywhere and basically gave up. But damn, those corridors look really nice! Not even because the 3D engine runs relatively smoothly for a Saturn game, but also due to the textures. Very good art direction imho. Also that Soundtrack is just amazing.
What I find most interesting about Enemy Zero is that as a kid (12 - 13) I found it scary as hell but was determined to finish it and plowed through. Now as an adult, this is the type of game I would probably read about and give a hard pass both because of the difficulty and fear (I've become kind of a baby when it comes to horror games). Funny how punishing difficulty as a kid translates to frustration as an adult.
"Program (x-sa) should be used for such case." Is it a coincidence that a few years later, Metroid Fusion, set on a space station where the protagonist is hunted by an alien lifeform, uses SA-X for the name of its enemy?
Thank you so much for covering obscure and forgotten games like this. I absolutely love taking a dive into old horror and scifi games and trying to figure out how it was all pulled off. Im only in my 20s and didnt get a chance to experience these fascinating saturn and ps1 titles in my childhood, but I enjoy getting to look back on them now. Games like these are just works of art and they werent afraid to get creative and controversial with their game design. There's a lot of soul in titles like these. Also, im definitely subscribing. Your commentary and presentation are well executed and i couldnt get enough! Im going to dive into the other D titles next!
I've never heard of most of the games you cover, but I adore how you cover them. Witty, chill, insightful, detailed reviews of games I never had the chance to play. Keep up the impeccable work.
I actually played Enemy Zero. It is trully an unique experience, with the invisible enemy and the sound orientarion device. Also, I still love the soundtrack (specially when you discover the true nature of David). The map detail, I had a draw of the sections that were super hard, it was fun. The ending is super exhilarating too.
I learned about this game years and years ago when Happy Nerd aka Derek from Stop Skeletons From Fighting covered it. Retro games were still affordable then so I was able to grab a copy from eBay. It's such a cool and unique game, and you can see how it influenced Alien Isolation. I'm just glad to see someone else talking about it!
Deep Fear is another Saturn exclusive game that gave some good nightmares. I played the first D for Playstation, I didn't have the opportunity to play E0.
It feels like this was to be a alien game, but did not get the license, so changed thing to make it a different game, not uncommon back in the day, great video love the Saturn 👍👍
I love guys like you, MagicMush, and Tsunul, who just have this way with words, wordplay, and humor that really just cracks me up and still remains informative.
I loved this game back then, scariest thing i ever played... maybe still today... was amazing.... You forgot to mention the Scariest part of this game: the SAVE SYSTEM... each time you save, it depletes a battery... but each time you Load... it ALSO depletes the battery.... so you're limited... Also i played the game several times to Beat the Hard Mode... 'cuz beating the game in Hard Mode unlocked a secret Shower scene in the new game plus :D You dont see anything really, but as a horny teenager, it was totally worth it :D
Considering that back in 2015/2016 I was trying to look up survival horror video games, or horror video games in general that would give me the spooks, something from the past or in the present I haven't tried out that I could play on an emulator. And sadly this game wasn't on that list of the most popular survival horror games on say Google's search engine. So seeing this one mentioned, well, I'll have to watch a longplay with no commentary to sleep to and get the full experience myself.
Luscious Jackson? That's a blast of nostalgia. Vivian Trimble did have a great voice. Their big hit was "Naked Eye." Unfortunately she died April 2023 from cancer.
Very interesting gameplay! I would not be able to play the third, because I would have a lot of trouble distinguishing the high an dthe medium sounds if they're really close together.
Omg the level of 90s in that opener makes me feel like they allll thought the world was going to end in 1999. That was just beautiful 😍 pure joy. I can picture everyone in the office just .. bumping. Thank you for showing us the amazing piece of art !!
I never played this game, but I really love the graphics and the ambience. The pixellated looks of the corridors are so satisfying to watch. Also, I recently your channel, and I'm really enjoying your videos ! Please keep it up !
Hi, i played the SegaSaturn version and if you unlock Hard Mode and finish it you get a cut sceen that shows you the video of the alien breaking the dor but this time its visible! Great review and yes , its was hard to figure out how to turn one some power in some areas that needed a sequence of buttons to press but all of that makes ir realistic ! Not like having an arrow pointing where to go like in other games! 😂 Really makes you feel the story and situation you are on.
Thank you very much for the review. :^) I played it the day it came out on the SEGA Saturn back then.. first the Japanese then the English, and loved it so much.
I always had this wierd thought that Eno was assassinated in some form or another due to what he did to SONY.. creative auteurs should be extra careful with whom they trigger or annoy.. They said it was a normal heart attack.. but to me, he falls into a list I am aware of, of a lot of magnificent autuers and creatives who passed away very young.. 😶 People who held a lot of creativity and could flip the scales or influence an industry.
I played quite some years ago, and remember enjoying the atmosphere the most, specially the later sections where the areas are pretty long, if I recall correctly the PC version is a little easier (not by much) since you have more mobility when charging the weapon
David looks like one of the actors from Aliens, I reckon. But also the fact that he's basically a synthetic human is like, yeah I get the reference my G!
This is what I miss from gaming in the 90s. They weren't afraid to experiment with genres and tried things different. Games didn't need to sell Millions of copies to be profitable. Nowadays a game like these is just not possible unless is an indie game that is not a pretentious visual novel or a metroidvania.
