Cursed Mountain
A gigantic snowy gust of fresh air
While the Wii continues to labour under the perception that it's only home to family friendly games, there's actually been a fair few titles appearing this year that fly in the face of such easy accusations. We've had MadWorld, one of the least family friendly games on any console, Resident Evil Archives and Dead Rising to name but three and now along comes Cursed Mountain, a tense survival horror adventure that relies on authentic Buddhist rituals and a realistic portrayal of the bleakness of life on the slopes of the Himalayas to provide it's unsettling atmosphere, rather than huge monsters and easy cliches.
Taking on the role of experienced mountain climber Eric Simmons you start the game in Tibet embarking upon a search of your bother Frank who's gone missing while exploring the Himalayan mountain Chomolonzo. Frank had been climbing in search of a mysterious artefact called a Terma at the request of an injured fellow climber when he seemed to vanish. With Frank's whereabouts unknown your aim is to search for clues to try and uncover his trail, as well as the reasons for his disappearance, while travelling up the mountain and experiencing for yourself its secrets.
Amidst the many Sherpa villages and Buddhist temples you'll pass through you'll uncover discarded diary pages and log books giving you glimpses into Frank's journey and the troubles he encountered. Rather than being a just simple plot device these snippets of information offer an interesting insight into Frank's mind, his distain for your own climbing prowess and an embarrassing lack of respect for the culture of the people he encounters on his climb. This fleshing out of Frank's character, especially his flaws, is an effective way of drawing you into the story and keeps it grounded in something universally identifiable, especially when the game's more spiritual elements come to the fore.
Perhaps surprisingly for a medium so used to creating it's own supernatural lore Cursed Mountain instead draws heavily on existing Buddhist spirituality for its spookiness. By depicting actual rituals and traditions, even if they're new to you, the game world instantly feels more believable although its fair to point out that these concepts are still often merely excuses for pretty standard gaming conventions. Cursed ghosts trapped in Bardo, a kind of Buddhist limbo where spirits await their next reincarnation, provide your most common foe and you'll have to use a technique taught to you early in the game called Third Eye to see into the Bardo and defeat them.
While CM's overarching climbing-up-a-mountain theme proves to be an effective, if not unnoticeable, method of masking what is essentially a completely linear experience it does also provide a sense of continual progress that pushes you ever forward. Perhaps Cursed Mountain's major failing is that after creating such a believable and authentic world to spend time in it then manages to often play just like many other survival horror games that have come before it. As you wander the mountain paths you spend your time searching for items everywhere you go and battling the hordes of spirits that descend upon you, much like you've done in games like Resident Evil many times before. Problems also arise when the well crafted sense of the tense and suspenseful gives way to the boring and uneventful, a transition that can happen a little too often at times. There are whole sections that could have done with a little more action and a lot less aimless wandering which is a shame. The proper mountain climbing sections that crop up from time to time lose their appeal fairly rapidly too, and you'll have to try far too many locked doors to find the ones that allow you through when you're searching villages.
However, it works more often than it doesn't and its then that Cursed Mountain is often very good indeed. There are regularly sections that aim to break up the normal gameplay by using the Wii's motion controls in various novel ways and these provide some of the game's highlights. One particularly impressive example is where you have to use the Wii remote as a walkie-talkie to listen to a friendly voice that guides you through a maze.
Combat also takes full advantage of motion control and while you'll start with only your trusty pickaxe as a weapon there's far more to fighting off ghosts as the game progresses. You'll soon start to gain access to ritual relics that enable you to perform a variety of new attacks. These tend to involve using your Third Eye ability to see into the Bardo realm where you'll be able to fire bolts of energy or perform healing rituals. I say perform because all these powers require you to actually cast them by putting the Wii remote through a series of movements designed to replicate symbolic rituals. Unfortunately this inventive twist on Wii combat isn't quite as impressive in practice as it sounds. While left and right movements are fine any symbol that requires forward thrusts can prove particularly unreliable. This can cause no end of frustration when you're in a frantic battle, especially if you're trying to heal yourself.
