Illbleed (2001)

(This was retro game club game #13 on the Grouvee forum.)

When I decided to throw together this retro game club thing, the first game that came to mind for me was Illbleed. It was a game I had been meaning to play for years and years, and I thought it'd be a fun one for everyone to discuss. (I decided to save it for October though, because Halloween month is for spooky times.) So did it turn out as enjoyable as I had always hoped it would be?

Nope. It was even better! And this is the part of the review where I sigh and try to decide how to proceed from here. Illbleed is... not some perfect masterpiece, not by a long shot. It's clunky, it's dated, it's weird, it's cumbersome, it's obtuse as hell, it's flawed in all sorts of ways that'll make pro reviewers objectively go "mediocre at best." Even for its time, it's kind of a mess. (Er, maybe very a mess?) But damn if I didn't have a blast from start to finish. Perhaps the easiest way for me to put it is: What Deadly Premonition was for a lot of gamers, Illbleed was for me.

First and foremost, it's important to go into Illbleed with the right expectations. It's not so much a survival horror game, as much as it's a bizarre sort of parody of a survival horror game. In terms of presentation and storyline, it's very clearly meant to be a tongue-in-cheek love letter to cheesy horror B-movies (think something like a direct-to-video slasher flick, maybe the 5th or 12th sequel to an actually good slasher flick). The voice acting in Illbleed is thus bad, but it's bad in a legitimately hilarious way. The plot in turn is fittingly nonsensical, and I strongly recommend people go into this one without looking up any of the specifics for what each level entails. Go in blind, and prepare yourself for many a WTF moment.

Now how is the gameplay for this one? Illbleed is really a one-of-a-kind game actually. It's not an easy one to jump into, and the game doesn't do a great job of explaining all its mechanics -- so it'll probably take a few game overs to get the hang of anything. Illbleed takes place at a haunted (or is it?!?) amusement park full of deadly traps, and your main goal is to locate and disable them with a special pair of goggles. You have to rely on a a sort of heart monitor for your sight, hearing, smell, and "sixth" senses, which help clue you in on what spots in your environment are traps (which trigger as jump scares that inflict damage on your character). It's kind of like Minesweeper in a 3D environment, if that makes sense.

There are all sorts of weird enemies in the game, and you can usually choose to either (try to) escape or (try to) fight back. Combat is definitely not Illbleed's strongest point, but I didn't find it unplayable or anything (and really, combat wasn't the strong point of any survival horror games back then). There are many ways to die in Illbleed though, so you've got to keep an eye on not just your health, but also your blood level, your adrenaline (your "MP" for disabling traps), and your heart rate. This can all feel a bit overwhelming at first, but again it becomes manageable in due time.

Overall I have to call Illbleed a game that is no "IGN 10 out of 10" or anything of the sort, but it's 100% My Thing™ and was probably the most fun I had with a video game this year. Will definitely be replaying this in the years to come, and I just might fly over to Sega HQ with a megaphone to make sure this gets on the Dreamcast Mini (if that ever ends up being a thing).

Illbleed is a very special game, one that doesn't work in its core concept but that emerges with such a bizarre and quirky amount of love put into it that you can't help but admire how it shocks, spooks, and weirds out the player.

Starting out with speech winner Eriko Christy, you and your friends are invited to the theme park Illbleed, a perilous set of stages with deathtraps and enemies abound. The first part of gameplay is the meat of the game, which involves Eriko and friends as they spot traps with a horror monitor. The monitor operates off of four heartbeat monitors for Sight, Hearing, Smell, and Sixth Sense. The first three are pretty much the same and apply to traps while the last applies to either items or enemies. It would be an interesting new system, if traps weren't so difficult to pin out - there's a lot of red herrings and spaces that activate traps are wonky to figure out. More often than not you'll be wasting all the times you can use the monitor and still run into a trap, increasing heart rate, bleeding, and decreasing health.

The other system is combat, and it's even messier. Enemies are often quicker than you, the player is clumsy and takes too long to exit their attack animations, and battles take much longer than they need to. The saving grace of this system is a helipad icon that will allow the player to quickly escape if they tap a button fast enough. This still takes a while though, and can also lead to some messy situations.

Systems aside, the game does its darndest to stand out. Stages based on The Burning, Tremors, (Puppetmaster?) Chopping Mall, and Toy Story of all things are peppered in between, and the traps are at times legitimately terrifying and downright silly. It's addicting to just run into the traps themselves, which can lead to the game's detriment as you're supposed to avoid them. The game does get into some squicky territory (an ending requires the main character to lose all her clothes) but the trip is wild - swords jumping out of paintings, Sonic from hell, dead Dogs Bower; Illbleed is a real haunted house. If you don't mind repetition and frustration, Illbleed just might have something to show you yet.