The Coma 2: Vicious Sisters is something altogether new to me. I’ve heard of Korean horror games but they have always been something on the peripheral of my awareness. It makes sense as I’m neither a fan of horror games (I think jump-scares are cheap and lazy) or survival games (I’d rather bash my skull in than craft crap). So, The Coma 2: Vicious Sisters was starting at a disadvantage with me.
And then it happened: The Coma 2: Vicious Sisters managed to get under my skin. Without realizing it I was invested in this new world thanks to the game’s solid pacing and strangely compelling story. I came into this one without any knowledge of the first title so the game had to grab me without understanding any backstory.
It did this by getting me invested in the life and world of our protagonist, Mina. She’s your average high school girl just trying to make her way through the world in one piece. It seems that Korean high-schools are pretty intense places even without all the horror. And that’s just it, the horror takes it’s time so as to let us get a better understanding of Mina and the world she inhabits.
The first fifteen or twenty minutes of the game simply sets up who Mina is while letting us get used to the basic gameplay elements we can expect. The first thing that grabs you is the game’s really smooth and clean visual style. It uses a colorful anime aesthetic that is about as far from horror as possible. Still, it’s a beautiful game in the light and stunningly macabre when the adventure goes off the rails.
The second thing you’ll notice with The Coma 2: Vicious Sisters is the sidescrolling nature of the game. If anime and horror don’t quite click in game form, you better believe that a sidescroller and horror sure as heck don’t mix. There are so many things not in the game’s favor when trying to set a mood and atmosphere, and yet somehow it all works better than expected.
Mina is caring for her friend who is trapped in a coma and was found with a locket in his hand. You take the locket and after getting your bearings as a Korean teen, the game gets dark when you somehow enter a coma yourself. And it’s here where a carefree adventure in school turns into a nightmare filled with all manner of spooky scary death-dealing debauchery.
I’m not one to get scared very easily as most games and films scare you with what’s on the screen. Where I feel true fear is when the monster or threat is looming offscreen and never fully understood or made clear. It’s why I don’t think horror games tend to work so well as you tend to know what you are running from, have some way to fight back, or the jump scares become predictable. At least in a film, you can only turn off the TV and hope the darkness just beyond your reach doesn’t follow you to bed thanks to your own brain filling in the gaps.
The Coma 2: Vicious Sisters does fall victim to this mostly due to its design. As this is a sidescroller you are going to be facing down threats either in front or behind you. That coupled with the story being told through a visual novel format and you are left with a game that isn’t as scary as it could have been. Still, the mood the game sets is fantastic while playing. This mostly comes down to the fact that your vision of the screen in kept minimal as you only have a lighter to light your path.
This light mechanic pulls your widescreen surroundings in tight and forces you to take care when moving forward. Sure, you aren’t moving forward slowly out of fear, but rather because you don’t know what danger might lie ahead. The environments presented are simply beautiful in this dark and sadistic way, unlike anything I’ve ever seen in a 2D animated game. Bodies can litter an area, background layers can shift and sway, masses of viscera can pulse and throb making everything a sight to behold.
And unlike modern horror games, The Coma 2: Vicious Sisters sees Mina as a scared teenager meaning that she can’t attack enemies around you. Bodies can drop from the ceiling onto you, plants may explode poison, and you’ll be stalked all along your adventure by a creepy lady that’s trying to take your life. But you do have a few options when dealing with these obstacles. Your light will help give you visual clues to any traps or danger that might just be out of sight.
You’ll be able to dodge enemies if your stamina is high enough, you can use mace to force an enemy to release you when grabbed, or you can run for your life and get to a room that has something you can hide inside. And even the hiding isn’t as simple as jumping into a locker and waiting until things reset to normal. Mina can hide in a few different locations of which you find and you should take note of on your map in any given section.
Lockers and standing cabinets are your best bet and you can go down the line to hiding under desks that are the worst place, but sometimes has to do in a pinch. It’ll also depend on your stamina how effective your hiding is as you’ll be asked to play a Simon Says mini-game in order to control your breathing. The better location and higher the stamina the better your chance of remaining undetected. It’s a simple system that often leads to some really tense moments.
