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This year we’re putting together a list of 31 Retro Horror games. Games that have come from dead console generations, back to haunt us. Sadly, not all of these games will be available for you to play due to the complicated nature of video game preservation. However, we’re going to note if it’s possible to play them on modern hardware. We’re going to be covering games from the Seventh Generation (PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii) and earlier. So basically anything before 2006. Day 16 I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream Harlan Ellison. If you don’t know the name, there’s still a good chance you’ve seen or read something at least inspired by the man. He was a prolific sci-fi author who had his heyday in the 60’s and 70’s, and spent the rest of his career as an over inflated blow hard that railed against the very properties that helped solidify his legacy. But this isn’t about the author of the short story I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream , but about the point and click adventure game on which the game was based. The premise is this: there is an evil supercomputer called AM that has wiped all life from the earth. AM, with its vast superior intellect, has decided that humanity isn’t awful actually, and has decided to torture four humans as proxies for the entire (now extinct) race. Somehow, AM keeps these humans immortal while doling out punishments that would make cenobites blush. Ellison himself actually voices the devilish AM. This supercomputer hates humanity so much its entire existence is spent torturing four humans. Now, there are a lot of missed opportunities in the conversion from short story format to the much longer point and click adventure format. Instead of exploring why or how AM is capable of these tortures, I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream instead focuses on the poor creatures being tortured. It ends up being a wholly bleak–and therefore wholly dread inducing.  I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream does give you some control over how the story plays out. Even though the game’s story is vastly different from the short story in many significant ways.In fact, a lot of how the game and its ending depends on the choices you make as the characters. There is some out there logic involved with some of hte puzzles. Not quite “moon logic” but more “ Groundhog Day knowledge”--stuff you’d probably only know after many playthroughs and experiments. If you want to play I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream you can do so easily via Steam. Many consider the short story to be a seminal work of sci-fi, and thus, by extension, the point and click adventure game is held to the same esteem by many. You can play it yourself and see–regardless of how you feel about it, it’s a story that you can’t easily forget.

Saturday Night is a film about the first ever episode of Saturday Night Live and the two hours before they go live. While this sounds like a fascinating topic to dissect, it’ll take multiple viewings for what is a juggling act at breakneck speeds. Director Jason Reitman does his absolute best to fill in as many tiny factual stories, minute details and jokes into every scene in a way that makes the film fly by. It’s really a spectacle much in the way that I’m sure SNL really is behind the scenes. A giant amalgamation of dozens of people all working almost at random to produce something that miraculously comes together at the zero hour. There’s so much to love about Saturday Night that I can’t even describe fully as I only saw it once.  The story takes place at 30 Rockefeller center, in the fabled studio 8H. We have a young Lorne Michaels producing what can only be described as a series of plate spinning acts, all wobbling and threatening to go out of control. From organizing the talent, all fighting to be more than what they are, to handling execs, script ideas, and even executing on a llama delivery. It’s fascinating to watch Gabriel LaBelle play a Michaels who is firing on all cylinders, struggling to maintain his composure as his show keeps threatening to spin out of control. Gabriel's acting is composed yet vulnerable, as what I would imagine this iteration of the SNL founder would be. Never wavering in his determination and belief behind his product.  We mostly follow Lorne, but the rest of the cast round out nicely with stand outs by Corey Michael Smith as Chevy Chase, Elda Hunt as Gilda Ratner and Lamorne Morris as Garrett Morris. Each attempting to find their own place amongst the crew. Chevy with a budding fame, Gilda with a cast and crew all in love with her, and Garrett with his place as the minority without a comedy background. Each of their dynamics together as well as separately inner weaves seamlessly with the rest of the chaos that you can pick just one thread and follow it to a satisfying conclusion. That’s really what I enjoyed most about Saturday Night, the fact that all of these different stories converge into this finely woven tapestry that is this film.  Another fun aspect of the film are the numerous cameos, not just of actors but the celebrities they are playing. J.K. Simmons plays a hilarious Milton Berle that acts as a foil to Chevy Chase’s rising ego. Nicholas Braun of Succession fame pulls double duty as Jim Henson and Andy Kaufman, both comedic gold and even Nicholas Podany as a lost and confused Billy Crystal got a laugh out of me. There are so many blink and you'll miss cameo moments that I’m already excited for a second viewing to catch the portrayals of Al Franken, Billy Preston and Paul Schaffer. These act as easter eggs more than anything but for the avid SNL historians, these are worth the second viewing.  Saturday Night successfully depicts the chaos of the two hours before the initial first episode of Saturday Night Live, but also how I imagine two hours before ANY of their episodes. It’s a fun piece of television history that delves into both the corporate and personal stakes that come with the show's original airing. The cast pulls together to create a magnetic energy that can only come from a live show, and the tension is both stifling and exhilarating. There's so many things being juggled at any given time that it’s impossible to track them all. As a fan of SNL and the history of those that participated, I found this a fascinating look into the gamble Lorne took all those years ago. I’m more appreciative of SNL now than I was before watching the movie, and am excited to watch it again to see what other details I may have missed. This is definitely worth checking out!  Did you see Saturday Night? What did you think? Sound off in the comments below!

