'Ju-On: The Grudge' (Wii)

Also available on: N/A
Genre: Horror
Developer: Feelplus
Publisher: Rising Star Games

There's nothing more we like at Digital Spy than a good horror game. We listed our favourites this time last year in our Top Ten Scariest Games feature, which was no easy task thanks to countless other games that could have made the cut.

However, since last year there's been very little in the way of new releases that have made us even think about sleeping with the lights on, Resident Evil lost a bit of its atmosphere with the fifth instalment, while Silent Hill 5 was hardly the jewel in the series' crown, and it was especially disappointing considering it had the power of the next gen behind it.

Maybe Ju-On: The Grudge could turn things around? After all, the films were pretty scary, regardless of which version you saw, and with the promise that it is less of a game and more of a "fright simulator" it has to be scary, right? Wrong. The only screaming you'll do while playing Ju-On: The Grudge will be down to the cumbersome controls and sluggish game speed.

Things start off well. The first episode kicks off with your pet pooch running into an abandoned factory as the player follows hot on his heels. Things are rather dark, so the player whips out the flashlight and searches the dank mess of a factory for keys to locked doors and other items to get through and retrieve the mutt. From a visual and audio point of view, the game's beginnings are impressive. The minuscule glare from the flashlight means that only small parts of the rooms are revealed; industrial lighting allows for slightly more areas to be seen, but bathed in an eerie coloured glow. The areas that you can see look great - although slightly less so if you actually examine them too closely - with lots of rusted walls and items haphazardly strewn about the place. The sound effects are also rather chilling, with plenty of things going bump in the night and familiar (to anybody who has seen the films) character noises.

However, for all of the presentation plus points, the actual game controls like a mess, and the gameplay variety - as well as the set piece scares - soon grow tiresome, even within the first chapter. In order to move about, players point the torch in the direction they wish to travel and then press the B button to walk forward. Speaking of walking, the actual movement of the player is so slow that you'll be forgiven for attempting multiple additional moves in order to speed things up even though deep down you know that this is as fast as you'll ever go. The pointer controls are also very clumsy and irritating, with so many inconsistencies that you'll end up wildly swinging your torch, despite barely moving your arm. Eventually, the walking and overly sensitive pointer controls become so annoying that you will wave wildly, shaking your fist at the screen in rage, which is when you know it's time to take a break. Although without any checkpoints or saving options you won't be able to continue where you left off, which almost forces you to carry on.

Walking around slowly and pointing at things is pretty much it from a gameplay point of view, with the exception of the various keys you need to find in order to get through a locked door. There are no puzzles as such, but there are action sequences, which involve shaking off arms that grab you, or moving the Wii Remote in a desired direction when ghostly beings corner you and you need to get away. The set piece scares, although welcome, also suffer from motion sickness, the player often seeing the game over screen thanks to the computer not recognising the direction you are frantically pointing the Remote in. Of course, as frustrating as this is, it wouldn't be so bad if you were able to continue from where you left off, but alas, it's back to the beginning, forcing players to shamble through the whole debacle again, knowing exactly where to go and what to do, but still taking just as long to do it thanks to the shuffling speed of the character, whose movement is so slow that it's almost like they don't want to get out of the place.

When you do finally complete the episode, there are only four more to go, which means that the game doesn't last very long, which would be a travesty and a waste of money for a decent game, but is still too long for this one. Replayability - there is none. Nothing you've seen before is really worth seeing again, and in all honesty, nothing you see past the first five minutes is worth seeing again; although you will, which means the scares get pretty old, pretty quickly. Surprisingly, there is a multiplayer element to Ju-On: The Grudge - a second player is able to join in and randomly scare player one by pressing their buttons and making things pop up or out at you. It's a novel way to include more people in the experience, but sadly it's just not an experience worth sharing and so feels like a redundant feature. The second player's motivation will either see them pressing for lots of scares out of boredom, or not bothering at all, also out of boredom.

It really is a shame that Ju-On: The Grudge plays so terribly, because it's got the look, sound and atmosphere of a decent game, but nothing else. If the developers had included some true puzzles, a proper storyline, and above all, decent controls, it could have shaped up to be half decent at least, but as it stands, the only grudge will be between players and the person at the counter who didn't try to talk them out of buying this scarily bad game.


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