...what? Bro it's just a sci-fi horror game. 2 years after System Shock no less. Also, the only thing that even slightly elevates this above indie status is the at-the-time expensive and high quality CG FMVs. Go play some Prey, Fear & Hunger, Withering Rooms, Returnal, Atama, Saturnalia, Alien: Isolation, Remnant 1 or 2, Iron Lung, Dredge, Return of the Obra Dinn, Lost in Vivo, etc. All kinds of different genres and experimentation in all these titles, big budget and indie alike, no visual novels of metroidvanias. Not all strictly horror games, but you didn't mention horror so I figured you mostly meant trying unique things, which many of these do. Now, are you actually *interested* in them or do you just want to wax philosophical about a niche 90s horror game? Note that none of this is to shit on Enemy Zero. It's a real cool game but it's hardly a mind-bending proposition.
@@Xbob42I think his point was that big companies don't have the freedom of creativity that they used to do in the past. About half of the games you've listed are indies, which proves his point. I mean, in the 90s we had a lot of new big games like Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Fallout, Deus Ex, System Shock, Silent Hill, Pokemon, etc., all of which changed the gaming scene and are still talked about to this day because they still hold up despite their extremely dated graphics and/or mechanics, whereas now whenever you think of AAA games, you're mostly just thinking of sequels to already existing IPs, because brand new IPs tend to be forgettable since they "play it safe". Even the best AAA game of our current year, Baldur's Gate 3, is part of a franchise that was created in the 90s! I do agree that saying "oh, X era had better games!" is just plain silly though. The problem whenever people say that is that they tend to remember 1 good game from that time, but forget the 100000 others that came along with it and fell into the forgettable/bad category. But he has a point in that developers aren't as risky with their games as they used to be in the past, mostly because companies can't experiment as much as they could before without the fear of going bankrupt. Then again, game development was different back then, so it's quite unfair to make comparisons. Back then you only needed 30 people to work on your game, now you need a mininum of 100. An AAA developer back then could be considered an indie developer these days, since they more or less have the same budget and size in their team.
@@loren5432 Ah, half the games being indie means the other half aren't creative and proves a point he never really stated... Huh. I do agree that in general, devs aren't as free to take big risks, but on the other hand, most big indie games are as complex if not moreso than these 90s AAA titles. And hell, a lot of them weren't even AAA games. This was clearly basically an indie game with an FMV budget. Regardless, just setting your sights on the biggest and most expensive games and then dismissing indie games for no real reason strikes me as the wrong takeaway. Enjoy the plethora of extremely creative indie titles! For all the freedom AAA devs may have had in the 90s, the indie devs basically had none. Now it's the other way around, so enjoy the fruits of their labor!
@@Xbob42 No one is dismissing indie games? When did someone ever do that? Like I said, a single good game can be surrounded by thousands of bad games, which is what causes this odd perspection people have on certain eras. A single indie game hit like Fear and Hunger is just a drop of water in an ocean full of uninspired, limbo-EA indie games for example. What I said before, which is what I believe is the point of the original comment is that big companies back then had more freedom than they do now. It's easy for a company to release sequels which slightly tweak their gameplay or games that if you strip them down to their gameplay are nothing but reskins of one another than it is for them to make a game that pushes the gaming scene as whole. Indies have taken over that creative aspect, that is true (though this doesn't necessarily apply to most indie games) but they rarely push the genre since they have a limited budget to work with in the first place.
6:02 Holy Jesus, I didn't remember this game at all... Until I saw this guy and then the memory of reading about it in Hyper Magazine came flooding back to me. The screenshot of this guy's face really stuck with me, for some reason.
I'm an old (literally) fan of the WARP/Kenji Eno stuff. It's been super fun seeing them again here. Makes me want to bust out the trilogy, but that means some system setup. Great vid.
Dude, not gonna lie.. Sometime around the early/mid 2000s I've found La Blue Girl on the interwebs. That small insert bring me back some funny memories hahaha. Time really goes by fast.
Man i hated this game growing up. I remember accidentally walking into my older cousins room who had this game blasted on our old tv and yelling at me because this game had them on edge and me bursting in freaked them out so bad, which of course scared me seeing them so shook. Now that Im older and having watched this video, I think I should give this game a go. Excellent video.
If I recall correctly, it was less that Kenji Eno "convinced" the sountrack composure after six hours, and more that he literally stalked and then locked him in a hotel room together and more or less held him hostage for six hours until he agreed to do the game. Absolute maniac, the gaming scene isn't the same without him. Look up his unfinished game Kakexun sometime. An seemingly impossible to understand game that looked to be about dying of a heart attack right before he died young of a heart attack. Tragic.
I love the idea of “digital actors” who appear in different roles in different games. It would be so cool to have Sony create a cast of reoccurring characters who always look and sound the same and have more or less have consistent personalities, appear in multiple genres of games in different roles.
I think I liked this and Deep Fear best out of the survival horror offerings on the Saturn...wait, was there actually something else? Don't mention that port of Bio Hazard...
Absolutely never heard of Enemy Zero or Kenji until this popped into my recommended. Was a really fun watch! The VPS surely inspired Silent Hill's radio, that feels all too coincidental - but also having tone changes depending on DIRECTION is absolutely heartpounding, what a brilliant game.
