I was really looking forward to playing Cursed Mountain this week. Cursed Mountain is an adult title, and by adult I mean not a Mario game, for the Wii. Cursed Mountain is a horror game set in the Himalaya’s, and developed by Sproing. I feel it’s time for the Wii to graduate out of the kiddie-casual games and get into making serious minded games for people beside your 13 year-old cousin.

So, once the game showed up here at Monkey Labs I was excited to play it. Upon playing Cursed Mountain I was immediately struck by the complete and utter lack of fun.

Now, I know what you’re thinking, “Abraxas, it’s a horror game. It’s not meant to be fun it’s meant to be scary. Geesh.”

And, hey, you’re kind of right. For once. I mean, fun and horror don’t have to be the same thing. But, I want to point you to two of the best horror games to date: Silent Hill 2 and Fatal Frame .

Both of these games are scary AND fun to play. Both have an effective use of stillness to ratchet up tension, excellent sound tracks to increase a sense of unease, and well placed creatures to strengthen the impact of the horror elements. You are creeped-out but can’t stop because you want to see how the story plays out.

True story: back in the day, in my first apartment I was playing Silent Hill 2 at night. Out of consideration of my roommate, I was playing with the headphones on. Some crazy shit was going down in the game, I was being chased by the nurse things I think, anyway I was freaked the hell out when the screaming started. I just couldn’t handle it anymore, and decided to pack it in for the night. I pulled the headphones off and noticed the screaming hadn’t stopped. Knowing my roommate was too lame to have sneaked a girl into the house, I looked outside to see someone screaming and yelling while trying to hack their way through my neighbors door with a machete.

That’s how scary Silent Hill 2 is, it will drive people near you mad with fear. They’ll be trying to breakdown doors and stuff to get away.

By comparison, Cursed Mountain is just flat out boring.

It’s in a good setting that key horror element of isolation – the Himalayas. Can’t get anymore isolated than the top of the tallest mountains. But really, the game comes off as empty and dull. As an example, you start off climbing the mountain. Then you go through a flash back to how you got to the mountain. By flashback, I really mean you walk through an empty city.

Which, wow, walking. Haven’t done enough of that in a video game ever before. Or a survival horror game for that matter. I mean, we haven’t seen that since 1998 with Resident Evil 2.

So, you’re walking through the abandoned town where you a prompted to look through a portal to get the text, “what is that thing on the ground?” Using the look mechanic, you can plainly see THERE IS NOTHING ON THE GROUND! It’s a bare patch of stone. Nothing scary. Nothing gore covered. In fact, there was NOTHING!!

Which brings me to the writing for this game. It has the emotional complexity and subtlety of a 7th grader. Sure, it’s a 7th grader with an excellent grasp of grammar, but it’s still not scary, horrific, suspenseful, or even interesting.

You walk through this town, busting pottery to discover stuff. And, I know what you’re thinking, “Um, wasn’t this breaking things to find stuff done in the 80s?” Yeah, it was. I know what you’re going to ask. You’re asking, “What are you finding in these pots?” Well, it’s journal entries about how people are leaving the town because they’re scared. Who does that? Who writes in their journal, “I’m scared. I’m leaving town,” tosses the note into the nearest bit of pottery and leaves town?

No one! No one does that! That’s who. If you want to create a believable world, fill it with rational things that rational people do. Damn!

Oh, and to add the exciting walking simulation you’ve been playing so far, you get to jog. I know! So, cool! A feature that’s been in horror games since Resident Evil 2, and if you use it here you get attacked by ghosts.

Which sounds kinda neat, if you try to rush through an area the ghosts will hear you and come after you. Yeah, except it’s not that cool. You run, you get jumped by a ghost you can’t fight off and then it leaves after doing a set amount of damage to you.

Making it less a lame running feature and more a lame self-damaging feature.

The graphic elements of Cursed Mountain are about 10 years old. They are painted in the ever popular brown palette, creating an atmosphere of crap. Which is an interesting choice, and one that blends well with the crap writing, crap music, and crap creature placement. Even for the Wii, this is setting the bar really low.

Oh, and the cut scenes are a series of narrated stills. Which tells me the producers spared every available expense on this game. I appreciate that games are expensive to produce, I get that, but damn. This ain’t 1995, dude, you can put a few dollars into creating animated cut scenes.

The combat control, in some sort of odd attempt to use the natural motion capture of the Wii, is one of the weakest points of a weak game. Which is surprising, really, but there it is. The on screen prompts are confusing and require several attempts before being registered. Movement is unnatural and stiff. Any jumping or climbing you do get to do in this game are at preselected points meant to force you along the linear narrative and game board.

Although, I will give them props for researching Tibetan society and their Buddhist traditions. The development team really did their homework to incorporate those ideas and traditions into a Western game. And, I thought a lot of missed opportunity for irony. I mean, can you imagine a Buddha statue coming to life to beat your ass?

That’s just, well, funny.

All in all, Cursed Mountain is part of a burgeoning cross-genre of games and movies: they are one part horror and 10 parts boring. Making Cursed Mountain more a survival borror game than anything else.