Battletech has been an IP that has popped up throughout my life in various forms. I think the first time I saw anything Battletech was at my local comic book shop. Those little pewter ‘mechs ignited my imagination and forever solidified a lifetime enthusiasm for pilotable mechs. See, I didn’t want to play Battletech: I wanted to be a mechwarrior.  Mechwarrior 5: Clans is a standalone expansion to Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries. In fact, I wouldn’t have blamed them if they just called it Mechwarrior 6 or just Mechwarrior Clans .  Developer Piranha Games changed up the formula significantly for this latest release. Instead of playing as a mercenary leader, you’re in the warrior caste of a highly militarized society that invades and conquers sovereign worlds.  I’ve heard about the Clan invasion in Battletech , but I’ve never had the chance to play as a Clan Mechwarrior invading the Inner Sphere. Now, if you’re reading this review and thinking “I have no idea what the Inner Sphere is or why the Clans would be invading,” you’re going to have to do some catch-up:   Clans does little to ease you into its dense narrative. Instead it throws you into the deep end. It doesn’t help that characters are constantly spouting jargon and esoteric phrases with little context. I wish they had an in-game glossary, but instead I found myself going to sarna.net to figure out what the hell they’re talking about.  Because the Clans have been away from the rest of the human population for a couple of centuries building a militaristic society, they have an entire dialect of their own. Let me start you off by telling you “aff” means “yes.” It’s short for affirmative. The Clans frown on contractions, but love to shorten words and phrases–like “battle challenge,” shortened to “batchall.” Shortened portmanteaus are good, but contractions are lazy. If you’re wondering why I’m talking about this and not the gameplay, it's because the narrative is such a huge focus in Clans .And this surprisingly comes up a lot. That means there are a lot of cutscenes. I feel like Piranha Games was going for that AAA look–and they mostly nailed it. However, there is something that’s just a little off with the facial animations sometimes. But overall I think they did a good job. Since Clans is so much more narratively focused than Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries, you have less choices for how to play. Gone is the ability to choose your missions as you see fit. This takes away a significant chunk of what made up Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries , and actually makes Clans a little less for it. The trade-off is new handcrafted levels that have a few variations, but end up feeling same-y anyway.   Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries wasn’t just a game where you engaged in ‘mech combat, it was a game that made every decision count. Failing a mission in  Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries had consequences that could ripple into further problems. All you get in Clans is a “restart mission” prompt when you’re met with failure. There isn’t the chance to keep going to see what happens or dig yourself out of a hole. This means failure doesn’t have gameplay consequences beyond having to redo the mission.  I loved Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries , and when I originally wrote about it for another publication I gave it a glowing review. However, hindsight and user reviews revealed to me the flaws that I missed because I was just so enamored with the stompy robot experience. After reading other people’s impressions, I realized that maybe I was just too into developer Piranha Games’ flavor of Battletech . I spent many hours in Mechwarrior Online, which is a precursor to Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries . I was already a bit biased. Mechwarrior 5: Clans does a lot to address the gameplay complaints of its predecessor. This is mainly done through scripted enemy encounters–which is a result of those handcrafted missions I mentioned earlier. Mostly gone are the helicopters that would surprise spawn behind you. Clans  has some decent mission variety too. Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries had you stuck running a handful of mission types. Clans , on the other hand, gives you varying objectives as you go through the levels. Sometimes the mission obvjectives even change as the story unfolds. But those changes mostly involve fighting more ‘mechs. So not much different there.  There are only a few changes that Clans made to the robot fighting formula. For one, now you can scan stuff. But only certain things. And usually to make the mission move along. Also, melee is hard baked into Clans . But for Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries it was a paid DLC. Being able to melee out of the box is pretty cool. As I’ve said to everyone I know: I really love how visceral and explosive the combat can be in Mechwarrior 5 . Clans is no exception. There was a time, in my youth,  that I hated the overheating mechanic in other Mechwarrior games, and how slow the battles can be. Don’t get me wrong, it’s like that here. But Mechwarrior 5  has enough visual fidelity and audio magic to sell the fact that you’re piloting a walking fortress as you lay waste to tanks and walk straight through buildings and walls. And maybe it was the impatience of youth, but there’s something spectacular about trading blows with an opponent while smashing through infrastructure and using buildings as cover. In battle you will be with your team. One of the complaints of the previous game was how unhelpful your teammates can be. That’s not always the case here, but you have to make sure you match the right pilot to the right weapons. You can also give orders in the midst of battle. This allows you the ability to set up ambushes, have units scout ahead, etc. There’s even a top-down battle map that allows you to issue orders to your units RTS style. This helps give a little bit of perspective to the battlefield. Developer Piranha Games did a great job making you feel like you’re in danger, despite being in control of a walking fortress. You have to keep a clear head to maneuver and position your ‘mech so you reduce incoming damage while maximizing the pain you put on your opponents. If enough enemy ‘mechs concentrate fire on you, you can lose components or get cored