The Vampires: The Ring That Kills Torrent
When randomly browsing Steam last weekend, I stumbled across this lo-fi, 90s era-looking Vampire Survivors game. Strong Castlevania flavors and the low price pulled me in, as well as a promise of becoming an insanely powerful monster slayer. Over this week, the game has been exploding in gamer communities, even garnering up to 80k views on Twitch. The likes of Lirik, MOONMOON, Sodapoppin, and so many more have streamed the game. Word spread organically about this little game (that barely has two levels!) without the need for any marketing or effort, really.
The Vampires: The Ring That Kills torrent
Vampire Survivors isn't that easy, especially at first. In a game where you're continuously assaulted by bigger and bigger monster waves, your character needs to carefully move around the endless stages, taking as little damage as possible. By gathering gems, your character levels up and gets new weapons, each one firing automatically. Getting the right combination of weapons and accessories takes a bit of practice. Read on with our guide and delve into your own hype runs.
Immortality spells allow witches to alter the age of living beings to the point of an indefinite lifespan. Witches, as servants of Nature, cannot become immortal and practice their witchcraft and may instead use age-altering spells to extend their lifespans beyond normal means. In some instances, immortality spells concurrently result in the creation of new immortal species. Immortal beings, however, are a direct violation of Nature's rule that all living things must die; therefore, there are consequences that act as a balance, a loophole that can undo such magic. For example, the creation of immortals resulted in the creation of doppelgängers as a balance, whereas the binding ingredients for the creation of vampires became their greatest weaknesses.
Protection spells allow witches to provide protection to a target as a sort of insurance. Protection can vary based on the user's requirements however, most protection spells seen thus far have been used against immediate death. They can come in the form of enchantments such as a daylight ring's protection against sunlight. Protection spells do come with restrictions such as one use per spell or protection from a specific form of death (burning from sunlight, supernatural death etc.) most likely due to nature's rule that all living beings must die. Thus, it is highly likely that protection spells do not cover natural death (old age). It is highly possible that protection spells protect the soul and prevents one from truly dying as they are done beforehand in anticipation of danger/immediate death and dying before casting said spell would require a resurrection spell.
Director: Terence FisherCast: Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Michael GoughDirected by the incomparable Terence Fisher, written by Jimmy Sangster, pairing Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee (with Lee getting actual lines for the first time), and going all out for colour, glamour, sex and blood, Hammer's Dracula aligns the elements and distils the formula that powered the studio for the next two decades. Sangster's bold screenplay at once eviscerates Bram Stoker's novel and sets the narrative free. With the locations transposed and limited to Romania and half the 'dramatis personae' excised, we're left with a lean adventure. The Lugosi film is a creaky slow-burn, but Hammer's is a swashbuckler. Lee, of course, gets to be urbane and darkly seductive, but there's also genuine savagery to the moments when he gets to bare his teeth.Read The Empire Review
Director: Tomas AlfredsonCast: Kåre Hedebrant, Lina Leandersson, Per RagnarWe all know children are terrifying, but Let The Right One In takes spooky kids and makes them almost too relatable for comfort. Simply trying to survive like countless vampires before her, Eli (Leandersson) strikes up a bittersweet friendship with social pariah Oskar (Hedebrant), offering him salvation from his less-than-ideal home situation. Based on John Ajvide Lindqvist's bestseller and set in Stockholm, it's not just the threat of being offed by a vampire that make this an incredibly effective Scandi scarefest, with themes of loneliness, anxiety and alcoholism helping it slip effortlessly into your bloodstream. It's no surprise Hollywood clamoured for a remake.Read The Empire Review
Director: Robert EggersStarring: Anya Taylor-Joy, Ralph Ineson, Kate DickieWith its meticulous period setting and language, The Witch comes across as much like The Crucible as it does your average demonic possession horror. In fact, there's really nothing average about The Witch at all: a devastating psychological ordeal that works as well taken at face value (the goat IS the Devil) as according to more complex theories. The cryptic events are never fully explained, leaving The Witch ambiguously unsettling.Read The Empire Review
