From one trope to the next, Corpse Party seems to meander through tired motifs like a Hollywood executive with a dart board and an empty fall slot to fill.
Corpse Party 2: Dead Patient
Developer: Team GrisGris and XSEED
Price: $10
Platform: PC
MonsterVine was supplied with a PC code for review.
While Corpse Party: Dead Patient isn’t as fresh thematically as advertised, it’s still an interesting addition to the series and conceptually strong. You take the role of Ayame, a high school girl that is in no way related to Ayumi from the previous games, probably. Ayame wakes up to find herself on the operating table of a hospital gone awry. Meeting up with friends who came to visit and hospital employees, Ayame tries to escape with as many friends as possible. Unfortunately for Ayame, it wouldn’t be a ‘Corpse Party’ without a few deaths along the way.
Corpse Party 2: Dead Patient takes place five years after the events of Corpse Party: Blood Drive. Despite having a direct connection to the previous game, the new protagonist and story are presented in a way that’s friendly to newcomers of the series. Dead Patient is presented similarly to the original Corpse Party, in an episodic format with only a single episode complemented with an EX chapter and five endings in total.
The first thing I noticed upon launch was the limited set of options. Allowing me to only choose the resolution, language, controller type (none is not an option) and frame rate, bare-bones indeed. Likewise, I was shown controller button prompts without having a controller plugged into my PC at the time, requiring me to guess which keys did what(X is the action button).
Still, once I found my bearings the game worked like a charm. I ran into no bugs or issues and managed to get all of the endings and complete all of the objectives with little trouble, so keyboard controls ARE an option. Like the previous games, you’ll be collecting the names of fallen victims only they’ll be patient cards instead of name tags. Ayame is also given the ability to move objects around as well as choose items in her inventory, a marked upgrade from previous entries in the series.
Despite a more modern setting and changing name tags to patient cards, the save points are still burning candles. I point this out because it seems awkward to have in a hospital setting and seems like more of an oversight than anything. Dead Patient focuses on a very hospital-centric story told through Ayame’s actions and it seems strange to have the candles there when in the previous titles, Ayumi Shinozaki was the one placing them around Heavenly Host Elementary.
With a more modern setting, we’re being introduced to a more modern sense of game design. Instead of spirits chasing you, Dead Patient has SWAT team members and zombies chasing you. Hiding in Corpse Party games has always been a little iffy, especially considering I struggled do it successfully in Blood Drive. However, it’s fairly viable in Dead Patient. Not only do enemies seem to lose interest in you quicker, they also don’t follow you from room to room, which is a huge improvement in gameplay. Another vast improvement is the lack of a long loading screen moving from room to room. I played Blood Drive on the Vita, which contributed to long loads, but only made the absence of a loading screen all the more refreshing in Dead Patient.
Considering Dead Patient is a single, stand-alone episode in what is supposed to be presented as four parts there’s a strong amount of content. The gameplay in Dead Patient is stronger than any Corpse Party entry before and even with a step back graphically, it presents a more modern attempt at Team Gris Gris’ own brand of horror.
The Final Word
Whether or not you’ve partied with corpses before, Dead Patient gives you a good taste of what’s to come in this new entry of the Corpse Party overarching plot. Even as just a single episode, it’s quite good.
– MonsterVine Review Score: 3.5 out of 5 – Fair
