The Scary Door

Back during GAME's firesale I picked up a copy of Cursed Mountain for £1.98 and about a week ago I finally got around to putting it into my Wii. I went in with very low expectations as the game had received 'mixed or average reviews', with most positive comments relating to the game's setting and intent, with heavy criticism of the controls.

I must say that the game starts very strongly, your character's brother went missing on Chomolonzo (the titular mountain) and you're looking for him. You arrive at the village of Lhando to find that it is deserted, all the food spoiled, and there is a briefly glimpsed strange ghostly entity running about. As you move through the city you collect notes and diary entries which give you hints about what may have happened, but nothing definitive.

It is during this early exploration of the city that you discover the first 'problem' with the controls, you can move at two speeds, slow walk or slow jog which just feels wrong when most other games give you the ability to quickly dash about. However, I like the forced slower pace because it means you can't just run past any game areas that are potentially dangerous (as you walk through the city the camera will often shift to an oblique angle and the colour drain from the screen making you convinced that something bad is about to happen) and secondly it seems more realistic, you are after all high in the Himalayas so the air is quite thin.

Eventually you meet a strange monk who teaches you to open the third eye, which enables you to see runes throughout the city and interact with them using a magic ice axe (it's wrapped in various holy ribbons). Next you finally get to come face to face with one of the ghosts, the first time you simply flail to fight them off, the second time you hack at them with the axe. Then your axe gains the ability to fire energy bursts and the game stops being scary.

The ability to pew pew laser the ghosts, and also get a free heal in the process, hurts the atmosphere of the game. What makes it worse is that it instructs you how to do this in an on screen tutorial after which there is a cut scene that tries to retroactively say that it was a strange and daunting experience. Up until now your character's various outbursts of "what's going on?" have matched your own confusion, but this time I knew exactly what I was doing, I was using this axe shaped gun to defeat a baddie.

This highlighted for me that what makes horror game scary is the unknown and feeling of potential risk. Giving me an energy blaster so early on ruined this. Making me flail at the first ghost before getting up the courage to actually take a swing at the second was the correct way to do things. The game had previously stated that the way to regain health was to burn an incense stick at a shrine, so the idea getting in close to battle a ghost felt risky. Letting me fight from a distance removed this feeling of risk, making matters even worse was that when using this distance fighting method you can perform a finishing seal which will restore part of your health.

It is a shame because if they had made trying to run from the ghosts a legitimate strategy, at least at the start, then it would have created an interesting dynamic, especially considering how slowly you jog.