I Would Recommend If You Like: Fatal Frame II, Clocktower 3, Clocktower: The First Fear

Haunting Ground tentatively explores fairly unmapped areas of the survival horror genre. Instead of employing high powered weapons to defend your character you instead have to rely on your wits to escape your enemies. This interesting approach is unfortunately let down at times due to limited options offered to the gamer.

Story

Haunting Ground's plot is slightly odd at times and downright weird at others. It centres on the protagonist Fiona Belli - quick-witted but physically frail. After blacking out during a car crash with her parents, she awakes in a cage in the grounds of a vast castle. The game chronicles her attempts to escape and the creepy inhabitants of the castle who will do anything in their power to stop her.

All that is fairly standard horror fodder, but as you progress the story gets significantly stranger. It becomes apparent that Fiona is a carrier of a substance known as Azoth, a cure-all sought by alchemists along the lines of a philosopher's stone (see references at the bottom of the review for a link to the 'Azoth' Wikipedia article for more information on that). The inhabitants are desperate to get hold of this substance as for them it holds the key elements for life, re-birth and eternal youth.

Alchemy is a running theme throughout Haunting Ground - you even get the chance to knock up a few weapons using an alchemist's set, but more about that later.

Characters and Voice Acting

You play as the young and fragile Fiona, who in all honesty, is a bit pathetic. She has no way to defend herself so instead you must use her intelligence in order to escape your enemies. A lot of the time she does little more than look frightened and occasionally faint like a distressed damsel. Luckily she befriends a dog, Hewie, who offers her a bit more protection. 

The enemies in this game are, in a word, mental. They range from psychopathic robots jealous of Fiona's ability to bear children, a cockney rapist who wants to be reborn through Fiona and a huge bear of a man-child who just wants a hug. 

The voice-acting in this game isn't spectacular, it's not too bad most of the time but at times it'll make you cringe. Riccardo is by far the worst, sounding robotic at times. For some bizarre reason the characters all either cockney of speaking the Queen's English - I'm not sure how many castle estates are hanging around in London (it's certainly not Buckingham) but I'm sure the game developers had their reasons. 

Gameplay

As I've mentioned before the gameplay in Haunting Ground isn't typical of survival horrors or games in general. You are more-or-less unable to defend yourself - instead you must find hiding places to lie low until whatever enemy is chasing you is out of your vicinity. This is frustrating because despite being the main method of escaping your enemies there's a ridiculously small number of places to hide. You can't keep hiding in the same place either because your pursuers quickly catch wise. This would usually make the game all the more exciting but instead just gets annoying as you soon run out of good hiding spots.

There are several points in the game where you can use the objects around you to your advantage, such as bookcases you can knock over onto your enemy. But again, these are few and far between.

There is an alchemy aspect of the game where, if you have found the suitable ingredients, you can make up items to attack your enemies with. These will at best stun them - the only opportunity to finally defeat any enemies is during boss fights. This does mean that you'll only ever have one enemy pursuing you at a time, so you can work out a strategy that works best for each one.

The one unique gameplay aspect that this game offers is the presence of Hewie as an amateur guard dog. Whether or not Hewie decides to protect you depends entirely on how you treat him - you need to train him so you need to use discipline, but reprimand him too often and he'll run off and leave you to your own devices (in a slightly humorous twist, if you kick him a bit he'll start to attack you, but of course I could never condone animal abuse, regardless of how fictional the animal may be). Your best bet is to find treats to give to Hewie when he behaves or if he is hurt - enemies will fight back at Hewie so he occasionally need a little pick-me-up. Treating Hewie well really is important, to the point of determining the ending of the entire game - you have been warned!

There is a bit of puzzle solving in this game - most of which is presented in a fairly innovative way. I don't want to give anything away, so I'll just say that although none of the puzzles are fiendishly difficult, some are a lot of fun. Keep in mind that enemies won't hang about while you're working on them though!

Another usual aspect of gameplay is that instead of a health meter you have what is basically a panic meter (anyone who's played any Clock Tower games will be familiar with this). Fiona will get more and more scared until she reaches the point of panic, and then everything goes to Hell - she becomes incredibly hard to control, the screen becomes more and more blurred so it's difficult to see where you're going and chances are that if your enemy is close by you have no chance of escape. The only way to manage Fiona's panic level is to find herbs such as Lavender to help calm her down.

Atmosphere

The castle is fairly creepy, there's weird experiments and Victoriana aplenty. There's absolutely no music for the most part of the game, you play in total silence. This makes you very aware of the amount of sound you're making - this will send you straight on edge as enemies are more likely to turn up if you're making a racket. When you do start to hear music, it's time to get running because it means an enemy is on your heels.  This music is really panic-inducing - think the drowning music in Sonic the Hedgehog and you'll know get an idea of just how terrifying it is.

Trying to keep Fiona calm usually does a number on your own nerves. Every little creak will sound like an avalanche and you often have to double back to areas where you know your enemy is lying in wait. You'll also discover that some hiding places are not only easy to find, they can often be fatal - as if you weren't scared enough with a psychopath chasing you with a bloody mirror shard.

The game developers have obviously gone to great lengths to make you feel vulnerable. Fiona is obviously fairly helpless, but her pursuers certainly aren't. If there not drastically stronger than Fiona, they've got real weapons - you'll even find yourself dodging bullets at times. Every step is uncertain as you never know whether you're running away from or towards an enemy-in-waiting or if the very stones beneath your feet will crumble away.

Graphics

The game's quite a few years old now, so the graphics aren't the most up-to-date, but they aren't too bad at all. The environments are fairly detailed, including a wooded area which is fairly large for such an old game. The opening scene is the most aesthetically pleasing but that standard isn't carried over to many other cut scenes and definitely not during general gameplay.

Additional Content

This game is a decent length, but it's not an epic. There isn't any additional content, probably just because it's quite an old game. There's no multiplayer option either, but as there's safety in numbers this makes sense for almost any horror game.

Glitches

I occasionally got stuck on scenery, but the game never trashed and there aren't any long loading times.

Summary

Haunting Ground is an almost unique experience which really makes you feel vulnerable, and in doing so, provides some real scares. If you're a fan of action-packed shoot 'em ups this isn't for you, you'll be running more than you'll be fighting. This game does a really good job at creating a frightening, menacing environment that you don't find in many games.

Recommended: Yes