best dreamcast game
Really fun game. Nonsensical, stupid and janky. Would recommend.
this is the best fucking game ever made
Glad people here seem to like it but yeah I sure didn't. Might try it again for Game Club.
She saunters casually, pulse slow and steady, as she meanders through the decrepit halls of Hotel Banballow. The stagnant air, suffocating like a thick fog, stands as a constant reminder of the incendiary fate that befell the manor, alongside the owner’s son, one Jimmy Banballow. Silence hangs heavily through the vacant corridors, an unending moment punctuating the loss of one life and the taking of many others, as the latest victim inches closer to her demise. With Jimmy’s beloved baseball bat clutched stiffly in her palm, caked in an absurd coating of viscera, Eriko Christy makes her way to an eventual dead-end, a one-way confrontation with the man behind the slaughter, Gale Banballow, eternally vengeful over the death of his son. The sharp hiss of a blowtorch begins to pierce through the veil, a siren song signaling a violent end…
Until the tension is cut by another crash test dummy jumping you, hitting you with sidekicks and an oversized wrench, escapable with only the finest of frame-traps and side-steps. Her foe maimed and brutalized, Eriko walks away, a blank stare on her face as she speaks her one-word eulogy: “Cool!”
Illbleed is as sincere as horror gets. Beyond the high-concept of a killer amusement park with a $100 million cash prize, nothing cuts to the inherent silliness of horror like Illbleed. For context, the 90s and early 2000s were an era of introspection and reflection with horror, where metanarrative and critique became the standard through which the genre could express itself. The innate need to satirize and comment on the tropes that solidified the genre itself became a trope, a voice strained by overuse. Thus, sincerity in horror, the wink-and-smile that formed the backbone of the medium, was shattered. However, as film moved further from the side-show roots of 70s and 80s horror, other formats became the realm for celebration of the old-school mentality.
Cue none other than Illbleed. Acting as reflections on the genre’s messy past, the game is split into six episodic stages, each representing different subgenres. Ranging from straightforward slashers to old-school creature-features, each level hinges on classic haunted house scares, pushing you into stories that feel like grinning asides to the audience, less a condemnation or remorse for the source material, and more an acknowledgement and appreciation for the works that inspired it. The jokes aren’t at the expense of classic horror, but out of a sense of love. Laughing with, rather than at them, gives this game a unique viewpoint in gaming.
When I say this, I look at the trend in modern horror games to match the expectation of modern horror films. This is to say, horror games lean toward the self-serious, the unhumorous, all in the name of truly terrifying the player, breaking down the façade of safety fundamental to any indirect medium by way of intense threat and malice. While this manifest sentiment is not a direct failing of the medium or genre, it speaks to the same cynical sarcasm that poisoned the well of horror: a refusal of the genre’s funhouse beginnings, a tacit refusal of the tactless, the tasteless, and the puerile: a refusal of the past, with sights set purely on innovation, truly original thought. Through this lens, games and their depiction of horror barely breach the surface of what the genre is capable of.
Illbleed, on a mechanical level, is flawed, stilted, and representative of a generation of design that has been overwritten and forgotten. But in that same sense, what better way to reflect on the works of the past than by incorporating your medium’s flawed past into that retrospection? What can tie a game to horror’s fraught, tangled past better having remnants of the past be part of the game design itself?
It’s hard to categorize Illbleed as anything more than schlock, a heart kept pounding with the screams of B-movie scares and cheap haunted house tricks, but there’s an intrinsic originality in the energy of the B-movie, of the midnight movie and the genre film. Not only as a work honoring a legacy of horror before it, Illbleed an original exploration on the humor and excess that created the modern horror movie in the first place, which in its own right puts it in a unique place in gaming, especially within the console release scene of the mid-2000s.
As a game bound to bounce off of the majority of players for very valid reasons, it’s difficult to just unabashedly recommend Illbleed as a must-play, or some major strive in the medium of gaming, because… well, it’s not. My love for it stems from an intensely personal place, as my love for this game stems from my love of slasher films, monster flicks, the realms of the gory and the gruesome. To love Illbleed is to love horror, as broken and chaotic as it can be.
