This PS2 game was introduced to Julia and I by Pyro's girlfriend when they were out to visit. She didn't bring it or anything, it just came up in conversation. I guess she didn't get to play much of it, but played a little and thought it was neat, and I didn't remember hearing about it (though I later realized I'd seen the box before and just never looked at it). Anyway, we decided it sounded too cool to pass up and we had to try it, so I ordered it on Amazon (it's pretty hard to find now, and you'll still pay a few bucks for it... it hasn't gone dirt cheap).
Basically, the premise is that you're an attractive young lady named Fiona trapped in a giant castle of (according to the box) 130 rooms, as well as several occasionally insane people who sort of want to kill you. You can't really attack much, though you do have a few items you find or concoct through various means which you can use to slow your pursuers down, and you spend most of your time trying to sneak around without them getting hold of you. So, generally speaking, when you're spotted, you run your ass away and try to find a good hiding spot until the heat blows over, then you head back out and try to get wherever it was you were going or finish whatever it was you were trying to do, hopefully without attracting any more unwanted attention.
Your other big tool is the game's main hook: a dog named Hewie. You find him early on and free him, and the two of you take a liking to each other. He's generally responsive, and you can command him a bit. Before long you realize he's not just company, but you can direct him to crawl places you can't get to, get items and stuff at times, and bite the hell out of the bad guys. Sweet! It's a bit trickier than that, though. Sometimes he sort of doesn't do what you want, and you have to train him by scolding him and praising him when appropriate. This is where the system breaks down a bit, as the animations and stuff take just slightly too long and throw things off a little. Still, it's really endearing, and ultimately isn't a problem at all if you have any degree of patience (and you're playing a survival horror game, so you should).
Things started off pretty well, with a nice opening cinematic and a creepy dude who's after you, and then it slows down a bit. There's some good creepy stuff, but a bit of a lull after you've explored for a while and stuff. But it just totally picked up again, and now it's got far more creepy atmosphere and just crazy shit going on. I'm pretty into it, and Julia's eating it up with a spoon. It's good fun, and definitely creepy enough. And the story has been picking up speed, getting more compelling all the time (the hints aren't hard to decipher, even early on, but it's hard to really get the full picture, which seems to be coming more into focus now).
What sucks is that the game really got very little attention, and I think it's really one of the better entries into the genre. Most people seem in agreement that it was completely overshadowed by
Resident Evil 4, which is a shame, because the games couldn't possibly be more different, despite both being from Capcom. Actually, in
RE4 there's a white dog at one point which heavily resembles Hewie from
Haunting Ground. Sort of a fun aside. The mansion also reminds one, from time to time, of
Resident Evil, and there are even some kinda'
Silent Hill overtones every now and again. Plus other weird shit that seems to come right out of nowhere.
Anyway, if you like survival horror games and have a little patience, I think this is an attractive, cinematic, spooky game that's different from others and has a real sense of something more like
Ico or
Shadow of the Colossus, if not as refined or as boldly stated. It's different, which is refreshing, and it's really a shame that more people didn't hear about it.