I played it on pc a long time ago and for me the experience was not really scary (and in fact sometimes quite boring) it's not a bad game at all, it's just that sometimes like i said it's monotone. about SH radio, nope... did not come from this game, they implemented that because radio static is a "well" known used method for almost every paranormal (thingy) implying there is an specter or some sort of energy (also used to communicate with the dead) This has been seen in tv shows and movies a LOT of times (as well as the lights failing for the same reason)
You have a high tolerance for game BS. And I'm glad you do. Otherwise, I wouldn't know of this interesting little game. Personally, I feel like life is way too short for me to try and put up with this kind of game for more than a minute. But I'm happy to know it exists and see what it tried to do.
My first thought while watching this was, why aren't there any androids? How on earth will you incentivise your crew to the point where they would put themselves in harm's way rather than sacrifice an alien creature? That's why you need a robot who can heartlessly committ the will of The Corporation. The other option: bring the thing back, with you dead or alive, or else you'll all die as soon as you land. In that case, if the crew knew anything about it, they'd likely just fuck off without the alien. Then you'd need children/family held at ransom back home, or again an android who is able to enforce the death threat while they're still in transit.
This game kinda reminds me of Hellnight (Dark Messiah), with the 3D hallways and the point and click safe rooms. This looks even more scary than Hellnight.
Kenji Eno was a promising game designer. He passed away too young, too suddenly.
I never knew this guy but with this game design I completely agree.
...and the plot chickens.
Man, I'd be so happy if Kenji Eno were still alive. Just imagine the batshit crazy games he could make on modern consoles/PC.
#F
The last thing he did was a random mobile game. He pretty much did nothing related to gaming in his last decade
Kenji Eno was mostly a sound guy. He made D and E0 because he wanted to make a cinematic game.
@@j.2512 his last game was You, Me, and the Cubes, wasn't it?
Honestly, I would love something that takes this concept and approaches it in a way that couldn't have been done back in the 90s.
Imagine having all the enemies in the game only be visible through their influence on the environment. Don't even have any models, just track where they are and have a physics simulation imply their presence.
If there's a puddle, show splashing as they move through it. If there's a set of crates, have them move a bit when the monsters are passing them. That sort of thing.
Different areas would have different giveaways for the things you're trying to evade and the last area could be a homage to this game: lots of long, dark corridors with barely any objects for the creatures to bump into, with only a tiny little beep to keep you updated on where you are relative to anything else until you're close enough to hear them breathing.
Closest thing to that I can imagine is Prey.
Shapeshifting aliens that can transform into anything and leave you paranoid about things like mugs and chairs.
Lots of awesome ideas there. I would love to play that kind of game!
Make invisible enemies great again
@@svperuzerIndeed, it’s like living in The Darkest Hour universe but this time around you have an Alien: Isolation tracker and a really powerful gun to kick some-🫠
Closest thing to this is a level in the first The Evil Within. Completely invisible enemy is introduced, but they fill the level with puddles, stacks of books, wheelchairs, medical trays, gurneys, etc. It was terrifying and fantastic, I couldn't believe no other horror games followed up on the concept (including its sequel). So check it out if you're looking for a modern example of this!
Criminally underrated.
The sound design in the game is fantastic. It goes from low drone sounds to loud pounding & screeching outta nowhere.
I remember that cutscene where the Enemy ambushes Laura in the elevator.
💩‘ed my pants just from sounds.
What Eno got right was that with monsters;
the more you see them, the more they become comical.
So making them invisible creates horror in the mind. The pinging & monsters screeching just fans the flames.
It’s an unforgiving game, but what it gets right, it nails. Really unique.
Absolutely. One of the best horror games I’ve ever played. So unique.
I really want to play this now
You’re totally right. Tight sound design and minimizing how much the audience actually sees of an enemy can have a huge impact on a horror game. It was really clever how he combined these two elements. Unfortunately, it does seem like the game suffers a bit from its own difficulty. When you start getting annoyed or wandering around too much, you lose fear.
When I first played Alien Isolation it reminded me a lot of Enemy Zero - it’s a really special game and the only Saturn game I still have in my possession
You ever been arrested for possession?
Hope it's safe from the disc rot
Alien: Isolation was in fact inspired by Enemy Zero, because these both games were published by SEGA.
I don't really care to play horror games but I like hearing about them! Kenji Eno was based
He sure was. What a legend.
Nice
Cool
@@dungeonchillwhat made him so based?
@@EmeraldLavigneAside from the innovative design and having the balls to call Sony out on their bullshit, even if it harmed his career?
I agree with you, I hate those people who say, “oh, that? That’s soo easy! I beat it on my first effort!” Even if I don’t have problems with something, I understand that my circumstances might’ve been different than another player’s.
Mostly just children who want to brag off.
They're probably lying, too.
for a year or so after any fromsoft rpg comes out, the related subreddits are flooded with people like this. folks who seems to have no other way to give their self-image tangible value than by comparing themselves to the struggles of other people. to me it seems like a similar impulse as the one that drives susceptibility to conspiracy theories or unjustified belief systems. that desperate need for the illusory power that comes from pretending you know super special secret things that other people don't, or are specially chosen by some magical force.
interestingly they're no where to be found in the intervening years, during which the souls subreddits become one of the most warm and supportive and tolerant places on the internet. someone about a shared journey and a shared struggle just leads to kindness and tolerance.
A lot of people say the same shit about Darkest Dungeon, despite the fact that it's NOT an "easy game" at all, especially on Bloodmoon difficulty.
wut
I literally got PTSD upon hearing the VPS again. This game and Alien the movie was enough to fuel my teenage nightmares for years.