before you know it. You have the ability to switch to other teammates, so losing your ‘mech isn’t an automatic fail. But don’t expect to come out of battles completely unscathed, even if you use terrain and buildings as cover. It’s not uncommon for me to finish a mission with most mechs missing components. Of course, without the meta game component of Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries , losing components or having your mechs badly damaged never feels like it sets you back too far. In Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries, a bad mission could lead to your best pilots getting killed, and expensive ‘mech repairs that can take a long time. There is none of that in Clans . Clans does introduce a new system for managing your vehicles and crew. Each crewmember has a set of skills you can choose to spend their individual XP on. Some of the skills are specialized, like rocket lock-on, etc.. Others are more general like “evasion,” which is essential if you don’t want your teammates to get hit more than they have to.  You have to choose to spend profile XP on upgrading your science bay or your repair bay. More scientists and more efficient research means you can unlock ‘mech upgrades faster. Repair bay upgrades and technicians ensure that your ‘mechs are repaired before the next mission. But Clans never forces you to make hard decisions. I never was in danger of running out of money. I could almost always buy the next upgrade in the tree. The only way to fail is if you’re unable to pass the next mission and can’t proceed. There are a lot of different ways to customize your experience and upgrade your ‘mechs. Different chassis have experience points you accumulate through combat, which you can then spend to unlock new omnipods and also unlock your ‘mech’s full potential by upgrading its stats like movement top speed, how far you can turn your torso, etc. You can also change your ‘mechs paint jobs as you unlock more by progressing through the chassis upgrades. Clans has a handful of other problems that I’ve run into, like teammates that don’t follow orders during battle sometimes, or teammates that have annoying pathfinding. Mostly issues with teammates.  I also, ironically (based on lore), find the omnimechs to be a little squishier than I anticipated. I think that’s because the Clan mechs have most of their weapons on their arms. The Clan ‘mechs also lack the variety that the Inner Sphere ‘mechs have. They’re all a bit uniform to each other, and a little bland. I have, sadly, not really found a Clan ‘mech I really love. You can play the entire Clans campaign cooperatively with up to four other friends. And while I really love co-op, there’s something that’s making me miss my Mechwarrior Online days. And while that game technically still exists, it’s in the dated Cryengine. I’d love to see a Mechwarrior Online 2  or an expansion that adds PvP into Clans . Mechwarrior 5: Clans isn’t perfect. And I’ve learned to temper my praise a bit. Clans isn’t exactly everything I wanted it to be–but I hope it’s what the fans want, because I would love to keep playing Mechwarrior games for the foreseeable future. Piranha Games really nailed the stompy robot carnage both in look and feel. Mechwarrior 5: Clans is available October 16th and will be available on PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store as well as on Xbox and PlayStation consoles. A Steam key was provided to us for this review

Last time, on Agatha All Along...Teen killed absolutely everyone. Seems like time for a flashback. And if Teen's your favorite character in the show like he is ours, you're getting your wish for the focus to just be on him for a little while. In what's a really cool transition, you go from Teen wearing his blue Maximoff crown as Wiccan to a blue kippah. Hebrew recitations are heard in the background, and formal preparations are being made. We're at Teen's bar mitzvah, with his parents. If this doesn't seem correct, it isn't. After all, Wanda's not really into anything but witchcraft, and she didn't marry a kindly looking blond bearded guy. The name on the Bat Mitzvah program says William Kaplan. What's at play here? Teen goes through the motions of the bat mitzvah and heads into the party portion of the evening carefree and looking quite at home. He walks into a tarot reading booth (which seems just a bit odd at this type of occasion) and it's Lillia. She's there to make a few bucks telling the kids they'll live long and prosper, basically. But when she takes Teen/William's hand, something is different. Her face grows concerned, the lights flicker. His life line is broken into two parts. She knows it's bad news, but she masks it as a time of life changes, a 'new you'. This isn't a party trick anymore. She pulls one tarot card, the Tower Reversed, before she flashes with recognition. 'I think I remember something.' Teen's not having fun anymore, and Lillia issues a rather ominous warning to enjoy the now. As soon as he leaves the tent, she takes a wood piece and scrawls...the sigil. She places it in the jacket Teen left behind and hands it to someone else, having completely forgotten everything that happened. Just as soon as that happens, someone comes over the loudspeaker to announce that everyone needs to evacuate, as everyone gets emergency alert texts on their phones that say they need to evacuate and return home. Teen's 'parents' race home with him, as Teen actually locates the sigil. Looking back they can see the red light of Wanda's Eastview destruction - and while they're looking at that, his mom narrowly misses hitting another car, and they careen down a hill, hitting a tree, which directly impacts Teen's seat. His mom and dad wake up frantic to get help, and from all sides it looks like that's it for him. Then, a snippet of Wanda's voice saying goodnight to her sons, and something enters him, reviving him. Help arrives soon after and Teen's brought to the hospital. Doctors say there's nothing wrong physically, but refer them to a psychologist. It's the old amnesia trope, this time with a body swap. Shortly after he's awake he finds he can read thoughts, and that he's going home. That goes as you'd expect, everyone strong emotions and Teen confused about literally everything. Even the dog knows something's up. Life's well and truly ruined. Cut to three years later, and Teen's on a date with what seems like a pretty long term