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Tell me to get back to rewriting this site so it's not horrible on mobile
I was waiting for you to say that.
Yodariquo said:So...broken camera, terrible combat and repeating the same few levels?
Oh you're mocking Eternal Darkness.
Well no, Cursed Mountain doesn't have any of that.
And Eternal Darkness, I'd say the camera was pretty sweet actually. Combat was okay, there were a few level repeats but there was different stuff to do in each one.
And you suck!
Then suddenly I have to waggle like a c*** to the rhythm to start this impossible boss fight.
An enclosed room with pillars and a boss that shoots and flies at you faster than you can run. I'm shooting this bastard, dodging his attacks but he never seems to die and there is nowhere to recharge your life despite me having 20 incense sticks.
Am I suppossed to use a specific weapon? Am I supposed to get in close and pick axe his ass?
Worst of all though, if you die you have to trot back down the mountain, skip the cut scene and waggle to the rhythm again, to get back to the boss. Argh.
gamingeek said:
Worst of all though, if you die you have to trot back down the mountain, skip the cut scene and waggle to the rhythm again, to get back to the boss. Argh.
Ugh, you are suppossed to click and drag the bad guy towards you. No problems then, I hope.
I know how to do the motion that people were having trouble with, seriously read the manual the pics show you how. If reviewers complain about it they aint read the manual. When the arrow looks like it wants you to pull the remote UP, no in the manual it shows you hold the remote or nunchuk upright vertically and thrust it forward.
Anyhow I'm slowly moving from selling this to keeping it, if that's any indication. The atmosphere is superbly engrossing, if only the running speed was faster and there was just a bit more of.... something to make it great. That's the strange thing about the game, the controls work fine, the visuals are good the design is competent, the battles are decent, story decent. There is nothing really that you can hone in on and fault, yet it just doesn't elevate itself in any other means than its location - which is admittedly, unique and atmospheric.
It's a very old school game, I think if it was released back on Xbox/Cube it would have a cult following. It's the kind of game where you walk up to a painting, press A and some text comes on screen "It's ritual painting of a sacrifice, horror is plastered on the woman's face" etc.
I've been playing this all weekend. The smoke and mist effects make my red and green dot problem go wild, its crazy.
But still even through that the story and world is compelling enough to make you want to make it all the way through. As well as the challenge of making it to the top of the mountain.
I finally figured out what this game is missing - puzzles! There are none, unless you count finding the odd key to open a door. And they could do so much more with item management, food, oxygen etc.
I can now see why reviewers were complaining about motion controls. In the first half of the game its okay. Later when you make it above the monastaries the game throws 5 sometimes 6 bad guys at you at once and requires 5-6 gestures to be performed per bad guy to dispatch them.
So when one motion doesn't work, its really f****** annoying. You can just blast them to kill them but its harder as your shots aren't that powerful.
Also they sometimes position the enemies to your exact opposite sides, 90 degrees on either side of you and they attack at the same time. You cannot turn around in time to get them. Very annoying. Its all do-able though.
Anyhow I didn't realise how much further I had to go, trekking up the cities and villages was a long trek but then you make it to the snowy uncharted part of the mountain. Whooooooooooooooooooooooooooooa. What an atmosphere. A skyline that rivals Oblivion for size, a trecherous path, slow and wind blustering by you. It's a relentless atmosphere, in fact the whole game has atmosphere going for it. I play for 2 hrs at a time which is saying something as I usually play games in 40 min chunks. Its an engrossing game.
It throws little annoying things at you though which tend to spoil things just as you are really enjoying it. Like walking on beams with no tutorial, or not telling you the exact way to beat a boss -gamefaqs time- or having the broken summit landscape being too realistic with little indication of where you are suppossed to be going. A slow walking speed makes backtracking painful.
But its a very unique game, I keep finding myself comparing it to endless ocean, because it recreates a certain atmosphere and environment you never thought you would experience. Standing on top of that mountain was a beautiful, bewildering, engrossing experience...... when I wasn't getting my ass lost.
