Over at Namako Team, Jiji has reviewed 'Simple 2000 Series vol. 113: The Tairyou Jigoku' for the PlayStation 2, the latest budget-priced Japanese title from the ever-dependable D3, and it seems like it's only borderline awful, yay.

He explains in the intro: "What makes a Simple 2000 release worthwhile? Does the concept need to be original? Does the game have to be "good?" Or simply playable? There are roughly three grades of Simple 2000 games out there: those that are terrible and unplayable, those that are terrible and playable, and those that are not terrible. I had fully expected this game to fall into the first category, but I found something that just barely sneaks into the second."

So what's it all about? "The Tairyou Jigoku, which loosely translates as "The Overwhelming Hell," puts the player in the shoes of high school student Erika Mizusaki, who at the game's outset has lost her cell phone and has returned to her school to retrieve it. Unfortunately for her, it's not where she left it, and it turns out that a very Carrollesque white rabbit has swiped it. Erika, of course, gives chase, through several nightmarish environments, covering (roughly) four stages."

So it's all a bit Fear Factor, really: "These stages are infested with all manner of creepy-crawlies, from insects to arthropods to rats to rather more supernatural creatures. It seems that they must like Erika's choice of perfume, because they have a tendency to swarm her whenever she moves near them. When she's being swarmed, Erika panics and can't move until she's shaken off all the critters... proximity to any given biomass causes Erika to be panicked, as represented by an onscreen meter consisting of the Japanese words "zowa zowa," onomatopoeia for the chills running down poor Erika's spine. If the creepy lettering reaches across the screen without being lowered, Erika will simply collapse and die of fright." Neat!