After having previously played The Coma: Recut, I was already impressed at the premise and setting the developers had created. There’s nothing creepier than walking through the dark halls of your once familiar school without being able to exit. To make matters worse, the protagonist also finds themselves getting chased by scary creatures, resulting in you having to constantly be on guard. The Coma 2: Vicious Sisters plays very similar to its predecessor, although a few features have been noticeably enhanced – making the overall experience even better and scarier than the first game.
Being a horror game, I was truly terrified while trying to escape the nightmare the characters find themselves in, but I guess that’s the thrill with playing spooky games…
Is that Vambrace I see on that advert…
The Coma 2: Vicious Sisters takes place after the events in The Coma: Recut, but this time the story doesn’t revolve around Youngho, our protagonist is Mina Park, Youngho’s best friend. Not knowing what happened to Youngho, Mina is innocently living out her everyday life, ignorantly following her own routine until she notices that something is off. One day, when she happens to stay at school late one night, everything suddenly starts to change and she finds herself in a dark and sinister world.
The game starts with a short introduction of what happened to Youngho during the final scenes of the previous game, so it’s technically possible to start with this entry without prior knowledge – yet I strongly believe that the experience will be much better if you play both titles in chronological order. I like the fact that Mina starts off without any knowledge about the mysterious happenings as that made it easy for me to sympathise with her once she finds out the truth. After all, it’s terrifying enough that Mina suddenly finds herself in a scary world, yet also not knowing what’s going on simply adds to the tension and fear factor.
As you’d expect, she tries to escape out of this nightmare which she’s found herself within, hoping that maybe, along the way, she’ll find out more about the “Coma” and what happened to her dear friend previously…
Erm, what’s that on the ceiling?!
There is always a task Mina has to complete which takes her closer to her goal of escaping, although there are a lot of obstacles she has to overcome and things in her way which are inevitably trying to delay her plans. You see, The Coma 2: Vicious Sisters starts off quite generous at first, presenting you with fairly easy tasks that don’t take too much effort or time to complete. Although the hallway itself is quite spooky at night, the player can easily go through it without having to worry about ‘anything’ too intense.
My only complaint with the tasks is that they feel like ‘fetch quests’ once you’ve completed a few due to simply having a map with the location you need to get to clearly marked upon it. So, it’s a case of getting from A to B safely, rather than leaving you to freely explore and discover things for yourself.
However, it’s not that easy to complete your tasks later on as freely walking around the school isn’t really possible once the halls become populated by creepy and spooking beings who want to see Mina die. The key here is to remember the hiding spots, yet even though you may successfully hide without the enemies noticing, there’s still a quick time event the player has to complete in order to not get caught. Although the QTEs are on the easy side, with only having to press a combination of the arrow keys, I still found myself messing up quite often since I was so nervous and ended up pressing the wrong combination of buttons!
Admittedly, that only made the experience better for me since everything made me feel very tense and stressed – the main goal of a horror game.
Famous last words…
When successfully escaping the enemies, Mina can recharge her health with items she either found or bought with money she finds around the environment. These items are essential as the player has to be careful with every step since it’s not easy to spot the enemy in the dark halls – they will most certainly see Mina, even if you’re not paying attention and spot them lurking in the darkness! The key mechanic here is to pay attention to the enemies footsteps as she’s an evil demonic woman who is luckily wearing high heels which gives you an early warning that she’s nearby. It may have been hard for me to spot just how ‘near’ she was, but it gave me a hint that I should be careful and maybe go into hiding, rather than running around blindly.
Something I really liked is that the location you walk around changes the further into the game you get. So, Mina doesn’t only walk around in the school, she also finds herself in other buildings outside the school which are just as creepy. This begins to change the simple fetch-quest nature as it means that she now has to find a new map for navigation, due to being in an unfamiliar location. You see, with the map the player can see all rooms and staircases – a feature which greatly helps with finding your way to the next quest and plan your escape when being chased. The convenient thing here is that the map also shows saving points or when there is an obstacle Mina can’t go through.
Straight to the point!
At times, the player has to think outside of the box as well since dialogue plays an important role within some quests, so careful reading is necessary to complete certain tasks – although it’s quite obvious where Mina has to head next if you have the maps.
Graphics-wise, The Coma 2: Vicious Sisters is greatly advanced over the original title and the characters seem a lot livelier during conversations, as there are now animations during these scenes. Admittedly, I already found the artwork gorgeous in The Coma: Recut, but I like it even more within this game (there’s also an artbook on Steam for £3.19 that contains 60-pages of hand-illustrated art from the game). There is just something nostalgic to me about 2D-adventure games, plus I adored the comic-style scenes.
The stages, overall, are pretty scary since they’re very dark and full of traps, but with time, the player will get accustomed to them and know what to expect – although, the various spooks still managed to startle me on more than once occasion when I ran into them, despite knowing exactly what’s about to happen!
Official trailer:
Final Conclusion:
Just hearing the high heel sounds, in The Coma 2: Vicious Sisters, absolutely terrified me and made it impossible to remain calm. There are moments when I simply didn’t want to come out of my hiding spot for fear that I’d run into the spooky enemy that was chasing poor Mina around the school. However, the point of playing a horror-themed game is to get scared, so in that respect, The Coma 2: Vicious Sisters perfectly fulfilled its purpose. The challenge here is to get past the traps and to find your way to the next quest, all whilst trying to avoid the enemy that is chasing after you; However, this simple premise isn’t an easy task as even hiding requires a QTE, and although they’re not too difficult, it’s very easy to mess it up.
That being said, The Coma 2: Vicious Sisters is a terrifying continuation of The Coma universe that turned out to be even more enjoyable than its predecessor.
A copy of the game was kindly provided for review purposes
The Coma 2: Vicious Sisters
£11.99
The Good:
- - Terrifying atmosphere
- - Stages change, you're not only in the school
- - Nerve-racking QTEs that add an extra challenge to the hiding mechanic
- - Beautiful visuals and well-done animations
The Bad:
- - Quite short
- - Fetch quest mechanics which may feel like a chore for some people