Until the tension is cut by another crash test dummy jumping you, hitting you with sidekicks and an oversized wrench, escapable with only the finest of frame-traps and side-steps. Her foe maimed and brutalized, Eriko walks away, a blank stare on her face as she speaks her one-word eulogy: “Cool!”
Illbleed is as sincere as horror gets. Beyond the high-concept of a killer amusement park with a $100 million cash prize, nothing cuts to the inherent silliness of horror like Illbleed. For context, the 90s and early 2000s were an era of introspection and reflection with horror, where metanarrative and critique became the standard through which the genre could express itself. The innate need to satirize and comment on the tropes that solidified the genre itself became a trope, a voice strained by overuse. Thus, sincerity in horror, the wink-and-smile that formed the backbone of the medium, was shattered. However, as film moved further from the side-show roots of 70s and 80s horror, other formats became the realm for celebration of the old-school mentality.
Cue none other than Illbleed. Acting as reflections on the genre’s messy past, the game is split into six episodic stages, each representing different subgenres. Ranging from straightforward slashers to old-school creature-features, each level hinges on classic haunted house scares, pushing you into stories that feel like grinning asides to the audience, less a condemnation or remorse for the source material, and more an acknowledgement and appreciation for the works that inspired it. The jokes aren’t at the expense of classic horror, but out of a sense of love. Laughing with, rather than at them, gives this game a unique viewpoint in gaming.
When I say this, I look at the trend in modern horror games to match the expectation of modern horror films. This is to say, horror games lean toward the self-serious, the unhumorous, all in the name of truly terrifying the player, breaking down the façade of safety fundamental to any indirect medium by way of intense threat and malice. While this manifest sentiment is not a direct failing of the medium or genre, it speaks to the same cynical sarcasm that poisoned the well of horror: a refusal of the genre’s funhouse beginnings, a tacit refusal of the tactless, the tasteless, and the puerile: a refusal of the past, with sights set purely on innovation, truly original thought. Through this lens, games and their depiction of horror barely breach the surface of what the genre is capable of.
Illbleed, on a mechanical level, is flawed, stilted, and representative of a generation of design that has been overwritten and forgotten. But in that same sense, what better way to reflect on the works of the past than by incorporating your medium’s flawed past into that retrospection? What can tie a game to horror’s fraught, tangled past better having remnants of the past be part of the game design itself?
It’s hard to categorize Illbleed as anything more than schlock, a heart kept pounding with the screams of B-movie scares and cheap haunted house tricks, but there’s an intrinsic originality in the energy of the B-movie, of the midnight movie and the genre film. Not only as a work honoring a legacy of horror before it, Illbleed an original exploration on the humor and excess that created the modern horror movie in the first place, which in its own right puts it in a unique place in gaming, especially within the console release scene of the mid-2000s.
As a game bound to bounce off of the majority of players for very valid reasons, it’s difficult to just unabashedly recommend Illbleed as a must-play, or some major strive in the medium of gaming, because… well, it’s not. My love for it stems from an intensely personal place, as my love for this game stems from my love of slasher films, monster flicks, the realms of the gory and the gruesome. To love Illbleed is to love horror, as broken and chaotic as it can be.
If you combine a how to draw manga magazine, mid 2000's creepypasta.ppt and killer7's spirit for experimentation you get this game, and I really dig it.
Once you get the gist of its main mechanics, it's a fun game that only gets better as you advance, each stage more interesting and entertaining than the previous one.
Unfortunately, this game became somewhat obscure, which is something that saddens me, because I believe Climax Entertainment (Crazy Games) would've had a bright future on the current times, where studios like White Owls or Grasshopper are appreciated more. This game, its studio and ultimately one of the main names behind it (Shinya Nishigaki) were stopped on their tracks when fate went against them several times.
Give it a try, if you manage to finish stage one, you're in.
Once you get the gist of its main mechanics, it's a fun game that only gets better as you advance, each stage more interesting and entertaining than the previous one.
Unfortunately, this game became somewhat obscure, which is something that saddens me, because I believe Climax Entertainment (Crazy Games) would've had a bright future on the current times, where studios like White Owls or Grasshopper are appreciated more. This game, its studio and ultimately one of the main names behind it (Shinya Nishigaki) were stopped on their tracks when fate went against them several times.
Give it a try, if you manage to finish stage one, you're in.