boyfriend. Teen hears him thinking he's going to say "I love you" and interrupts their kiss. He doesn't want to have any secrets, and he tells his boyfriend, Eddie that he can hear people's thoughts, if they're people he really cares about and the emotions are intense, and starts to relay the details of the car accident, including his death, and how he came back different. Eddie takes it remarkably well, and now with his secret out, he's free to tell Eddie that he loves him too. It's a tender moment in an otherwise dark episode. It's not like Eddie doesn't have questions though, and he gets to the main one right away. "If you're not William Kaplan, who are you?" Cut to all William's musical posters gone and a large amount of research all over those walls instead. We see a brief youtube ad featuring Jen hawking her skin products, and then a YouTube video about the red bubble, or the anomaly. He recognizes it's a spell, but no one will talk about what happened that day, likely due to the intense amount of PTSD something like that would cause. Eventually though, through the power of the internet, they find someone who's willing to talk - Randall. (Quicksilver, as you know) Randall describes what it was like living in the world of Wandavision, basically. The citizens of Eastview, being able to perceive themselves, but not control anything they said or did. Knowing who they were but not being able to cry out for help or live out their own lives, just watching themselves like they were on TV but in their head, as he points out. It's a perfect illustration of the intense amount of trauma Wanda caused for everyone else who participated in her world. I appreciate this because often Wanda's played as a tragic hero of a sort, but inflicting pain on people because of your trauma just isn't okay, even though it's hard not to do if you're suffering a great loss. It's here in the show that I want to stop and say I think Agatha All Along may have made some mistakes. Randall's got a funny screen name and a funny trench coat and a funny hat, and he wants to meet all clandestine in a parking garage. It's very cartoony and very much seems like it's played for laughs. To be fair, he has been stuck in a television show life playing different versions of the same person across genres and eras, so maybe that's just another pond ripple, but to me, it seemed like after they pointed out how traumatizing the experience would be, they made light of it by treating his character as ridiculous instead of being empathetic through the lens. Teen and Eddie manage to show off that Gen Z "rizz" and actually treat him like a human being and with kindness even if they are a little freaked out, but it still really blows a hole in something that should've been said about Wandavision originally. As sympathetic as she may be, Wanda was still the villain, ruining an entire town's lives to serve her purposes, however noble she thought they were. But it's not all Wanda. Agatha stole his house, made him pretend to be her husband, and used him like a puppet. During this incredibly valid list of horrible things that were done to him, Eddie mentions that he was a bad influence on Wanda and Vision's kids, and Teen finally gets some information that will help him figure out who he is, as Eddie reveals, to Teen's surprise, that they did have kids -- twin boys. One was a "speedster" and the other could read minds. Tommy and Billy. Suddenly, we know who he is, and so does he. Back at home, he pieces it all together, while listening to Linda Wu's version of The Witches' Road and contemplating the sigil. When all signs point to Agatha, he does what any of us from the Plissken faction on would do, and Googles her. And there she is, in the background of tragedies and great moments in history alike. When he finally gets to the brujapedia part of the internet, he gets the really juicy bits - Agatha was the only known survivor of The Road. And off we go, away from Westview, to find Agatha. With GPS and some mild Google skills, it's a short trip. He's got his spellbook, he's got someone on his side, and he's going to get answers. Upon arrival, we find out this is Agatha when she's playing true crime detective, and the familiar scene from before plays out again, only this time with it making a whole lot more sense. After the insanely amusing antics of detective Harkness, Teen releases the spell, and Agatha comes to, realizing nothing she was doing is real. She throws him in the basement for awhile, and after some more ridiculousness that Hahn plays pitch perfect, they get to the point. Teen, aka William, aka Billy, wants to get to the Witches' Road. He says it's because he wants power. Agatha asks who he is, and though he says William Kaplan at first, he then relents, and reveals his true identity. He is Billy Maximoff. Time to head back to the future. Agatha crawls out of the sucking mud and almost immediately she's back on her bullshit. Back at the scene of the crime, Billy's crushed the sigil and stood contemplating his powers. When the two meet, Agatha and Teen clear the air. He doesn't need power, and it doesn't interest him, but what he does want is to find his family. Meanwhile, Agatha's delighted at the prospect of someone so powerful and in what he's done, which only serves to disgust Teen more. Agatha is pure Agatha here - making light of her coven's deaths, Teen's trauma, and basically everyone else's suffering because all she's interested in is herself and the power that she can get if she makes it through the trials and to the end of the Road. There's plenty of horrible, irredeemable characters in shows, especially of late, but the line between love to hate and just pure hatred is a fine one. Kathryn Hahn manages to ride the knife's edge between completely unlikeable and sympathetic and add a comic flair that could only come from her. This time though, she's trying to convince Teen to overlook what she is and help her get what she wants. Teen/Billy knows that he's insanely powerful on his own, and tries to shake her off by saying he doesn't need her, and that's where Agatha gets her hooks in, pointing out that he doesn't know how to control his power, and that given that he killed the rest of the coven, he's just like her. She beckons him down the road with "Last one there is a nice person" and off they go. This road's had plenty of twists and turns but perhaps nothing quite like this. See you next time.