The Alien movie? Or Alien Trilogy the PS1 game?
Have you played Alien Isolation yet?
Damn...peak nightmare
Me too! The beeping sound is stressful to this day. Hahahahah
Yeah, it reminds me of the part where Dallas enters the ventilation ducts with the camera shutter gates. Nothing on the sonar detector thingy for ages, then suddenly a blip heading right for him. That absolutely terrified me as a kid...
Since you asked, and since I work as a deputy coroner: severed fingers really don't sound like anything - but given how limp they are, that likely indicates that Marcus died within the past 6-9 hours or so (depending on the ambient temperature) since rigor mortis would start to become apparent after that. And now you know!
I appreciated the little nugget of insight
@@courierz9451 Of course! Actually, the more I think about it, rigor might not be as apparent if it's just the fingers. Your fingers themselves are all just fat, bone, and tendons - the actual muscles are in the central part of the hand, which pull on the tendons like a system of pulleys. Completely detached like that, they might not be as rigid as you'd expect; hard to say since you typically encounter amputated fingers after car/motorcycle crashes and thus still fresh by the time of the scene investigation.
@DylanDekk as someone with no actual education to the relevant, i don't imagine them to make that "squish" noise tho, right?
@@courierz9451 Definitely not. They aren't going to sound like anything. Seems like Kenji Eno really liked his weird stock cartoon sound effects.
So awesome to see someone speak of this crazy game! I have it on the Saturn and no one seemed to remember it
It’s a real hidden gem. Had a great time playing it. Thanks for watching my video!
Mainly no one really had a sega Saturn when it was a thing, I only saw one more recently as a novelty
Alien references:
1- Alone in a ship
2- The 'transport enemy as the highest priority regardless of crew safety'' directive
3- David being an android
4- Android being called ''David'' this is a coincidence tho, prometheus came out like 20 years after
5- ''Enemy'' plants baby on main character
6- Spaceship selfdestruct at the end
Not complaining tho just pointing similarities
The ship has 4 towers, just like the Nostromo in Alien.
I saw in some wiki, Prometheus David name was inspired by Michelangelo's David statue. Perhaps this game have same inspiration or something?
Also, "mission to send androids into alien planet to collect specimens" and "falling in love with an android and only finding out after he's ripped apart by an alien" is straight out of a series of comic books that came out after the second Alien movie and served as sequels. It told what happened to Newt and Hicks, but got retconned after the third movie came out and the names of the characters were changed in future reprints.
They were honestly amazing and the story they tell is very gripping. I have a edition with the original names still that I luckily got in a Blockbuster clearance sale
Wow, I *never* want to play this game. So I'm glad you made a video about it, so I don't have to. That's a real service to us baby gamers!
I like struggling through these kinds of games. They make for the best videos. Glad you enjoyed it!
.
3:42 I love 90's era 3D animation in games. It really felt like the future to me at the time.
Seconded.
Retro-Future, especially the hopeful utopian future of gaming, compared to what we actually got in real life nowadays. (Even the early to mid 2000s was full of that as well, not just the 1990s and 1980s).
@@SuperFlashDriver Indies and emulation are the saving graces nowadays.
@@SicketMog True that Sicket.
the 80s and 90s was the peak before the decline into clown world. We thought things we were at the start but we came along at the end
okay, so you've completed the D Trilogy! congrats!
Now, just for a lark, do Dark Dreams Don't Die. Because it's called D4.
I'm glad you did this wonderful video covering this interesting game because man, the combat was just too intense and difficult for me, I had to shut it down and go cry in the corner. I really love the aesthetic of these old Saturn games and I'd love to see some retro throwback games adopt this style in the same way other games have adopted the style of SNES and Playstation games.
If I wasn’t making this video, I might have given up. It’s a frustrating game for sure.
Saturn is such a cool system. I have some other Saturn games I want to cover in the future
Dude, you’re amazing! These kinds of games don’t get nearly enough love, so it’s totally awesome to see people like you giving them the attention they deserve. Much love 😁
Thank you so much! Glad you liked the video! More obscure and underrated stuff incoming.
Yeah these videos are awesome
David being an android who didn't know he's an android and confused about how he could feel may be another reference to "Aliens" universe, but this time to Dark Horse's comic series
Man, that’s a deep cut. And I bet Eno would have read those.
Dang
Now I fond myself googling if the Dark Horse Aliens run was published in Japan in the mid-90s.
Enemy Zero was one of those first horror games I played outside the most popular horror games like Resident Evil and Silent Hill. When I first read about the game mechanics, I became absolutely interested with the invisible enemies and spatial-sound tracking.
I was expecting difficulty after a background check on it, but what I never knew was the recorder that uses batteries. The recorder has the most terrifying mechanic in this game, because it is absolutely a permadeath system when you run out of battery life. It’s game over when it reaches 0 and I have to restart the entire game again from the beginning. It also doesn’t matter that whether you load or save the game, the battery will continue depleting either way. And that is even harder than classic Resident Evil games that only deplete ribbons when you save, not when you load.
The last parts of the game were the most terrifying and most difficult. Even if accompanied by a pistol with infinite rounds, the complex maze of same corridors can easily make you lost and knock off your sanity, and will make you panic for your recorder battery life every load. It’s a little close to being a YOLO scenario.
