It’s a baffling design choice for a game like this, and it leads to infuriating moments where you have to watch your character wind up for a swing you already know she’s going to miss. Tapping the “X” button repeatedly launches you into a lengthy combo animation, which can’t be interrupted. A lot.Īlso, you should resist the urge to button mash. So if you play this game, be prepared to swing and miss. If you hold the attack mode button, you’re locked in to your position for the duration. (In fact, often the pivoting is automatic, as a “lock on” feature.) In Rule of Rose, you can’t pivot. But in all of those games-even going back all the way to the original Alone in the Dark in 1992-you can at the very least pivot in place, to adjust your aim. Much like in Alone in the Dark, Resident Evil, and Silent Hill, you have to hold down a dedicated button to enter into an “attack mode,” which reduces your movement. But Rule of Rose is just exceptionally bad. Survival horror games have a reputation for janky combat, and sometimes they’ve worn that reputation as a badge of honor: supposedly, combat is scarier when you’re fighting with clumsy controls. That said, Rule of Rose does have some problems. I’d probably still put it in my top, say, 100 games, and I feel like I owe it to the world to raise the game’s critical profile in whatever small way I could. And even though a lot of time has passed, and a lot of games have come out since, including a truly astounding array of indie games tackling a tremendous number of subjects and widening the emotional palette of the medium considerably, I still have a soft spot for Rule of Rose. It was unlike pretty much anything else that was coming out at the time. Rule of Rose is among the more obscure horror games I’ve talked about, but it’s actually among my favorite games from the sixth console generation. If you’re a subscriber who’s been eagerly awaiting another video on a horror game for the past seventeen months: welcome back! I hope this doesn’t disappoint. If you’ve stumbled onto this video outside of that series, don’t worry-it’s entirely stand-alone. Technically, this is the twelfth episode in a long-dormant series I was doing on horror games. Today I’m going to be talking about the 2006 survival horror game Rule of Rose, developed by Punchline as a PlayStation 2 exclusive. But hey, I also write about experimental film, so I know the feeling. Unfortunately copies of the game have become real collector’s items over the years, and it’s sad to praise a piece of media that so few will have access to. I really relished the opportunity to talk about Rule of Rose, one of my favorite odd little games that I’ve never written about in any fashion before. Whoops! I made sure to give myself enough time to finish this video by Halloween … but then I neglected to post the announcement here! Happy belated Halloween, everyone.
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