Interestingly, Deep Silver have been using night-vision style video clips of gamers playing Cursed Mountain in the dark to advertise the game's supposed ability to terrify. To be honest I didn't find it all that scary, especially in the jump-out-of-your-seat way these adverts lead you to expect. That's not to say it isn't unnerving, it is, but that's due to the all prevailing eerie atmosphere and ever present sense of foreboding rather than any constant stream of jumpy moments. Play the game in the dark on your own and it'll be all you can do to resist turning the heating on such is the effectiveness of the games depiction of exposed mountain life.
Even as Wii games go this is no visual stunner, however, what it lacks in pure graphical fidelity it more than makes up for in art design and atmosphere which it uses to create a highly immersive whole. The care taken to accurately depict the world you travel through on your climb, from the remote mountain settlements to the carefully thought out use of genuine Buddhist teachings and rituals; it all helps aid the feeling of immersion. Well implemented hand-drawn cut scenes push the ever interesting story along, while the whole voice cast give generally impressive performances.
Cursed Mountain deserves praise for existing at all, a Wii exclusive, deliberately mature, survival horror with neither Mii nor Mario in sight. The fact that it turns out to be both interesting and enjoyable as well makes it even more impressive. It's by no means perfect, the motion controlled combat can be a tad flaky and its pacing may be too languid for some, but those Wii owners looking for something a little more grown up would be well advised to put on their climbing boots give this a try.
80%
Comments
I pretty much agree with the points made, this is an accurate and fair review of the game. I feel on the whole a little more time polishing up the game would have raised this from just a very good game with flaws to a "classic".
There are little presentation niggles; cut scenes are slide-shows of still images, not a killer, but this smacks of a money-saving move, some of the movement is of. Eric jerks occasionally for no apparent reason and ghost that normally walk, albeit in a stylised fashion, suddenly 'glide' from side to side in order to become harder targets. Again I get the impression that the developer just couldn't afford the time or resources to create an animation that made this movement fit better with the rest of the non-player character animation. The rock-climbing sections were pointless, once you know to spend as little time as possible on the "crumbly" bits, it is just another trudge, except this time vertically. All this is forgiveable, even the slow turning of the character, which during combat can seem to take forever, can be forgiven. What cannot is the lousy motion controls for the compassion ritual, or exorcism. At first they seem to work well and the novelty and satisfaction of this method of 'finishing move' helps you ignore the other little niggles and get into the game. Unfortunately that does not last, soon you begin to notice that some motions are not recognised. O.K. It's still a good idea we can put up with a few misfires, but as the game progresses more and more use of the worst motion is called for and against more and more powerful bad guys. so for the first third of the game I was pretty much delighted, a few flaws, but still a novel game with a great atmosphere. by the time I reached base camp, about two thirds of the way thruogh, I was thoroughly pee'd off!
So much so that I was seriously debating whether to stop playing the game altogether. One bad encounter with a group of seven ghosts, who all seemed to need the most unreliable gesture two or three times to exorcise had me swearing very loudly indeed, especially after the twelfth time I died, because the motion controls were not recognised. Arrrgh!
After calming down, I reasoned that, the developer would have to be insane to release a game with controls this unreliable, so it must be me. Well, it was partly me. after some time experimenting I found that I could get the game to recognise the motions more often than not.
The motion that failed most often was the forward thrust, like a punch. the Wii remote itself got this right about three out of five times, but the same thrust with the nunchuck, would not work four out of five times.
Turns out A; you have to tip the nunchuck right back, so that the 'C' button is point directly up and then B; punch forward, not an easy movement for me and after a while actually painful. Perhaps this is about wrist flexibility? I'm an 'older gamer', but not yet decrepit. There is also a timing element that becomes more important as the rituals begin to require more gestures, again not properly explained in the instructions..
Still, this is a major failing, a little more polish, better instructions and better recognition of the motion controls would have elevated what ended up as a good game to a classic, must have game.
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