Regardless of all that, I am one ridiculously stubborn player, and I finished the game at last. With only 2% recorder battery life remaining, Laura Lewis was able to escape the ship safely. My eyes welled up a little bit from almost getting permadeath, and I was cheering her on as the shuttle cutscene was running. A very difficult experience indeed, but a game that is possible to beat with effort. The horror, gameplay, the lean plot and the puzzles were the peak of this game. Being able to beat it is a rewarding experience.
D and D2 (which really was fine storywise but I love the soundtrack especially the ending) I played right after Enemy Zero just to get something good from all of them. Even if they now pale in comparison to the games we have today, I love the innovative mechanics that Kenji Eno put in them, makes them more engaging to play if we go back to the 90s.
When I compare the 3 WARP games, Enemy Zero is the best. I had a good time playing it for a week, and include the fact that I just played it on February 2020, which was the time that lockdown seriously started in our country.😂 Just the perfect time to play an “isolation” space horror game :>
Now, to add more challenge in the game, I’ll be replaying it again, but this time around I’ll be recording it and upload my gameplays (I just dunno when). You mentioned this was the Saturn version, right? I played the PC port, and it was mentioned the PC port includes 2 additional monster types in the game, hence even more masochistic in my situation LMAO. But what I’m not sure about both versions is the resolution. The game display only occupies 1/4 of my PC screen, and I don’t know how much it occupies from the TV screen of the Saturn version, if it’s in fullscreen or more like windowed as well.
Did you ever play Lunacy? It's not developed by Warp, but if you liked D and D2, you may enjoy it too.
@@michaeloffgrid Not yet actually, might as well check that out too :)
I played this game, blind, for a Halloween event a group of friends do online, and whooo weee you hit the nail on the head with this review! I loved this game, even though it was hard as shit, and kept me nervous as hell throughout. Subbed because of this and the Cosmology of Kyoto video. Keep up the great work!
The excitement
Alright phew theres a lot of stuff in my mind atm but I hope I can communicate it clearly. When I watched that intro about the invisible enemies and the audio ping used to locate them, the first thought that crossed my mind was about Death Stranding's BTs. They actually feel very reminiscent of the enemies in Enemy Zero, as they are only able to be located thanks a direction and and approximative distance given to you by that little funky arm on Sam's back. Now what gets even more interesting is the parralel between Enemy Zero and Alien and how that actually relates to Death Stranding. From what I remember from the first movie, Alien deals with a lot of themes surrounding motherhood (the central computer being named Mother, Ash bleeding what looks like milk while emitting baby cries, the Xenomorph gestating inside its host etc...), motherhood themes which can also be found in Death Stranding (Bridge Babies being harvested from still mothers, BTs literally having an umbilical cord floating around them, Sam having a C-Section scar on his belly...) Now idk what the fuck you can do with this information other than deducf that Kojima probably played and was influenced in some measure by Enemy Zero and its definition of motherhood and femininity for the making of Death Stranding but its a pretty fun thing to consider.
Really interesting connections there. D2 also has a lot of motherhood themes.
Man, I really need to finish Death Stranding. I played about half of it, and I really liked the gameplay and story. Just got distracted and left it unfinished.
It's worth it.
Invisible enemies? Either the cheapest, laziest idea for an enemy ever, or a stoke of mad genius.
It’s really simplistic, but the important think if it works in the game or not. And it does.
Games like this where you die over and over stop being scary and start being frustrating. Horror, more than most other genres needs to strike a balance. You need to fear death, death has to be POSSIBLE, but if it's too frequent players will just become annoyed and the fear wears off
Skill issue
Well said. When i did alien isolation, and amnesia dark descent there was serious scares in it but some of the puzzles required such a stretch of logic that dying repeatedly and failing to understand a segment just destroys the fear factor completely.
Huh; That tumor creature thing on Laura's neck does remind me of the time I had a lateral cyst on the left side of my neck some years ago. Ended up getting my first surgery experience. It was some primordial remnant organ thing back from when all life was in the water, gill-related or whatever.
Eno's three Laura's may have been inspired by Osamu Tezuka's "cast" of characters with the same design and similar personalities that populated his works.
Great review. I have owned it for ages and have been meaning to play it beyond disc 0. Had to skip the spoiler section so I can discover it for myself.
Thanks! And the game is worth a playthrough. Really unique.
I really love the games Kenji Eno made that I have played: D, Enemy Zero, & D2. Since he has passed, I wonder who owns the rights to the three games. I would love a nice collection of his works to be made available on current platforms.
Gosh I remember this game back from like one of my first game magazines. I didn't know Sega Saturn was a thing back then but I remember being so into the 3d images of games I would re-read the captions and stare at the pictures several hours into the night (I was like seven and ADHD hyperfixation HO) and I remember being slightly spooked by Enemy Zero preview as it showed Laura in the cutscene seeing the butterfly and the sliced fingers. Oooh creepy for me back then.
Nice to finally be able to put a name to the game.
Bro I used to study those tiny ass screen shots all the time at that age too
This game kind of reminds me of Robotica, with the maze-like corridors in a space station and aliens, but that was a FPS shooter, this is more survival horror.
I think the tension of hearing beeps as invisible enemies get closer to you would drive me batty, but I think there would also be a bit of a thrill in being able to shoot them correctly.
Another one I missed out on. This Kenji guy, I like his style. Especially the tentacle stuff. I wonder where that comes from? Because that goes back pretty far to ancient scrolls having women attacked by octy.
Learning how to use the guns is what kept me going.
