Gaming Trend

Gaming Trend Review

by Mike Repella

You can usually count on two things when playing any survival horror game: 1. There will be zombies or some form of zombiefied person. 2. Most of the scares will come from the developers making things jump out at you. I’m happy to report that Cursed Mountain for the Wii sheds the zombie cliché entirely and attempts to toss the second cliché by creating a game atmosphere that conveys a sense of loneliness and dread, much more so than a dog jumping through a window ever could. Still, as unique as the developers tried to make Cursed Mountain they still left in some traditional survival horror elements that should have been tossed, especially after the example made by Dead Space and even Resident Evil 5.

 

Cursed Mountain puts you in the role of an experienced mountain climber named Eric Simmons, who discovers his brother has gone missing while leading an expedition to find an ancient artifact at the summit of a mountain in the Himalayas. Eric quickly discovers that the towns leading up to the top of the mountain are deserted and have been cursed. The souls of the dead are roaming freely between the real world and Nirvana. The developers have done an excellent job creating a game world that truly makes you feel alone. The towns are deserted, the wind is howling, snow is blowing, and you feel 1000 miles from civilization even though you are standing in the middle of a small Sherpa village. It’s this feeling the game gives that provides the Cursed Mountain's scares more than anything else. Adding to that lonely feeling is the fact that each level takes you higher and higher up the mountain, with the start of each level showing you the current elevation. Many times throughout the game you can look back down the mountain to places where you have already been. It’s a cool effect that really adds to the game.

The game’s storyline is based heavily on the Buddhist religion and progresses through the collection of pages from diaries scattered about each level, as well as through in-game cut scenes. The story will start out a bit confusing, especially if you know nothing about Buddhism, but more and more gaps will be filled in along the way and you will start to learn why the main character’s brother is missing and what exactly happened eventually becomes clear. 

While there aren’t any zombies in the game, there are more than enough ghosts in Cursed Mountain to fill two games. The biggest problem with this is that I quickly got bored with fighting the same old ghost over and over again. The ghosts all behave the same, they are all killed in the same manner and fighting them gets boring very quickly. There are occasional boss fights that help to break up the monotony a little bit, but they are few and far between and in no way make up for the overwhelming repetitive nature of the ghosts.

In order to actually kill a ghost you have to either hit it with your pick axe or shoot it with your magical staff until it becomes weak, and then you have the ability to enter a first person viewing mode where you can activate a quick time event wherein you must move the Wii controller and nunchuck in the correct direction to kill the ghost. Most of the time the motion controls respond correctly, but for whatever reason the game has a difficult time detecting a forward thrust of both the Wii controller and nunchuck. If the game doesn’t detect your motions in time then the ghost lives on and you have to start the entire process over again.

 

The main character also controls rather stiffly. His turning speed is slow and he is by no means nimble. The main character controls very much like any given character in a Silent Hill game. In this day and age that is just not good enough.

I always have high hopes for the visuals for games that are developed specifically for the Wii. It seems that if your only concern is getting the game running on one system, then you should be able to max out that system’s abilities. Nintendo and Sony are able to do it with their games, so the same should ring true for third party developers right? Well in this case Cursed Mountain looks impressive in some parts, and extremely average in others. Developer Deep Silver certainly crafted an engine capable of making realistic looking snow blowing around and they even created fairly realistic looking mountains with a long draw distance. But it is ultimately this realistic approach that hurts other parts of the visuals. The character models in particular can’t stand up to the bigger consoles and the overall building textures are very drab. For some reason with this game the good really stands out, and it makes the bad elements look worse than they really are.

I will compliment the game for its sound. The developers could have very easily gone with stock generic moaning sounds for the ghosts and typical creepy voices mixed into the background, but they did not. Instead we do get the sound of wind blowing, and the main character often pants in fear, which pulls you into the atmosphere. The game is also fairly long with each level taking about an hour to complete and a total of 13 levels. If you rent this one you will probably have to keep it for a few days to get through it. Once the game is done, it is done though, as there is no multiplayer, hidden levels, or trophies.

 

I can see fans of the Silent Hill series really enjoying this game. It has a slow deliberate pace, the setting is very creepy, and there are some genuine scares in this survival horror mystery. But everything is not perfect. The game is very monotonous after the first couple of levels, the graphics are inconsistent and the motion controls don’t always work. So if you’re a Wii owner and a fan of slower paced survival horror games then give Cursed Mountain a shot. Everyone else should probably rent it before they buy it.

Gaming Trend Score

74

1. Graphics: 80
2. Audio: 85
3. Controls: 70
4. Gameplay: 70
5. Value/Replay: 70
6. OVERALL:74