Vile Exhumed Review: A banned masterpiece.

TRIGGER WARNING: This review will be talking about dark topics such as Misogyny and violence against women. If that sounds triggering I advise you avoid this article.

I'm sure just about everyone right now knows about the massive game censorship regime being pushed by Visa and Mastercard due to the words of a certain feminist group, so I'll spare you the backstory.

 In the massive ban wave, a promising indie horror game called Vile Exhumed was caught in the crossfire. The game's synopsis is that you investigate an old computer and piece together a dark story about a parasocial relationship, Misogyny, and violence against women. 

But Collective shout/mastercard whatever name 'big brother' is using for himself nowadays didn't see that, all they saw is that this game had adult themes and partial nudity and shot it on sight.

The game was banned from steam and forbidden from sale, but it's now freely available as shareware Here

Now I find the idea of playing a banned game very enticing and being an avid lover of morbid crap (See the skull rabbithole I went on here) I just HAD to give it a try.

I Installed the game and was greeted by this:

The game is essentially a point and click from the POV of an old school like windows 98 OS. All of the links here lead to different stuff that hold bits and pieces of a larger and more macabre story that reveals that whoever owned this computer before? had some dark secrets.

quick note, Past this point I will be spoiling the ENTIRE game, I highly recommend you play this for yourself. the games free and pretty short, I managed to get everything in all of twenty minutes. If you want to avoid spoilers, Go to the next highlighted section.

The first thing you wanna do when you play the game is just, look through everything, The paint thing has no purpose that I've found. the calculator though if you type in your Pin number (A four digit number you enter in on the title screen) you get a secret file that shows some grisly images. 

From there the next thing you want to look at is DLov.EXE, a dating site that your IP is blocked from. A minute or so later you keep getting popups until THIS happens

Clicking on "Kill her" seemingly restarts the computer, don't worry it's just aesthetic, the game doesn't restart.

after that you'll likely find yourself on Cat, just a site that lets the devs show off their pets.

the next step is Candy Corpse, a fan site dedicated to a pornstar named Candy corpse who makes horror based porn movies: there's a few hints and a bit of a story there to unpack but nothing secret at least that I've seen.

Next is VNS or Video Nasty Swap. A page dedicated to selling and trading 'video nasties' that being super grisley films, Cool enough is that the devs included an actual few video nasties like Driller Killer 1979 and the little shop of horrors 1960. 

A "Video Nasty" is a term referring to a film too disturbing or violent to be consumed and then banned, the UK was SUPER liberal with that and banned a ton of movies for being too fucked up.

and Naturally this game got banned. the irony is pretty thick eh?

This page has a bunch of different films, clicking to buy or trade doesn't do anything, the most interesting one is one called Hardcore Gore Whore 3, which along with giving you a popup, is already favorited.

VNS doesn't contain any secrets really, though to get EVERYTHING you do need to come back here.

Next is Mail.EXE, which is locked behind an email and password screen, luckily it gives you a hint, that hint being "the book of the head" 

Going back to the Candy corpse site, Her flick "Evil head" References that same line and calls it "Necronomicock" that being the password. the email itself looked you dead in the face in the games intro, that being Shootthedog77.

Getting the Email open is pretty important, There's a lot of hints and bits of the story in here. along with the video, viewing the trash is also valuable, you can find a minigame in there. 

The next site is FFVR, A regular video rental site, though clicking that middle image brings you to a page asking for a password. to get said password you need to enter in your email and The characters birthday, which you can find in their account on the candy corpse website, That being 03/12/1972. you enter that in, wait a few minutes and you get mail giving you the password. SUGARWATER. enter that in and you get a look as some of the porno flicks they sell and... that's it.

the next one is PARA.EXE, This website is an encryption protected file service type thing. and the password is hidden. but it gives you a hint.

See those three stars? where else have we seen stars? The VNS site! So now you go to all of the candy corpse videos and favorite them. When you come back you'll see the hint 

IMB ALA NCE

Enter IMBALANCE, and you're in. 

In here there ain't much to do, Sweetshop is a store that sells used underwear and hunting photos has photos of dead deer. Storage.EXE though has some valuable stuff but it needs a three digit pin, if you recall in the mail folder, there's payment information about a storage unit numbered 487 and inside is a bunch of creepy stalker photos coupled with some snuff pics, (Censored)

Closing PARA the next one up is User.Sys, this needs a four digit pin, The same one you used to unlock the game, I just used 1234 so no trouble there. 

Inside is a bunch of system information, alongside our villanous main characters name, Shawn Gerighs. the most important thing here though is what it says on the memory test. take a note of it. 

Up next is Message.exe it's an old school instant messenger, you have a few friends and coworkers to talk to here, all of which reveal some stuff about them and this computers previous owner. One friend, Wheretheresawill42 is a cop, and they sent a report that someone shawn messeged. you can find that email in the trash bin however you don't get the option to view it at least now that I saw.

the most interesting one though is the one titled "Molly the dolly"  it needs a password, and that password is that memory test, 4682974K and in that message reveals that Shawn did some... bad things to her.

the next one up is Vile.Mov but that should be saved for last. So onto Scent.EXE it brings you to a perfume shop, However all of these perfumes have a broken link with an error code. but if you look closer...

you'll notice one of these hearts is actually a link, click it and surprise you need a password. To get it, look close at the error messages in the perfumes. each error message has ONE letter, Piece them together and you get Wickedness. enter that in and you get this:

A Red room. You can place a bid of your choice but to my knowledge it doesn't do anything outside of giving you another email to read. 

Molly.EXE you need to wait a bit to access. After looking at molly the dolly in messenger you get a message from "Will" Who namedrops the name of her street. and that street name is the password to Molly. EXE

Inside Molly.EXE you find all sorts of messed up stuff. Pictures of her with blood, a few videos, one showing the beginning of an implied rape and break in, and a restraining order.

So now... Vile.MOV the password for this is once again in your emails. finding a vet record you can see the name "Ginny AKA misa" Entering Ginny gets you in. 

This one is what all the leadup is to, Inside here you find several explicitly gory photos of women, A nutjob email to Candy corpse detailing the obsession Shawn had over her, and a video...

the video is a stalkers dream, showing Shawn following someone, to their house, along with cut in shots of a bloody hand and them with a gag in their mouth...

Just a bit after that? you get an email from Found Footage video rental stating they found one of Candy corpses videos. once you read it? the game goes black as a phone rings, and you overhear a phone call as the game plays a video showing Missing persons posters and pictures of injured women.

the person on the other end of the phone calls us "VILE" and then the credits roll. Showing several more snuff images as they roll

and then the game ends.


SPOILERS OVER!


So, that's the game. Altogether it tells a pretty fucked story. and it was banned for it largely due to collective shout. Listen I'm an avid support of women's rights but I think somewhere CS lost the plot, They're just targeting everything with ADULT themes outright, 

Lets be clear VILE isn't for the faint of heart and it has really heavy themes and topics but if you just stop talking and bringing awareness to them and get to banning media that shows them in their ugly truth, then the only people you're helping are the EXACT people you're trying to codemn. You can't claim that you're "Helping women" when your ban wave is erasing the ugly conversation that has to be had. 

Vile isn't comfortable, and it shouldn't be. It's a mirror into some of the worst corners of human behavior. it's the kind of thing that you don't walk away from without feeling your skin crawl, especially because it almost puts you RIGHT in the seat of the villain. It's a very important work for showing fully and completely what goes on in the ugly corners of the world. and what did it get? banned. 

It's tragic, but at least the game can still be experienced via Shareware, If you read this far I HIGHLY recommend you give the game a play for yourself.