As for the tentacle thing, maybe Japan being an island nation, having a big fishing culture could be a reason. That’s just my guess, though.
Tentacles were used to bypass censorship laws regarding porn in japan, I believe.
An island nation full of perverts and with weird censorship laws.
Kim's self game end makes sense. She was in on the mission and the thing she was knowingly transporting killed the most important person to her. He's probably feeling very guilty and very alone in San incredibly stressful situation.
It does suck, though.
Was way too hard for me back then. I couldn't get anywhere and basically gave up. But damn, those corridors look really nice! Not even because the 3D engine runs relatively smoothly for a Saturn game, but also due to the textures. Very good art direction imho. Also that Soundtrack is just amazing.
If it weren’t for me wanting to make this video, I don’t know if I would have finished it. I’m glad I did, but man, it was tough.
Wow! I'm genuinely at a loss for why you don't get more attention for these videos. Awesome stuff! Keep it up dude!
I actually saw a review for this in a gaming magazine forever ago. I had forgot the name until just now. Thanks!
What I find most interesting about Enemy Zero is that as a kid (12 - 13) I found it scary as hell but was determined to finish it and plowed through. Now as an adult, this is the type of game I would probably read about and give a hard pass both because of the difficulty and fear (I've become kind of a baby when it comes to horror games). Funny how punishing difficulty as a kid translates to frustration as an adult.
"Program (x-sa) should be used for such case."
Is it a coincidence that a few years later, Metroid Fusion, set on a space station where the protagonist is hunted by an alien lifeform, uses SA-X for the name of its enemy?
Thanks for taking some of us down memory lane. I vaguely remember finishing this. This was the closest we got to Alien until Alien Isolation.
the soundtrack was composed by Michael Nyman, a very well regarded avant garde minimalist composer who agreed to do it on a whim reportedly!
Love when youtube recommends me smaller channels, youre great man
I appreciate that! Glad you liked the video.
Thank you so much for covering obscure and forgotten games like this. I absolutely love taking a dive into old horror and scifi games and trying to figure out how it was all pulled off.
Im only in my 20s and didnt get a chance to experience these fascinating saturn and ps1 titles in my childhood, but I enjoy getting to look back on them now.
Games like these are just works of art and they werent afraid to get creative and controversial with their game design. There's a lot of soul in titles like these.
Also, im definitely subscribing. Your commentary and presentation are well executed and i couldnt get enough! Im going to dive into the other D titles next!
I've never heard of most of the games you cover, but I adore how you cover them. Witty, chill, insightful, detailed reviews of games I never had the chance to play. Keep up the impeccable work.
I actually played Enemy Zero. It is trully an unique experience, with the invisible enemy and the sound orientarion device. Also, I still love the soundtrack (specially when you discover the true nature of David). The map detail, I had a draw of the sections that were super hard, it was fun. The ending is super exhilarating too.
I learned about this game years and years ago when Happy Nerd aka Derek from Stop Skeletons From Fighting covered it. Retro games were still affordable then so I was able to grab a copy from eBay. It's such a cool and unique game, and you can see how it influenced Alien Isolation. I'm just glad to see someone else talking about it!
Deep Fear is another Saturn exclusive game that gave some good nightmares. I played the first D for Playstation, I didn't have the opportunity to play E0.
It feels like this was to be a alien game, but did not get the license, so changed thing to make it a different game, not uncommon back in the day, great video love the Saturn 👍👍
I love guys like you, MagicMush, and Tsunul, who just have this way with words, wordplay, and humor that really just cracks me up and still remains informative.
I played Enemy Zero to the end on Saturn and D2 to the end on Dreamcast. Great games. Expensive now especially in UK.
Never even heard of this game and i'm amazed it escaped me until now, always nice to see people covering games like this, great video.
just googled Kenji Eno...damn, he died at 42😢
I've never played any of these 90s games...now i just might
I put “Ladyfingers” by Luscious Jackson on every party playlist. Song slaps.
13:57 - her reaction is perfect. the looks at the gun and be like "ah, an improvement, that doesn't exactly help"
I was running out of Grimbeard videos and this magically appears.
I just got a few of his down then see this.
I loved this game back then, scariest thing i ever played... maybe still today... was amazing.... You forgot to mention the Scariest part of this game: the SAVE SYSTEM... each time you save, it depletes a battery... but each time you Load... it ALSO depletes the battery.... so you're limited... Also i played the game several times to Beat the Hard Mode... 'cuz beating the game in Hard Mode unlocked a secret Shower scene in the new game plus :D You dont see anything really, but as a horny teenager, it was totally worth it :D
Honestly if an indie dev made this in a modern engine i think it would do well
This, clockwork knight, and bug were my first Sega saturn games. Loved them. This one scared tf out of me
duuuude you're my new favorite channel! I'm binging all your content and it's all so well made and edited. love your stuff, you deserve so many subs
When I was a kid the scariest thing I had ever witnessed was a hand reaching out of a toilet at a certain Inn in Clocktown...
17:00 "drop the gun, that's not gangsta! That's very not gangsta!"
21:28 "ENOUGH!" now I have no choice but to subscribe.
Considering that back in 2015/2016 I was trying to look up survival horror video games, or horror video games in general that would give me the spooks, something from the past or in the present I haven't tried out that I could play on an emulator. And sadly this game wasn't on that list of the most popular survival horror games on say Google's search engine. So seeing this one mentioned, well, I'll have to watch a longplay with no commentary to sleep to and get the full experience myself.
