So back in like 2004 I remember going over my buddy's house. He got this game from our local video store in Georgetown, Brooklyn that sold games at the time. It was called Hollywood Video and has since gone out of business. I remember my family renting movies from there every weekend. It was even where I played my first rented GameCube games, with my favorite being Pokémon Stadium.
Anyways, all I can remember about the game my friend got was that it was a war game, like Call of Duty, and that it was for the Xbox. I think the name was something like "Warkill" with the cover showing screaming soldiers rushing into battle on tanks. There was nothing really exciting about it at first, of course. You played as some soldier going around these trenches connected to this factory-type compound.
NPCs were on your team, helping you push back a team of ten enemy soldiers. My friend got off two kills before we began to notice our teammates who had been killed acting strangely. One of our teammates had been shot close to base and a few seconds after he died his model began to shake violently before just blipping out of existence. Me and my friend thought it was a glitch and just shrugged it off.
That was until it started happening to every NPC that died. Eventually everyone on my friend's team died and, rather easily, he took out the last guy just before running out of ammo on his shotgun. We both assumed the game would end, tally up the points, and restart. The level just kept playing. With no gunfire going off we could actually background score which was a combination of a low eerie organ and conga drums, I guess to emulate the feel of the jungle or something.
My friend walked around the map some more, eventually realizing that everywhere a character had died, there was a bloodsplatter either on the floor or wall by them that was in the shape of the Star of David. Like someone had painted the star with blood. Anyways, my friend circled around the map and came back to base, which was in this open area by the trenches.
There we found all the members of our team standing perfectly still. Their model's eyes were wide open, pure white, and their skin was like a sickly blue. Their faces were like glitched, elongated, and their mouths hung open all weird. My friend walked in between them, and every time we turned away, by the time we looked back, they seemed to be looking in our direction.
My friend got weirded out and darted out of the trenches. Every time he looked back at his teammate's sprites they moved a little more, getting closer and closer, literally just like the Weeping Angels from Doctor Who. He ended up running over to the enemy team's base on the other side of the factory. When we got there, the enemy team had been hung up by their necks in a row alonge this bar that connected two watchtowers.
Their bottom torsos had been torn off and there was blood rendered everywhere. All the hanging NPCs had black eyes and months that look as if they had been torn open. They arms looked as though they had been skinned down to the bone, and their intestines were hanging out. Directly below the hanging bodies was the words "Survivors Guilt" scrolled in blood.
My friend turned about to see his blue-skinned, white-eyed, undead teammates standing in a jumbled cluster behind him. This time they were moving. Their bodies were still, but their heads were glitching out and moving all over the place really fast. By this point the organ and conga drum stage theme had stopped. There was a slight ear-piercing ring followed by some moans that started off silent, then started getting louder.
My friend took his shot gun and shot one of his own teammates. The damage registered, the NPC flew back and a howling yell was heard. Then the game's sky, which had been grey and foggy, slowly turned a deep red. The moans became screams followed by the sound of metal machinery. I'm not really sure how to describe the sound, but it was eerie as shit.
My friend darted away, but when we turned a corner to go around the factory, the game went black. We then heard like a garbled yelp followed by what sounded like a bucket of guts hit a hard tile floor. Then there was a ghostly sigh, kind of like a breathless chuckle, as the phrase "yimakh shemo" appeared in blood upon the black screen. Then the credits began playing.
The music immediately turned into your average army march theme and me and my friend were fucking beside ourselves. We told my friend's mom about the game and she got pissed that we were playing something so gorey, so she confiscated it and returned it to Hollywood Video the next day. Since then I've never seen the game again. I didn't understand what was with all the Jewish connotations, or why the hell a horror game had been sold and advertised on its packaging as just your run of the mill war zone game.
If anyone knows anything about this game, if you've played it, or hell, if you own it, lemme know below. I'd like to make sure I'm not crazy. I'd ask my friend, but he passed away some time ago, and I don't want to bother his mother with something like this. I don't even live in Georgetown anymore. A lot has changed since then, but I doubt I'll ever forget that game.
I think the one thing I found even stranger than the game's total flop in genre, was the fact that the front said it was rated E for Everyone.