This year we’re putting together a list of 31 Retro Horror games. Games that have come from dead console generations, back to haunt us. Sadly, not all of these games will be available for you to play due to the complicated nature of video game preservation. However, we’re going to note if it’s possible to play them on modern hardware. We’re going to be covering games from the Seventh Generation (PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii) and earlier. So basically anything before 2006. Day 15 Alien: Isolation  The game starts with you playing as Amanda Ripley, daughter of Ellen Ripley from the films. Amanda has signed up on a mission in search of her mothers distress beacon, and to discover the mysterious circumstances surrounding her mothers disappearance. This journey takes her crashing into the Sevastopol, a derelict space station that is currently in the stage of revolt, chaos and an infestation of some sort of vicious alien being known as the Xenomorph.  It’s from here that you are thrust into a terrifying adventure of trying to get the information you want, while also being hunted by the deadly alien, as well as the rioters and a synth android uprising. The game revolves around a lot of sneaking and hiding with being caught leading to almost certain death. There’s a perfect level of tension surrounding the hiding mechanics because safety is never truly guaranteed, and every moment is punctuated by a completely dynamic orchestrated soundtrack that knows exactly when to ratchet up the tension.  On top of the orchestrated soundtrack and chilling hiding mechanics, I also would like to emphasize the Alien Xenomorph itself. It’s a trained hunter and killer that stalks you as its prey throughout large portions of the story, but on a technical level, its AI is something worth discussing. The Xenomorph operates in two different ways: the menace gauge, which is a meter on the back end that measures how often it appears, and will gauge, based on your actions, when is the perfect time to appear and scare you. This works to keep you guessing as you never know when the alien will appear to stop you in your tracks. 2:  The alien’s AI, which is a series of directives. Specifically, imagine a spider web, starting out with only 3-4 nodes, but branching outward into multiple other nodes. This is the learning process of the alien, so if you are constantly hiding in lockers, it will begin to start looking in lockers. It’s ever learning and also works as a real entity in game, so it is always somewhere on the map waiting to start hunting you. But it’s fair and doesn’t cheat, which makes for the feel of an actual animal learning your moves. It’s haunting.  The Alien: Isolation story takes you all over the space station and at some points outside of it. It’s equally fast paced and intensely slow. It works in waves to show you how fast things can spin out of control when it comes to the Sevastopol. The game even goes as far as letting you relive some of the key moments of the original movie, in a fantastic homage that feels right out of the film. The developers were given tons of data as far as reference material from the films, so they had a lot to work with when trying to make this game as accurate and closely tied to the film franchise as they could. To me it’s a triumph and still to this day still manages to shock and awe me while feeling totally in line with what I would see in theaters. I usually go back to re-watch Alien yearly, but this felt close enough to that, that I felt happy with this being my spooky season Alien inclusion. I would recommend our audience check this out if they want more of that world because the developers at Creative Assembly did a phenomenal job with it, and will be doing it again in a sequel in the near future.

