Review of Dead of the Brain ~Shiryou no Sakebi~
Subject | Dead of the Brain ~Shiryou no Sakebi~ Dead of the Brain ~Shiryou no Sakebi~ |
By | Helpfulness: 1 Vote: 7Ileca on 2021-03-15 last updated on 2021-05-11 |
Review | Brain of the Dead is a mix between Dawn of the Dead whose title it makes reference to, Re-Animator, and Terminator whose second opus was released the year before (look at the cover). It has everything which would make any parent-teacher association go on a rampage for the sake of the children : ultra violence, sex, dismembered naked bodies, brain eaten skulls! It is the perfect ADV representative of the uninhibited OVA trend which used this format to bypass TV censorship, and which is at the root of the bad reputation anime had. It is also a good representative of the B movie culture and horror from that time. First thing to notice is that the game is incredibly beautiful. This game from 1992 sure has nothing to be ashamed of. They put a lot of effort into making it as shocking as possible by detailing the many corpses peopling the scenes of carnage and the rotten zombies lusting after your cortex. They also added small animation here and there to make the whole more alive and disgusting. They built an incredible oppressive atmosphere with a clever use of silence and heartbeats. My favorite ambient moment is when you are at the Central Hotel during one of those rare times of respite: the loud rain is all you can hear as the walls bath in the setting sun's suffocating orange, anxious as your girlfriend Sheela is late from her dangerous errand. Instead of rest, the discomfort gets to your nerves as the dreadful night is threatening to come at any moment now. The staging of the first resurrection is masterful: the animation of the syringe starting the chronometer, making quick auto comments as the seconds tick by and our breath is held, waiting for the fatal moment where... the dead cat starts suddenly to writhe, moving his leg in an unnatural and grotesque pantomime! The way this adventure game was staged is not to be underestimated as the spice of this game is all there. The zombie apocalypse is faithfully rendered. While mainly an ADV, they livened the game with brief action sequences, asking you to make quick decisions on a matter of seconds, playing with your panic. It's nothing but it makes the game feels a bit like an actioner, as if the game wasn't entertaining enough already. Because, yes, the game is plenty entertaining, with zombies, "gratuitous" gore, guns, deaths, and an overarching mystery. It is also quite short, like four hours, being the equivalent of 1H20 movies when now the trend is 2H+. Only the last part is a little weak: the Terminator ending, when it shifts from plain zombies to cyborg-zombies. It gets a little too much over the top, a little too much actioner, and doesn't blend well with the first two parts which relied more on atmosphere and timely action. But, god, that level of detail on that cyborg! Mama mia! If you remember that 80/90's culture fondly, do not hesitate because Brain of the Dead is a lot of fun! You really don't have much to lose by playing it. However, don't expect to read something very original as it is exactly what you would expect from that kind of game. |
1 point |