There's an appeal to the Horror B-movie that games have scant captured. Stuff like Resident Evil gets a part of it, but there's a certain vibe to a Horror B Movie where multiple layers of self awareness, weird egos, overambitious ideas, lack of awareness, camp, and low budget somehow all intersect. And to it's credit, Illbleed is maybe the only game that gets that feel down quite right. I ca appreciate that. The dialogue has that vibe of a bad giallo movie and is bizzarely paced, the story setup is incredibly weird in what it devotes time to and doesn't, the sense of location and space is blatantly flimsy and the production values are completely all over the place. I can appreciate that illbleed has grabbed something here, latched onto a feeling very little else does.
Still, it kinda fucking sucks. Illbleed's pretty strong momentum from it's opening and initial exploration of the hub and the start of the first level comes crashing to a halt as you've found yourself in maybe one of the worst gameplay loops imaginable. Even if you've got a friendly person in your discord VC to point out the easily missable key item hidden in a cranny at the start of the game, you're left dealing with this stop start game of wandering down hallways, equipping some goggles to spot weak-ass jumpscares in advance, indicated with blue dots. The blue dots can be jump scares, items, enemy encounters or nothing at all, and most of them are gonna trigger if you walk past them anyway so the only point on putting the goggles on is so you dont get fucked by them.
And getting fucked by some pathetic, annoying jump scares, is like, the game. The player's involvement is in, of all things, meter management, of blood, stress, etc. There would be some tension to this, slowly bleeding out over the course of a spooky level, but this is completely the wrong game for it to be in. The entire tone of this game is this fun goofy b movie horror and then the game itself is this slow burn, patience rewarding, fucking aggravating survival experience.
There's also some predictably dogshit combat. I kinda don't care enough to comment more than that on it.
The real crime here is the dissonance for me. Illbleed's tone is great, and I don't think the gameplay had to be anything spcial at all for this to be worthwhile. Honestly, even that dogshit melee combat system just being the whole game on a mechanic level might have been fine, like the B-movie Horror drakengard we all needed. But what's been chosen is both pretty bad and worse, slow and repetitve. Managing meters and analysing the world through goggles every ten yards. It's a system better suited for an abject survival horror game where the feeling of slowly bleeding out might actually be tense, and even there i'd say it'd be too much. For what's basically a comedy? Fuck off.
I have heard that the first level is notoriously terrible and a massive filter on the game. Sure, i can buy that, but the core of the game still feels absolutely rotten. When I was playing this, I had Border Down installed in the same folder, taunting me on the flycast boot page. And Illbleed does nothng to hook me back in outside of what i could probably experience in a youtube cutscene compilation.
Still, it kinda fucking sucks. Illbleed's pretty strong momentum from it's opening and initial exploration of the hub and the start of the first level comes crashing to a halt as you've found yourself in maybe one of the worst gameplay loops imaginable. Even if you've got a friendly person in your discord VC to point out the easily missable key item hidden in a cranny at the start of the game, you're left dealing with this stop start game of wandering down hallways, equipping some goggles to spot weak-ass jumpscares in advance, indicated with blue dots. The blue dots can be jump scares, items, enemy encounters or nothing at all, and most of them are gonna trigger if you walk past them anyway so the only point on putting the goggles on is so you dont get fucked by them.
And getting fucked by some pathetic, annoying jump scares, is like, the game. The player's involvement is in, of all things, meter management, of blood, stress, etc. There would be some tension to this, slowly bleeding out over the course of a spooky level, but this is completely the wrong game for it to be in. The entire tone of this game is this fun goofy b movie horror and then the game itself is this slow burn, patience rewarding, fucking aggravating survival experience.
There's also some predictably dogshit combat. I kinda don't care enough to comment more than that on it.
The real crime here is the dissonance for me. Illbleed's tone is great, and I don't think the gameplay had to be anything spcial at all for this to be worthwhile. Honestly, even that dogshit melee combat system just being the whole game on a mechanic level might have been fine, like the B-movie Horror drakengard we all needed. But what's been chosen is both pretty bad and worse, slow and repetitve. Managing meters and analysing the world through goggles every ten yards. It's a system better suited for an abject survival horror game where the feeling of slowly bleeding out might actually be tense, and even there i'd say it'd be too much. For what's basically a comedy? Fuck off.