Director: George A. RomeroCast: Duane Jones, Judith O'Dea, Karl HardmanWhenever you watch an episode of The Walking Dead or read a Max Brooks novel or even fiddle with your smartphone on Plants vs Zombies, you have George A. Romero to thank. Nobody else has contributed more to the modern conception of zombies than the bearded genius from the Bronx, and no film has kickstarted a subgenre so enduring or fruitful. Night Of The Living Dead is scary, sure (its violence caught audiences by surprise at the time) but it's also surprisingly witty: a socially cognisant satire from a politically loaded time. Little wonder that Quentin Tarantino once claimed the "A" in George A. Romero stood for "A Fucking Genius".Read The Empire Review
Director: John CarpenterCast: Adrienne Barbeau, Jamie Lee Curtis, Tom AtkinsA chilly yarn about ghost pirates exacting their revenge on a small coastal town, The Fog is so explicitly a campfire tale that it even begins with a scout troop sitting around a seaside blaze, with time for just one more story. Carpenter's follow-up to the classic Halloween saw some post-production tinkering to make the scares more explicit, and when you know that you can definitely spot the reshoot joins. But it doesn't affect what remains perhaps Carpenter's most purely atmospheric film.Read The Empire Review
Director: Alfred HitchcockCast: Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, Vera MilesImagine a trip to see Psycho in 1960. Its deliberately oblique marketing, fronted by Hitchcock himself, would have prepared you for a motel to feature prominently but not much else. The opening 20-odd minutes must have seemed like a pretty standard noir set-up, with Janet Leigh eloping with a bunch of money and the tantalising possibility of a new life that lasts precisely as long as her next trip to the shower. Then came the full-bore shock of that brutal knifing, each stab driven home by Bernard Herrmann's jarring score, unexpected and almost entirely without precedent. Audiences must have wondered if it wasn't Hitch himself who, in the nicest possible way, was the real psycho here.Read The Empire Review
Director: Brian De PalmaCast: Sissy Spacek, Piper Laurie, Nancy AllenCarrie was among the first films to utilise that most terrifying supernatural force: puberty. Stephen King's novel recognised the trials of adolescence as ripe ground for horror, and found a worthy suitor for his first cinematic adaptation in director Brian De Palma, who brings the tale to life with sadistic relish and intelligent, daring camerawork. Sissy Spacek, meanwhile, imbues Carrie with childlike innocence and genuine pathos, blotted only by mild bouts of, erm, telekinetic murder. It's a testament to her range that, come that prom finale, you find yourself feeling simultaneously sympathetic and scared shitless.Read The Empire Review
Director: John CarpenterCast: Kurt Russell, Keith David, David Clennon, T.K. CarterWho can you trust? And when you rely on other people to survive, what does that do to the paranoia levels? That's the key to John Carpenter's freezing chiller, set at a remote Antarctic research station. An otherworldly discovery brings blood, guts, body horror and twisty storytelling, all anchored by Kurt Russell's charisma and Rob Bottin's exemplary effects work. It'll make you itch with suspicion and recoil at the more gruesome scenes. The Thing deserved a fairer shot on release; thank goodness it has long since earned cult status.Read The Empire Review
Director: Stanley KubrickCast: Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Scatman Crothers, Danny LloydStephen King hates it, of course. Contemporary critics were lukewarm. Initial box-office returns were middling. The Academy Awards flatly ignored it. Stanley Kubrick, unbelievably, was even nominated for a 'Worst Director' award at the inaugural Razzies. (He 'lost' to Robert Greenwald's Xanadu). It wasn't a fun shoot either, by all accounts. Kubrick forced Shelley Duvall to do 127 takes of one scene, a record according to The Guinness Book Of Records. The infamous "Here's Johnny!" scene took three days and 60 doors. Both lead actors left the shoot exhausted and resentful.What a difference a bit of hindsight makes. As with a lot of Kubrick's work, time has been kind, and it now seems blindingly obvious that The Shining is a masterpiece without parallel: precise, meticulous, surreal, visually astonishing, a shimmering study of a descent into madness. The ultimate horror movie.Read The Empire Review
In RINGS, the cycle of the mysterious video and subsequent deaths continues. After a plane crash kills the latest victim, a professor (Johnny Galecki), visits an estate sale and buys an old VCR. Inside he finds the death-causing tape and watches it; he then receives the inevitable phone call that he'll die in seven days. He saves his own life by "passing on" the curse to others, including clean-cut college student Holt (Alex Roe) and his girlfriend, Julia (Matilda Anna Ingrid Lutz). With the curse resting on Julia, she and Holt begin investigating, using the images she sees in the deadly video. They're led to a dying small town and the home of a blind man (Vincent D'Onofrio) who may know more than he lets on.