If you've been following our adventures into "iconic American junk/snack food collabs" lately you know we've taken the dive into the Coke and Oreo combo. In Part I, we, or I, since everyone else at Culture Combine apparently disagrees, found ourselves mightily displeased with Coke flavored Oreos, from the sickeningly sweet Coke syrup they injected into my precious Oreo chocolate to the adulteration of the "Stuf" with popping candy, and a weird aftertaste to boot. So by the time I actually got a chance to snap up a few Oreo flavored Coke Zero Sugars, I was less than enthused to crack them open. I assumed the two just somehow didn't actually blend as well as I'd thought they would given my recollection of eating Oreos and washing it down with a Coke in my childhood. Well, I'm batting a thousand, because, even though I'm more a Diet Coke stan than a Coke Zero Sugar stan, turns out, Oreo flavored Coke Zero Sugar was NOT a miss for me. I'm going to point out again that I'm a traditionalist when it comes to things like the literal number one cookie in the entire world, and well, Coca Cola, which has more or less dominated the entire planet for as long as I can remember. So I'm a hard sell on weird-ass flavor trips for novelty's sake, though I'm trying to live a little more and just bite the bullet. Or the cookie. For better or worse. Expecting the worst, I took a sniff of the Oreo flavored Coke Zero Sugar. Not bad. Not offensive in any way, really, though it didn't immediately give me Oreo vibes either, the way that the Coke flavored Oreos bludgeoned you with the classic Coke syrup smell. I wondered if it'd taste like anything at all. And it does, actually. Oreo flavored Coke Zero Sugar tastes pleasantly altered, with a sort of...creamy vanilla taste. In other words, if I had to describe it, I'd say it's Stuf forward. I didn't notice a lot of Oreo's iconic chocolate flavor. We had guests over when I tried this out, and all of us agreed that in the end, Oreo flavored Coke Zero Sugar turns out to taste a whole lot like Vanilla Coke. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it might not be exactly what they were going for. Still, all three of us finished our bottles, and I'd honestly grab another one. As someone who lacks a sweet tooth and often finds super sweet things rather unappealing, I even feel like the fact that so far, this collab's only featured Coke Zero Sugar (with rumored plans to release a Coca Cola OG version towards the holidays) works to its advantage, allowing the smooth vanilla to marry with a not-too-cloying Coke Zero Sugar to make a very...sedate but pleasant beverage. Again, I'm not sure if that's the idea, or what you're looking for in something like this, but I'd reach for it again. So, to round out our little Oreo/Coke adventure, here's the scores: My predictions were completely off, and I thought I'd hate the drink and love the cookie. Coke/Oreo is 50/50 with me, and here at Culture Combine as a whole, I'm in the minority for detesting the Coke Oreo. See what you think of this abomination/delight yourself and leave a note in the comments.

Admittedly, I'm the wrong person to take on "creative" flavored classics. While I love to experiment with new recipes and flavors, I maintain that some classics just shouldn't be tampered with. Even so, I had a little bit of a good feeling when I first saw the announcement for Coke flavored Oreos and their counterpart, Oreo flavored Coke. In this case, it's two can't miss classics for me. Perhaps no other cookie is as iconic as an Oreo, and even though I'm of the "Pepsi Generation" I have to admit, Coca Cola is the first thing anyone thinks of when they think of soda (or pop, as it is correctly referred to here in Chicago where Culture Combine's crew calls home) Still, I grew up on hot dog stands and ice cream places serving things like Chocolate Pepsi, and with that iconic chocolate and vanilla creme combo I thought you couldn't miss. In the case of Coke Flavored Oreos though, I was dead wrong. I didn't know too much about the mysterious collaboration before I ran into it at the store. Nevertheless we snatched up a …carton (?) and took it home to sample. These Oreos look pretty cool, with a red "golden" Oreo cookie side and a Coke infused chocolate cookie on the other. Inside, the classic "stuf" has been replaced with "Coca-Cola inspired flavor creme" and popping candy. When you first open the pack, you'll quickly be met with the classic aroma of syrupy, delicious Coca-Cola. It smells almost identical to opening a can of the fizzy favorite. This gave me false hope as I bit into this weird collab, unfortunately. While you get a first rush of Coke flavor, the next minute it feels a little like an unholy mix of saccharine sweetness between the Oreo's classic (and perfect) balance of "just sweet enough" and Coca-Cola's "at the tipping point between too sweet and very sweet." That combination met with the unpleasant addition of crunchiness you'll get chowing down on popping candy begins the downward spiral. Popping candy was actually a favorite of mine growing up, and I often poured packets into my mouth and swished some soda around to really get the party going - but I never claimed it made either taste better. I get why they'd include it - so you get that iconic Coke fizz - but it is not a welcome addition to an Oreo, in my opinion. Secondly, while the aroma is spot on Coca-Cola and makes you excited for the flavor, the flavor turns out to be rather unpleasant. Oreo's chocolate is of a different variety than standard chocolate syrup or fudge that are used in things like Chocolate Pepsi, and Coke's borderline too -sweet main notes are discordant when paired with Oreo's balanced flavors. The final nail in the coffin for me is one I find a lot in these weird mashups - an odd aftertaste. While forcefully smelling of Coca-Cola, it doesn't really continue to have that classic taste, and instead just ends up tasting...confusing, if that's even a thing. I don't know how this didn't hit the mark, to be frank. Eating an Oreo and washing it down with Coke isn't bad, but somehow, infusing Oreos with Coke seems to be. That's alright, though, cuz there's always Oreo Flavored Coke to hang our hopes on...right?