Wow, real Alien Isolation vibes here - I wonder how much inspiration that game drew from Enemy Zero.
Luscious Jackson was an alt rock band from the 90s!
Check out their big song “Naked Eye”
you give me massive grimbeard vibes in the best way possible, loving your work so far
Luscious Jackson? That's a blast of nostalgia. Vivian Trimble did have a great voice. Their big hit was "Naked Eye." Unfortunately she died April 2023 from cancer.
Very interesting gameplay! I would not be able to play the third, because I would have a lot of trouble distinguishing the high an dthe medium sounds if they're really close together.
Omg the level of 90s in that opener makes me feel like they allll thought the world was going to end in 1999. That was just beautiful 😍 pure joy. I can picture everyone in the office just .. bumping. Thank you for showing us the amazing piece of art !!
I never played this game, but I really love the graphics and the ambience. The pixellated looks of the corridors are so satisfying to watch.
Also, I recently your channel, and I'm really enjoying your videos ! Please keep it up !
This was my mother's favorite game of all time. Child me couldnt understand the mechanics.
Hi, i played the SegaSaturn version and if you unlock Hard Mode and finish it you get a cut sceen that shows you the video of the alien breaking the dor but this time its visible!
Great review and yes , its was hard to figure out how to turn one some power in some areas that needed a sequence of buttons to press but all of that makes ir realistic ! Not like having an arrow pointing where to go like in other games! 😂
Really makes you feel the story and situation you are on.
This game deserves a remake.
Thank you very much for the review. :^)
I played it the day it came out on the SEGA Saturn back then.. first the Japanese then the English, and loved it so much.
I always had this wierd thought that Eno was assassinated in some form or another due to what he did to SONY.. creative auteurs should be extra careful with whom they trigger or annoy..
They said it was a normal heart attack.. but to me, he falls into a list I am aware of, of a lot of magnificent autuers and creatives who passed away very young.. 😶
People who held a lot of creativity and could flip the scales or influence an industry.
@@ArabKatibConsidering that some video game companies have definite ties to the Yakuza...
@@Elyseon Wow! Riiiiight!! 😶
Thats very much could be a possibility.. 😶
Interesting.. never rule that out.
3:38 the good old days. 90s marketing is undefeated.
I remember this well! Really loved these fmv games back in the day.
Still one of my favorite games and I still glad I own it.
I played quite some years ago, and remember enjoying the atmosphere the most, specially the later sections where the areas are pretty long, if I recall correctly the PC version is a little easier (not by much) since you have more mobility when charging the weapon
David looks like one of the actors from Aliens, I reckon. But also the fact that he's basically a synthetic human is like, yeah I get the reference my G!
Boo's Mansion from N64 was terrifying as a kid, but still compelling, so I played through it. That music.
It isn't 90s until it sounds like a night club in a Blade movie
The opening movie for this game feels like something that would be in the background of serial experiments lain to slowly drive people insane
This is what I miss from gaming in the 90s. They weren't afraid to experiment with genres and tried things different. Games didn't need to sell Millions of copies to be profitable. Nowadays a game like these is just not possible unless is an indie game that is not a pretentious visual novel or a metroidvania.
...what? Bro it's just a sci-fi horror game. 2 years after System Shock no less. Also, the only thing that even slightly elevates this above indie status is the at-the-time expensive and high quality CG FMVs. Go play some Prey, Fear & Hunger, Withering Rooms, Returnal, Atama, Saturnalia, Alien: Isolation, Remnant 1 or 2, Iron Lung, Dredge, Return of the Obra Dinn, Lost in Vivo, etc.
All kinds of different genres and experimentation in all these titles, big budget and indie alike, no visual novels of metroidvanias. Not all strictly horror games, but you didn't mention horror so I figured you mostly meant trying unique things, which many of these do.
Now, are you actually *interested* in them or do you just want to wax philosophical about a niche 90s horror game?
Note that none of this is to shit on Enemy Zero. It's a real cool game but it's hardly a mind-bending proposition.
@@Xbob42I think his point was that big companies don't have the freedom of creativity that they used to do in the past. About half of the games you've listed are indies, which proves his point. I mean, in the 90s we had a lot of new big games like Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, Fallout, Deus Ex, System Shock, Silent Hill, Pokemon, etc., all of which changed the gaming scene and are still talked about to this day because they still hold up despite their extremely dated graphics and/or mechanics, whereas now whenever you think of AAA games, you're mostly just thinking of sequels to already existing IPs, because brand new IPs tend to be forgettable since they "play it safe". Even the best AAA game of our current year, Baldur's Gate 3, is part of a franchise that was created in the 90s!
I do agree that saying "oh, X era had better games!" is just plain silly though. The problem whenever people say that is that they tend to remember 1 good game from that time, but forget the 100000 others that came along with it and fell into the forgettable/bad category. But he has a point in that developers aren't as risky with their games as they used to be in the past, mostly because companies can't experiment as much as they could before without the fear of going bankrupt. Then again, game development was different back then, so it's quite unfair to make comparisons. Back then you only needed 30 people to work on your game, now you need a mininum of 100. An AAA developer back then could be considered an indie developer these days, since they more or less have the same budget and size in their team.
@@loren5432 Ah, half the games being indie means the other half aren't creative and proves a point he never really stated... Huh.