I have heard that the first level is notoriously terrible and a massive filter on the game. Sure, i can buy that, but the core of the game still feels absolutely rotten. When I was playing this, I had Border Down installed in the same folder, taunting me on the flycast boot page. And Illbleed does nothng to hook me back in outside of what i could probably experience in a youtube cutscene compilation.
i will bring illbleed back if it's the last thing i do
what can I say about Illbleed that you don't already know? It's a fantastically silly & extraordinary time & knows exactly what it's doing.
ILLBLEED.
This game singlehandedly shaped my entire taste in media and I feel both happy and terrible about that.
Simultaneously a mess of mechanics and poor level design and a wellspring of clever parody and satire of classic movie tropes that can't be described by human language. I don't know why this game keeps gravitating me back to it, even with its many flaws, but there's an earnest passion and creativity in Illbleed that isn't matched in many games.
A must-play for fans of horror films, the Dreamcast, and corny B-movie goodness alike.
Simultaneously a mess of mechanics and poor level design and a wellspring of clever parody and satire of classic movie tropes that can't be described by human language. I don't know why this game keeps gravitating me back to it, even with its many flaws, but there's an earnest passion and creativity in Illbleed that isn't matched in many games.
A must-play for fans of horror films, the Dreamcast, and corny B-movie goodness alike.
Never has a game been so excited to just be itself...
oh my god. this is THE game of all time. I can't really say much because this is absolutely one of those games where the blinder you go in, the more it's gonna hit. The levels start bonkers then somehow manage to keep one-upping themselves as they go on. The gameplay is a bit strange but works once you figure it out. This game is one hell of a trip and I'd seriously recommend it to anyone with a dreamcast.
This game would get a very low review as a game alone, it's confusing, repetitive and way too difficult.
But it's crazy how well this works to realize the games vision, there really isn't anything like this game. I had the pleasure of playing this on a dreamcast in a room with a bunch of friends, which helped cement the feeling of a b horror movie together.
Truly a unique experience, if you can get a group of friends together to play this, I reccomend it highly.
Also the worm level is the hardest I've ever laughed WITH a video game.
But it's crazy how well this works to realize the games vision, there really isn't anything like this game. I had the pleasure of playing this on a dreamcast in a room with a bunch of friends, which helped cement the feeling of a b horror movie together.
Truly a unique experience, if you can get a group of friends together to play this, I reccomend it highly.
Also the worm level is the hardest I've ever laughed WITH a video game.
I suck at this game but I love it. Novel mechanics with awesome animations, TONS of atmosphere and some of the funniest cutscenes on the Dreamcast. If you get in the groove of it this is an extremely memorable experience that feels fresher than 90% of survival horror games.
This review contains spoilers
Killerman was Killerman
The only art ever made
The only art ever made
Hausu (1977) meets american horror b-movies
Fails to excel at anything in particular nowadays (especially the parodical ethos of the foundation); would have likely been incredible had each element been sewn into the disconnected fabrics. Frankenstein's monster had its limbs strewn about in various points of the room instead of being put together. As it stands, however, each element/mechanic makes for an aloof treat. A fun-house mirror that warps your silhouette (permanently). Illbleed reinforces & confirms that variety is, indeed, the spice of life.
I love this game despite its obvious flaws. Once you master the mechanics and understand how the game wants you to play the game is a fun and rewarding experience despite the lack of the game explaining it's mechanics. it's wacky and b horror movie humor definitely makes up for what flaws this game has.
Jimmy, your kusoge is magnificent.
Let's place it in our bedroom so we can see it everyday.
Let's place it in our bedroom so we can see it everyday.
Cheap special effects. Over-the-top violence and gore. Hokey acting. Gratuitous sexuality. These are the hallmarks of the classic Halloween staple: The B-Horror Movie, where high concepts, low budgets, and mid-range actors band together to produce certified schlock for the silver screen! In an interesting parallel however, we have the mid-budget late 90s video game, which has the same kind of soul we find in B-cinema: ambitious ideas, middling budgets, and acting of dubious quality. It was only a matter of time before someone noticed the common ground there, and so, enter stage right Crazy Games and their loving send-up to B-Horror, Illbleed.