This year we’re putting together a list of 31 Retro Horror games. Games that have come from dead console generations, back to haunt us. Sadly, not all of these games will be available for you to play due to the complicated nature of video game preservation. However, we’re going to note if it’s possible to play them on modern hardware. We’ll be covering games from the Seventh Generation (PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii) and earlier. So basically anything before 2006. Day 14 The Suffering The Suffering is a fantastic game that blends first person shooter that blends action with horror. You’re not exactly defenseless, but game protagonist Torque has to deal with a lot of issues. For one, he’s on death row. He’s been accused of murdering his family. The other issue Torque has to deal with? An infestation of creatures that are killing guards and inmates alike. While The Suffering wasn’t unique in many ways, it executed its action horror premise extremely well. The atmosphere was fantastic, the creature design would make Clive Barker salivate, and most importantly: it was fun to play. There was also a morality system that changed that game’s ending. The thing that stands out the most is perhaps the creature design. The monsters in The Suffering are based on methods.  The Suffering also has an insanity meter, but unlike other horror games, filling this meter enables Torque to turn into a literal monster. This bit of retro nostalgia comes with a sad story about its creators. Developer Surreal Software went on to release a sequel with The Suffering: Ties That Bind . These two games were the latest in a string of successes for the studio, but their parent company Midway Games was bought out by Warner Bros. Eventually, Surreal Games merged with Monolith Productions, making the real horror here the video game industry and its ability to devour itself. Unfortunately Ties That Bind was less well received and considered second rate compared to its predecessor. But we still have The Suffering and our memories. Unfortunately, if you want to play The Suffering today you’ll need access to retro hardware and an old copy of the game. It was available to download on myabandonware.com , but ironically it was taken down because it was reclaimed and put for sale on gog.com . Sadly, the store page for the game no longer exists.

Four player co-op horror games with proximity chat seem to be the newest phenomenon. It makes sense: these games tend to lead to hilarious chaotic situations. It doesn’t hurt that genuine scares help heighten the hilarity.  Terrorbytes is definitely following the first person four player co-op trend. And developer Treetop has seemed to run with the 80’s theme that has been so popular lately. In fact, even the Terrorbytes logo invokes a Stranger Things feel. Ironically, however, it’s pretty far from Stranger Things thematically. For one, Terrorbytes takes place in an arcade game. And you’re the “bad guys.” If you told me one day I’d be playing a game where we were the ghosts in a Pac-Man like game, I don’t think I’d really be surprised. It was a matter of time before someone took the maze chase and went full circle. After all, Terrorbytes  is the latest in a very long list of such games that has you both chase and be chased in mazes. I mean, Maze Chase was an entire genre back in the day. But Pac-Man didn’t have proximity chat shenanigans. Ever since I saw the video of someone in DayZ playing Tiny Tim over their proximity chat I realized how genius this feature was. Why should all video game communication be done through meta applications like Discord when routing your voice through your game’s character can lead to some funny–and some interestingly emergent situations? That’s what Terrorbytes is banking on.  I was able to play it with some friends. And while we didn’t get very far, fun was had as we were attempting to avoid Ms. Croak Man. And it turns out, there are a bunch of other horrible things that run around in  Terrorbytes’ mazes that can kill you with the push of a button. Ironically, as the ghosts, your job is to pick up pellets. Pellets are shared among the group– and doing actions like sprinting, buying items, or even closing the door to the exit room costs pellets. Nothing counts unless you can carry it out. Items like cherries or blueprints slow your character down, making them vulnerable to attacks, but net you points or give you access to valuable items. As we played, we noticed that it helps to have someone looking over the maze. This player assumes the role of the sort of “man in the chair” position that games like Lethal Company employ, and helps you make your way back to the safe room before you meet a terrible fate. Terrorbytes stands out. But at this point it’s more about what your flavor of funny will be, instead of games creating a framework of interesting and challenging gameplay. Maybe I just don’t get it. Get off my lawn.

This year we’re putting together a list of 31 Retro Horror games. Games that have come from dead console generations, back to haunt us. Sadly, not all of these games will be available for you to play due to the complicated nature of video game preservation. However, we’re going to note if it’s possible to play them on modern hardware. We'll be covering games from the Seventh Generation (PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii) and earlier. So basically anything before 2006. Day 13 Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest The Castlevania series is iconic. It sits up there with iconic series like Super Mario Bros , Halo , Pokemon , and a handful of others. It hasn’t had much in the terms of recent success, but the series has found new life in a couple of excellent Netflix series.  It’s hard to consider retro horror and not think about Castlevania . I can’t say that the games were meant to scare, necessarily–but they’re definitely gothic horror themed. You take on Dracula and an army of evil minions in the first game. And as the series goes on, the Belmonts clash with not only Dracula, but other horrors through the generations. And now that Castlevania is 38 years old the series has let more than a few generations take a stab at the famous Count. I think if I had to narrow down a single Castlevania game that caused the most fear–okay, mostly just stress– it was Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest . I know this might be a controversial choice, as out of the first four games, Simon’s Quest is the only game that deviates from the first game’s formula so drastically. It’s also a game that I grew up playing, and I spent countless hours exploring and trying to make sense of its cryptic (and apparently mistranslated) clues from the townspeople.  Time mattered in Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest . Any game that has an overarching time pressure immediately becomes stressful–I’m looking at you Dead Rising. But the only consequence of failure in Simon’s Quest is purely narrative, and only affects the story’s end. But that also means the game has a day/night cycle, famous for introducing gamers to the phrase “it’s a terrible night to have a curse.” To be fair, what night is good for a curse, exactly, though? Simon’s Quest also introduced RPG elements into Castlevania . And similarly to how Zelda II: Link’s Adventure alienated some fans for changing up the formula, Simon’s Quest had the same effect. The naming for this game is a little confusing, too, because the Game Boy also had another Castlevania II, this one subtitled Belmont’s Revenge . If you’re itching to play Simon’s Quest or any of the other Castlevania games, you’re in luck: The Castlevania Anniversary Collection and the Castlevania Dominus Collection have a wide range of hard to find retro Castlevania games with the former containing the first three games in the series. These two collections are available on modern consoles or Steam.