I do agree that in general, devs aren't as free to take big risks, but on the other hand, most big indie games are as complex if not moreso than these 90s AAA titles. And hell, a lot of them weren't even AAA games. This was clearly basically an indie game with an FMV budget.
Regardless, just setting your sights on the biggest and most expensive games and then dismissing indie games for no real reason strikes me as the wrong takeaway. Enjoy the plethora of extremely creative indie titles! For all the freedom AAA devs may have had in the 90s, the indie devs basically had none. Now it's the other way around, so enjoy the fruits of their labor!
@@Xbob42 No one is dismissing indie games? When did someone ever do that?
Like I said, a single good game can be surrounded by thousands of bad games, which is what causes this odd perspection people have on certain eras. A single indie game hit like Fear and Hunger is just a drop of water in an ocean full of uninspired, limbo-EA indie games for example.
What I said before, which is what I believe is the point of the original comment is that big companies back then had more freedom than they do now. It's easy for a company to release sequels which slightly tweak their gameplay or games that if you strip them down to their gameplay are nothing but reskins of one another than it is for them to make a game that pushes the gaming scene as whole. Indies have taken over that creative aspect, that is true (though this doesn't necessarily apply to most indie games) but they rarely push the genre since they have a limited budget to work with in the first place.
6:02 Holy Jesus, I didn't remember this game at all... Until I saw this guy and then the memory of reading about it in Hyper Magazine came flooding back to me. The screenshot of this guy's face really stuck with me, for some reason.
Damn, that death scream is nuts.
This game is definitely Kenji Eno presents Ridley Scott's Alien. It has many elements of that film
I finished that game when I was a kid, and yes I can confirm that it's an anxiety inducing game, i never touched those 4 discs ever again
I'm an old (literally) fan of the WARP/Kenji Eno stuff. It's been super fun seeing them again here. Makes me want to bust out the trilogy, but that means some system setup. Great vid.
Dude, not gonna lie.. Sometime around the early/mid 2000s I've found La Blue Girl on the interwebs. That small insert bring me back some funny memories hahaha. Time really goes by fast.
Man i hated this game growing up. I remember accidentally walking into my older cousins room who had this game blasted on our old tv and yelling at me because this game had them on edge and me bursting in freaked them out so bad, which of course scared me seeing them so shook. Now that Im older and having watched this video, I think I should give this game a go. Excellent video.
If I recall correctly, it was less that Kenji Eno "convinced" the sountrack composure after six hours, and more that he literally stalked and then locked him in a hotel room together and more or less held him hostage for six hours until he agreed to do the game. Absolute maniac, the gaming scene isn't the same without him. Look up his unfinished game Kakexun sometime. An seemingly impossible to understand game that looked to be about dying of a heart attack right before he died young of a heart attack. Tragic.
Damn that opening cinematic was so 90s I’m now wearing plaid and talking like Chandler
I love the idea of “digital actors” who appear in different roles in different games. It would be so cool to have Sony create a cast of reoccurring characters who always look and sound the same and have more or less have consistent personalities, appear in multiple genres of games in different roles.
I think I liked this and Deep Fear best out of the survival horror offerings on the Saturn...wait, was there actually something else? Don't mention that port of Bio Hazard...
Absolutely never heard of Enemy Zero or Kenji until this popped into my recommended. Was a really fun watch! The VPS surely inspired Silent Hill's radio, that feels all too coincidental - but also having tone changes depending on DIRECTION is absolutely heartpounding, what a brilliant game.
I played it on pc a long time ago and for me the experience was not really scary (and in fact sometimes quite boring)
it's not a bad game at all, it's just that sometimes like i said it's monotone.
about SH radio, nope... did not come from this game, they implemented that because radio static is a "well" known used method for almost every paranormal (thingy) implying there is an specter or some sort of energy (also used to communicate with the dead)
This has been seen in tv shows and movies a LOT of times (as well as the lights failing for the same reason)
You have a high tolerance for game BS. And I'm glad you do. Otherwise, I wouldn't know of this interesting little game. Personally, I feel like life is way too short for me to try and put up with this kind of game for more than a minute. But I'm happy to know it exists and see what it tried to do.
Michael Nyman is great. Interestingly enough, it sounds like he reused some of this score for his score for "Man With a Movie Camera" in 2002.
I swear I've heard Kimberly's voice before, but can't quite pinpoint it. Sounds a bit like Alyson Court (Claire from RE2)...
One of my favourite horror games of all time! Absolutely nothing else like it! 🙏🙏 Have my Saturn copy complete in box in mint 🥰🥰
This episode is sponsored by Zero VPS.
My first thought while watching this was, why aren't there any androids? How on earth will you incentivise your crew to the point where they would put themselves in harm's way rather than sacrifice an alien creature? That's why you need a robot who can heartlessly committ the will of The Corporation.
The other option: bring the thing back, with you dead or alive, or else you'll all die as soon as you land. In that case, if the crew knew anything about it, they'd likely just fuck off without the alien. Then you'd need children/family held at ransom back home, or again an android who is able to enforce the death threat while they're still in transit.
This game is pretty impressive for the time, and the sound design is pretty solid.
For a baby game for babies.
This game kinda reminds me of Hellnight (Dark Messiah), with the 3D hallways and the point and click safe rooms.
This looks even more scary than Hellnight.
I was thinking the same thing. Hellnight is also a hidden horror gem.
It looks like Enemy Zero has that subliminal space vibe going.