Podcasts
Going on a Bug Hunt With ‘Aliens: Dark Descent’ [Safe Room Podcast]
Earlier this year, we covered Aliens: Colonial Marines, which may have put the player into the boots of the galaxy’s toughest soldiers, but fundamentally misunderstood what made James Cameron’s 1986 classic Aliens timelessly terrifying. So, color me surprised when the latest attempt at bottling that magic, Aliens: Dark Descent, not only replicates the tension and terror of the film but manages to achieve this from a top-down RTS perspective.
Structurally, Aliens: Dark Descent shares some connective DNA with Firaxis Games’ XCOM reboots. You manage a squad deployed on missions, between which you manage a base and soldiers’ wellbeing. And that’s where the comparisons end. Aliens: Dark Descent’s combat playing out in real (or slow-mo) time replicates the urgency of marines duking it out with xenomorphs on Hadley’s Hope. And when the stakes are this high, as death is inevitable in Aliens: Dark Descent, it makes for nail-biting tension that I have never truly felt with a real-time strategy game.
In this week’s episode, Neil and I unpack more of what makes Aliens: Dark Descent not only another quality Aliens adaptation but how the game adds a new facet to the RTS experience.
Then, in this week’s Horror Bytes we discuss two more bite-sized horror treats. First up is The Third Wish is a mini point n’ click adventure inspired by 90s LucasArts games. Then we boot up a 90s computer to play a cursed educational game about surviving an earthquake in Sin(e)s.
Safe Room is a weekly horror video game discussion podcast with new episodes every Monday and Thursday. For additional streaming services, Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and Linktree.
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Safe Room | Neil | Jay | Horror Bytes
After winding down June with discussions of our vey first William Castle film Homicidal (listen) and queer director Roland Emmerich’s summer tentpole Independence Day (listen), we’re heading back to 1981 to check out Joe Dante‘s seminal werewolf film The Howling.
The Howling sees television journalist Karen White (Dee Wallace) attend a psychiatric retreat with her husband Bill (Christopher Stone) after being attacked and traumatized by local serial killer Eddie Quist (Robert Picardo). It isn’t long before Karen realizes that the retreat is actually a secret cult of werewolves, and they’ve already got their sights set on Bill.
Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get a new episode every Wednesday. You can subscribe on iTunes/Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, iHeartRadio, SoundCloud, TuneIn, Amazon Music, and RSS.
Episode 394: The Howling (1981)
Make note of that smiley face sticker and snag that conveniently-placed jar of acid because we’re talking Joe Dante’s stealth werewolf classic The Howling (1981)!
Join us as we discuss the film’s deviations from its source material before doing a deep dive into this very tongue-in-cheek, self-aware horror film. It honestly feels like a precursor to Scream, in many ways!
Plus: Roger Corman (again!) those incredible special effects, differentiating “color movies” from “movies in color,” and why queer icon Elisabeth Brooks has us going “Marsha, Marsha, Marsha!”
Cross out The Howling!
Coming Up Next: We’re tackling our very first Ken Russell film with a look at his controversial 1984 erotic thriller Crimes of Passion!
P.S. Subscribe to our Patreon for over 508 hours of Patreon content including this month’s new episodes on Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Forbidden Fruits, Saccharine, Evil Dead Burn, an audio commentary on Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf (aka Howling II: Stirba – Werewolf Bitch), and the conclusion of our coverage of AMC’s The Vampire Lestat on the Requel Tier.