It's a shame that there isn't that X-factor and a lot less irritation, coupled with a faster running speed. This could have been very decent. So far despite its flaws there is something just so darn compelling about it that it makes you want to push on and on. Oh and the story revelations were great.
It's about a 7.5 game so far, could go up or down.
I'm nearing the summit on this game.
I really want to love it, I really want to shout out that yes its worth buying, yes its worth it. But everytime you start to enjoy it, they throw something frustrating in there to annoy you.
Invisible walls for instance, you can climb a freaking mountain but not put your foot over a 3 foot high mound of snow.
The worst offender is the walkways, think Prince of persia walking over narrow beams and balancing. Only in CM you use the wiimote to tilt, which is actually a good idea. Its implementation is horrid though, wholly unresponsive and it becomes like a gamble. There are only 5 of them in the whole game but you will find yourself dying about 10 times on each one. Thank god for checkpoints.
Also the enemies are sometimes unfairly placed on opposite sides of you and battles that can seem impossible become do-able if you strategise. The battles do become repetitive after a while because the game has no puzzles whatsoever.
However, despite all this frustrating crap that is interspersed, the game is SO engrossing and compelling that I really haven't been able to put it down. It nails the hostile loneliness of climbing a mountain. It feels almost like the end of Return of the King when Sam and Frodo were fighting up the side of Mount Doom. If you've ever wanted to know what it looks and feels like to climb a mountain, get this game as its certainly one of those experiences you want to try out.
The story is very emotional too, going after your brother, and you dont know if he is dead or not. If you are a younger brother it will particularly impact you emotionally.
So until I complete it, my score would hover between a 7.5 and an 8. Depending on how things are wrapped up.
Do I even need to review this when these sum my feelings up?
Play Magazine
Fantastic atmosphere, setting and story will chill your bones and nerves. But spotty controls and some tedious pacing keep Cursed Mountain from reaching its full potential.
Read Full Review >Play.tm
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.
Read Full Review >
On final boss, once again the game throws shit your way just as you are enjoying it. You have to fight 6 guys before climbing up, facing off with the boss. The checkpoint isn't at the boss, so you have to fight the same six guys and climb up again to try again.
They dont tell you how to beat the boss, you are supposed to run close and wait for his claw to get caught in the ground. Because of the camera angle and lack of quick turn its difficult to know when this is happening. The slow running speed hurts it too.
On my list of games I will get on the wii when they are dirt cheap.
gamingeek said:
On final boss, once again the game throws shit your way just as you are enjoying it. You have to fight 6 guys before climbing up, facing off with the boss. The checkpoint isn't at the boss, so you have to fight the same six guys and climb up again to try again.
They dont tell you how to beat the boss, you are supposed to run close and wait for his claw to get caught in the ground. Because of the camera angle and lack of quick turn its difficult to know when this is happening. The slow running speed hurts it too.
God I hate that!
Dvader said:Thanks for the impressions.
On my list of games I will get on the wii when they are dirt cheap.
that will be very soon now. i'm already seeing this for under £12 on european websites. feel a bit silly having paid launch price, but oh well it seemed like a good idea at the time
___
Listen to Wu-Tang and watch Kung-Fu
Dvader said:Thanks for the impressions.
On my list of games I will get on the wii when they are dirt cheap.
Yeah it's not brilliant and is very slow. Dont want to get anyone excited, but its an old school experience. It doesn't really change in pacing or gameplay or tone from the first city to the final boss but the challenge, story and experience of climbing a mountain is one that will have you engrossed for long spells, presuming you can put up with the slow pace. And I mean SLOW.
Very memorable though and I will be playing it again just for the atmosphere.
On the other hand, the realisation is really so-so. Graphics could be polished, invisible wall better implemented, and closed doors should not be only texture! The game was also really slow paced and re-playability is very low. I would have like it a little more scary too, but well I just love survival horror ^^
So, awesome story and characters, mediocre realisation. I won't advice it at full price but for if you find it at around 20 euros it's not a bad deal.