Illbleed is a virtual horror house all about exploring different attractions based on in-universe B-Movie horror films; in which you focus on disarming traps, fighting monsters and making it to the end of each stage without bleeding yourself dry, giving yourself a heart attack, or just flat-out biting the dust. From Psycho to Child's Play to Tremors, Illbleed wears its influences loud and proud, but in the same breath, it's not afraid to poke fun at itself, its influences, and the very nature of the B-Horror. In between some horrific monster design and genuinely unsettling moments of terror, there's moments where the game will peel the curtain back a bit to reveal the inner workings of the setting and poke fun at itself, from employees complaining about malfunctioning equipment in the park, to some stages flat out requiring you to break the rules of the universe to proceed. It's all incredibly surreal and bordering on full-blown Dadaism, but it all works in Illbleed's favor, lending the game this enjoyably irreverent tone throughout.
Illbleed can be hard to parse at the best of times, and the first level will test your patience like no other, but much like any B-Horror film, if you can stick with it past its rocky start, you'll be in for the ride of your life. Illbleed is a cult classic for good reason: It's a loving homage to B-Horror and an unabashedly earnest celebration of the medium and it's influences that isn't afraid to revel in the absurdity of it all.
Illbleed is a virtual horror house all about exploring different attractions based on in-universe B-Movie horror films; in which you focus on disarming traps, fighting monsters and making it to the end of each stage without bleeding yourself dry, giving yourself a heart attack, or just flat-out biting the dust. From Psycho to Child's Play to Tremors, Illbleed wears its influences loud and proud, but in the same breath, it's not afraid to poke fun at itself, its influences, and the very nature of the B-Horror. In between some horrific monster design and genuinely unsettling moments of terror, there's moments where the game will peel the curtain back a bit to reveal the inner workings of the setting and poke fun at itself, from employees complaining about malfunctioning equipment in the park, to some stages flat out requiring you to break the rules of the universe to proceed. It's all incredibly surreal and bordering on full-blown Dadaism, but it all works in Illbleed's favor, lending the game this enjoyably irreverent tone throughout.
Illbleed can be hard to parse at the best of times, and the first level will test your patience like no other, but much like any B-Horror film, if you can stick with it past its rocky start, you'll be in for the ride of your life. Illbleed is a cult classic for good reason: It's a loving homage to B-Horror and an unabashedly earnest celebration of the medium and it's influences that isn't afraid to revel in the absurdity of it all.
I have to admit, I knew a lot about this game going in. I've seen the deviousness of the first level, I understood the main mechanic and how to apply it, I even knew that Eriko was pretty much the only character worth playing. However, I don't think any prep short of being completely spoiled would adequately set you up. Because once you're past the Banballows? You couldn't predict a single move Illbleed pulls if you had a gun to your head.
Game development doesn't really work like this, I know, but never before has a game felt so driven by whimsy alone. Drifting from one idea in this completely free-wheeling state of mind where the connection between a talking cake and a grill that turns meat hostile makes sense together simply because they were thought in close enough proximity. Or maybe it just feels that way because the ideas never go above or below wouldn't-it-be-funny-if levels of consideration. And I honestly wouldn't have it any other way!
Unfortunately, even with its lean 6-ish hours of runtime (add a few for the true ending, and a couple more if you're really struggling), a chunk of that effort will be spent rationing the most rancid salads ever digitized and ambling from point A to B to reduce bleeding. I can absolutely respect conflict in my game design, and I do admire how Illbleed's survival-isms are ridiculously complex and overlapping for a game about a spooky theme park, but ultimately, the drive of this game doesn't lie here, and the insistence of being a part of the game so often only chafed against me. This extends to the level design and encounters, too. I played this with a friend and we both made a comment at some point about how annoyed I sounded every time I looked at the map and got nauseated by what's ahead.
(It makes sense, then, that this game has been mostly preserved in the form of Let's Plays where this sorta thing can be defanged for the audience.)
As noted in other reviews here, this game really does feel self-prophesizing in who it attracts. If you're capable of getting past Level 1, you're probably there until the end. Hell, even if you're not, just look it all up or something. Illbleed doesn't strike me as a game concerned with the means. Much like its B-horror roots, it's about having a good time on both sides of the screen.