This year we’re putting together a list of 31 Retro Horror games. Games that have come from dead console generations, back to haunt us. Sadly, not all of these games will be available for you to play due to the complicated nature of video game preservation. However, we’re going to note if it’s possible to play them on modern hardware. We’re going to be covering games from the Seventh Generation (PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii) and earlier. So basically anything before 2006. Day 12 Nightmare Creatures Nightmare Creatures is a bit of an obscure title these days. Taking place in the early 1800s, in Nightmare Creatures , you take control of two distinct monster hunters as you do battle against (surprise) nightmarish creatures in London. Your goal is to put an end to Adam Crowley’s (based on real life Allister Crowley) devious machinations that have unleashed these monsters.  While it was pretty well reviewed on its release, Nightmare Creatures, as a series,   never lasted beyond a single sequel. And that’s too bad, because the closest I’ve seen a game come to Nightmare Creatures thematically and gameplay-wise is Bloodborne . I’m not saying that Nightmare Creatures is comparable to Fromsoftware’s ultra tight style combat–as Nightmare Creatures has very arcade brawler-y combat–but no game has quite the same combination of gaslight and night fright. Nightmare Creatures does have a few things that might make it annoying to modern audiences, and one of those things is its adrenaline system. If you spend too long between fights, your adrenaline can run down which makes you lose health rapidly until you die. It’s a bit of a bummer that mars an otherwise fantastic title–but with patience and gumption it’s something that can be overcome. In fact, I didn't even remember the adrenaline system until I did research for this article–and I know I played through Nightmare Creatures a few times. If you want a chance to try out Nightmare Creatures for yourself you’re going to have some trouble. Unless you have access to retro hardware, like an original PlayStation or Nintendo 64, there just isn’t a way to play this retro horror classic. That might be because, despite its success, Nightmare Creatures failed to launch into a franchise, and is currently destined to sit in old media limbo.

This year we’re putting together a list of 31 Retro Horror games. Games that have come from dead console generations, back to haunt us. Sadly, not all of these games will be available for you to play due to the complicated nature of video game preservation. However, we’re going to note if it’s possible to play them on modern hardware. We'll be covering games from the Seventh Generation (PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii) and earlier. So basically anything before 2006. Day 11 Doom 3 Okay, so this series ended up having a ton of id Software developed games. I’m obviously a fan–but id Software was on the cutting edge of graphics and gameplay for a significant chunk of my youth. And that was still true for Doom 3 . I vividly remember the first tech demo showing off the first look at the engine running Doom 3 , and realizing I would need a much better computer. The lighting and character animations looked even better than big budget computer animated TV shows from a decade earlier. It was truly groundbreaking stuff. And it was all going to be used in a game designed to scare the crap out of you. Doom 3 adopted a slower pace that is almost antithetical to what Doom stands for today. In fact, Doom 3 isn’t even considered canon while others like Doom 64  have a place in the story, but wasn’t considered a main line game by fans of the time. That makes Doom 3 a strange outlier in the Doom franchise. So you’re playing as a marine, but not the  Doomguy. That means you don’t casually run around at 30 mph while ripping and tearing. Instead, action is slower paced with jump scares aplenty, and enemies lurking in shadowy darkness. The original game even made it impossible to have your gun out at the same time as your flashlight, so you had to stay in the dark if you wanted to keep your defenses up. Mods, and later remasters of Doom 3 would change this–but those of us who were there originally remember. To this day I fondly remember Doom 3 . It was almost like a prototype to Dead Space . The atmosphere and deliberate slow pace really gave Doom 3 a sense of dread and horror that no other id Software game managed. Even while you’re mowing through hordes of demons, you still feel vulnerable–a far cry from the tanklike DoomSlayer. Doom 3 even did enemies well, though you never really encounter more than 2 or three at a time. But id Software did a good job utilizing the shadows the game’s engine was capable of producing to create some truly dreadful encounters. If you want to play Doom 3 today, it’s not as hard as other games on this list–in fact, it just barely makes the cut off to be considered a retro game based on the criteria at the start of this article. But even so, Bethesda has been really taking care of the Doom IP, and has released Doom 3 as the BFG Edition available on modern consoles.