Mekere said:I think that Cursed mountain is difficult to rate. Parts of it are just awesome, the story, the characters, the voice acting, the scenery is just perfect. A game with non-stereotypical characters, with expressed human feelings (envy, jealousy, duty...) frankly it's so rare that the game is worth it just for that.
On the other hand, the realisation is really so-so. Graphics could be polished, invisible wall better implemented, and closed doors should not be only texture! The game was also really slow paced and re-playability is very low. I would have like it a little more scary too, but well I just love survival horror ^^
So, awesome story and characters, mediocre realisation. I won't advice it at full price but for if you find it at around 20 euros it's not a bad deal.
I like it just for the experience. When I finally got to the top of that mountain and looked around in the blizzard, it was just an experience I had never expected to see in a game. I can't put my finger on what it needed exactly, the setting was perfect, I guess it just needed a core gameplay that was a little more engaging and intricate. SOmetimes the ghost battles were overdone.
angrymonkey said:Would have liked a little more eternal darkness. Like playing short interludes to the main game between chapters as different members of the expedition all coming to a bad end that help you to piece the story together. Or being one of the monks when the shit hits the fan. The basics were there they just needed to push things more creatively.
Because that's the vibe it gives off. I played for 2 and a half hours straight and it looks and feels like what Eternal Darkness would be if played from an over the shoulder viewpoint.
Eternal Darkness is better because it has multiple characters and locations, some gimmicky but fun effects and a more compelling narrative. But in control, visuals, atmosphere and mechanics Cursed Mountain feels almost like a Silicon Knights game.
Visually its pretty decent, yes it does look like that albeit a might less sharp.
More-pics
The opening city is huuuuge and has some of the best lighting and shadowing out there, the lighting is high contrast and rivals games on more powerful machines. The art is pretty great but yes the textures when viewed up close can be low resolution. Like a poster once said, it simultaneously has some of the best and worst Wii visuals out there. Many times it changes camera angles on you, giving you spectacular views of the surrounding scenary. There is even one mindblowing mountainside that looks like it has full on high res shaders on, I'm not talking low res Xbox 1, I'm talking high res next gen. Strangely its one mountainside and scanning around the rest of the environment the others are a combination of matt painting and flat 3-D.
Anyhow, other times, interiors of buildings etc can look very PS2-ish.
One thing that completely stands out its its atmosphere, it's thick with it and it wholly engrosses you in its environment with eerie sound effects like tones, chanting and even silence and wind. In audio terms it's almost an Exorcist style masterclass in using sound to alarm the senses.
The games controls are a mid-way point between old school slow clunkathons and new style action games. Whilst sluggish compared to many action games they are a far cry from old survival horror games and do a good job and leaving you just struggling enough to be scared.
From the reviews I can understand why they were having problems with the motion controls. There is one movement which is tricky to pull off, but I have found out how to do the upwards vertical wii remote movement with 75% efficiency.
The game at first almost feels like an Endless Ocean style jaunt through a survival horror game, almost relying on environmental atmosphere to make the game more of an experience than a game. Your basic structure is walking through semi-linear (albeit large) environments, picking up journals (which give you in depth knowledge of the story), fighting ghosts and collecting items.
You can use the third eye, sort of like a metroid style visor to see the unseen symbols and attack ghosts with a sort of spiritual gun. Pointer controls are excellent and if you want to gain back health you can perform a ritual to make the ghosts be at peace.
The ghosts are excellent in that they dissipate and re-appear, keeping you on your toes and tense.
So at this point it sounds all good, but that is not the whole story. The basic walking speed is perilously slow and the running speed is more like light jogging speed.
There is nothing inherently wrong with the game but there is not much that pushes it into being a special game that you can't miss. If its cheap get it. Otherwise this is rental territory. It's great in the sense that its another one of these unique games you can't experience anywhere else and I am glad that I got to play it - I will be pretty much engrossed for the rest of the play time I'm sure. But I would not reccomend a purchase unless you can get it cheap.
But you must be able to appreciate an old school feeling survival horror/ adventure game with slow pacing and atmosphere.