Game development doesn't really work like this, I know, but never before has a game felt so driven by whimsy alone. Drifting from one idea in this completely free-wheeling state of mind where the connection between a talking cake and a grill that turns meat hostile makes sense together simply because they were thought in close enough proximity. Or maybe it just feels that way because the ideas never go above or below wouldn't-it-be-funny-if levels of consideration. And I honestly wouldn't have it any other way!
Unfortunately, even with its lean 6-ish hours of runtime (add a few for the true ending, and a couple more if you're really struggling), a chunk of that effort will be spent rationing the most rancid salads ever digitized and ambling from point A to B to reduce bleeding. I can absolutely respect conflict in my game design, and I do admire how Illbleed's survival-isms are ridiculously complex and overlapping for a game about a spooky theme park, but ultimately, the drive of this game doesn't lie here, and the insistence of being a part of the game so often only chafed against me. This extends to the level design and encounters, too. I played this with a friend and we both made a comment at some point about how annoyed I sounded every time I looked at the map and got nauseated by what's ahead.
(It makes sense, then, that this game has been mostly preserved in the form of Let's Plays where this sorta thing can be defanged for the audience.)
As noted in other reviews here, this game really does feel self-prophesizing in who it attracts. If you're capable of getting past Level 1, you're probably there until the end. Hell, even if you're not, just look it all up or something. Illbleed doesn't strike me as a game concerned with the means. Much like its B-horror roots, it's about having a good time on both sides of the screen.
This review contains spoilers
I love the tone and atmosphere of this game. It's so unlike anything else I've ever played; having to focus on like 5 different "health" systems at once which means you really need to be smart with item usage. But despite it's unique gameplay, it can't escape the pitfalls of its time, mostly things like clunky movement, bad level design (there's way too many long corridors with nothing happening, or maze-like areas that make no sense when you have a map), slow pause speeds which you'll be doing a lot to look at the map, or use an item.
Some of the flaws actually do help it though, the lack of lip movements, the bad voice acting, really help capture the cheesy B movie feel. I'd argue even the clunky controls could help it, as if it was more polished it might become too easy (but fuck the car platforming section).
Though if we're being honest once you get to grips with the game it becomes very easy very fast. The first boss is honestly the hardest part of the game for me. Once you can start upgrading your character and buying as many healing items as you need, levels can't throw anything at you that you can't just heal off. This is kind of a big flaw as part of the appeal of the early stages is the need to take it slow and figure out what is a trap or not as your resources are so limited. It loses any sense of its survival horror once you can just run into every trap head first because you have so much health and so many items to recover heart rate.
Luckily the game does something different with every level to help alleviate any feeling of repetitiveness that might come with the decreasing difficulty. Level 3 has you turn into a wood puppet, while level 6 is a Toy Story parody with Sonic as the boss. It's all just so crazy that you'll want to experience it even after you've reached a point where the game can no longer challenge you.
Some of the flaws actually do help it though, the lack of lip movements, the bad voice acting, really help capture the cheesy B movie feel. I'd argue even the clunky controls could help it, as if it was more polished it might become too easy (but fuck the car platforming section).
Though if we're being honest once you get to grips with the game it becomes very easy very fast. The first boss is honestly the hardest part of the game for me. Once you can start upgrading your character and buying as many healing items as you need, levels can't throw anything at you that you can't just heal off. This is kind of a big flaw as part of the appeal of the early stages is the need to take it slow and figure out what is a trap or not as your resources are so limited. It loses any sense of its survival horror once you can just run into every trap head first because you have so much health and so many items to recover heart rate.
Luckily the game does something different with every level to help alleviate any feeling of repetitiveness that might come with the decreasing difficulty. Level 3 has you turn into a wood puppet, while level 6 is a Toy Story parody with Sonic as the boss. It's all just so crazy that you'll want to experience it even after you've reached a point where the game can no longer challenge you.
This world is hard on silly men. Men filled with a joyous whimsy. Nothing in this world is harder than being a goofy and fun loving guy.
this is the videogame ever
The definition of a cult classic. Harking back to memories of all your favourite B-movie horror schlock, Illbleed takes the weird, the frustrating, and most importantly, the amazing charm of its low budget inspirations, and turns it into a glorious messy and indulgent little experience.