You’ll also need to manage your inventory as well so you’ll be having to get creative with how you want to tackle the next area. All you have is a backpack that can accommodate a few supplies at any given time. You might want to stock up on food and water that act as health and stamina regen respectively, but then you’ll have less room for a can of mace or that bottle of poison cure. It’s a give and take and will have you playing inventory management quite a bit.
Thankfully it never feels offputting like it would for me in so many survival games. I think it’s because of the nature of the adventure at hand. Mina isn’t a skilled survivalist and can’t craft an AK-47 out of some metal, a broken broom handle, and rope. She’s just a regular teen caught in a crappy place and must rely on vending machines and basic first-aid learned in school. Death will happen and feels natural because of the character you are playing. A few wrong moves and you’re brown bread just as you would be in real life.
And this inventory management means you’ll always be on the lookout for vending machines and the like to restock supplies after an encounter. It also means that you’ll be playing amateur detective and trying to uncover what’s going on in this coma world along the way. And while not a point-and-click adventure, it works in much the same way. You get near an object of interest and you can interact with it in some fashion.
All this while trying to avoid monsters and wondering if that weird noise coming through your headphones should be of concern. There were many times I heard something or saw something just beyond the reach of my light shift that saw be running back for cover. For the style mismatches at the core of The Coma 2: Vicious Sisters, the game still has a way of always keeping you on your toes.
I’m always a fan of audio design and how much it can add to an overall gameplay experience. And while the music is pretty par for the course, lots of looping screeches and weird noise backed by classic remixed pieces, it’s the overall sound design that kills it. You’ll not only be tipped off to events or dangers from music stings but also from footsteps around you. It’s important to listen as a monster could be right behind that door or near your location. A good ear can really save you from some sticky situations.
But what the game does best might also hinder it with a lot of players. The pacing in The Coma 2: Vicious Sisters is excellent, slowly ramping up the difficulty nice and slow. Early on as the game gets going you’ll be feeling okay about your abilities as save points, vending machines and cash pickups are fairly abundant. But as the game gets deeper into the nightmare these things become few and far between. The game gives you just enough to feel like you have a chance while patiently taking things away so as to always keep that tension tight.
But it’s this later spike that might be problematic for some as The Coma 2: Vicious Sisters seems intent on keeping you off balance even at the expense of its own mechanics. What I mean is that at points in the latter half of the game it seems as if monsters no longer play by the rules that the game has set out. There are creatures that will find you in cover no matter what. What’s worse is that you can take damage when in your inventory and also when in the middle of a conversation with someone. Being attacked when control is ripped from you feels extremely cheap and unfair.
Still, those grips aside The Coma 2: Vicious Sisters is something really unique in the horror space. It’s this weird merging of SNES-era horror (something that never really worked for me) and an adventure game styling (a genre long since dead) that makes it all work. And for me, someone totally new to the series, I never felt at a disadvantage because I didn’t play the first title. But for me The Coma 2: Vicious Sisters is the sort of game you play in short bursts.
I spent a lot of my time completing missions/tasks and making it to that next checkpoint so I could step away and catch my breath. I think in a marathon session the game might lose some of its charms with the difficulty, but that’s more a personal feeling. I like to let the horror build and fester in my brain throughout the day. I want to question what I saw and what I might have seen so that when I come back I’m ready for the challenge presented to me. I want to uncover more of the story because I want to and not because I have to.
“I can’t stand horror or survival games so I should hate The Coma 2: Vicious Sisters, but I came away loving the unique style and approach the game took to each.”
Final Score: 3.5
Title: The Coma 2: Vicious Sisters
Genre: Action, Adventure, Indie
Developer: Devespresso Games
Publisher: Headup, WhisperGames
Platform: PC
Release Date: Jan 28, 2020
*A game code was provided for this review*
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