Before anything, it is very important to note that this game takes some time to warm up to properly. The first stage of this game, while great in building its wonderful off-kilter tone, is incredibly trying, having to juggle around the game's numerous mechanics that it doesn't do a great job of telling you about, and navigating around the game's main gimmick can be incredibly frustrating, and literally random at first glance. But like any fan of horror B-movies knows, if you can get past the initial frustrations, Illbleed is a game that will stick with you, there is no game quite like this one.
Every scenario in this game is silly and memorable, everything is "gory" but its all so tongue-in-cheek that you can't help but laugh when your character is literally spraying puddles of blood from a jump rope or something. And the last two levels in particular are such wonderful highlights, ending with a weird tokusatsu murder "mystery" and just, a parody of Toy Story, for no reason. I do like saying that games in the modern day are of an unreal quality of both variety and weird wonderful joy, but there isn't and likely will never be a game quite like Illbleed ever again. While its a hard game to get to grips with, like any fan of the game, I would implore you to tough it out, and strap yourself in for one of the most wild games to have graced an equally wild console.
Before anything, it is very important to note that this game takes some time to warm up to properly. The first stage of this game, while great in building its wonderful off-kilter tone, is incredibly trying, having to juggle around the game's numerous mechanics that it doesn't do a great job of telling you about, and navigating around the game's main gimmick can be incredibly frustrating, and literally random at first glance. But like any fan of horror B-movies knows, if you can get past the initial frustrations, Illbleed is a game that will stick with you, there is no game quite like this one.
Every scenario in this game is silly and memorable, everything is "gory" but its all so tongue-in-cheek that you can't help but laugh when your character is literally spraying puddles of blood from a jump rope or something. And the last two levels in particular are such wonderful highlights, ending with a weird tokusatsu murder "mystery" and just, a parody of Toy Story, for no reason. I do like saying that games in the modern day are of an unreal quality of both variety and weird wonderful joy, but there isn't and likely will never be a game quite like Illbleed ever again. While its a hard game to get to grips with, like any fan of the game, I would implore you to tough it out, and strap yourself in for one of the most wild games to have graced an equally wild console.
Illbleed controls poorly, the writing is shoddy, the characters are flatter than cardboard, even for dreamcast the game doesnt look good, the music is grating and repetitive, the gameplay feels half-baked... but I cannot help but adore this weird little game.
I played Illbleed as a "devil pact" with my partner as we take turns playing "bad" video games to watch each other suffer. However, the more I played of the game the more I loved it. It's just so absolutely unique and insane that I couldn't help but be charmed by it.
The stilted voice acting (by most of the Sonic Adventure crew) and awful writing just made every joke (and unintentional jokes) hit so much harder.
The clunky controls and gameplay made the game feel unique and ambitious.
The visuals look terrible but with the plot device of the game being a shitty amusement park, they never broke my immersion. Plus all of the AMAZING textures for signs.
Sure the music is bad, but its the kind of bad that is so fun to make fun of.
Illbleed has so many memorable moments and is such a genuinely bizarre and fun time that I HAVE to give it a 5/5 because I'll never forget this game.
I played Illbleed as a "devil pact" with my partner as we take turns playing "bad" video games to watch each other suffer. However, the more I played of the game the more I loved it. It's just so absolutely unique and insane that I couldn't help but be charmed by it.
The stilted voice acting (by most of the Sonic Adventure crew) and awful writing just made every joke (and unintentional jokes) hit so much harder.
The clunky controls and gameplay made the game feel unique and ambitious.
The visuals look terrible but with the plot device of the game being a shitty amusement park, they never broke my immersion. Plus all of the AMAZING textures for signs.
Sure the music is bad, but its the kind of bad that is so fun to make fun of.
Illbleed has so many memorable moments and is such a genuinely bizarre and fun time that I HAVE to give it a 5/5 because I'll never forget this game.
This game is simultaneously bad and great. Practically a minesweeper game with extra steps. But the scenarios and pure creativity of the levels makes it worth going through. You won't find anything else like it. Pure B-horror stupidity.
HOLYYYY SHIT !!! ILLBLEED SWEEP !!!! #ILLBLEEDSWEEP
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!!!!!!
Truly, the most interesting games are not necessarily the most good