Cursed Mountain: Hands On

When Sir Ed "knocked the bastard off", he never said anything about ghost towns, tomes of ancient knowledge or healing shrines. That's either because these things only exist in the world of make believe, or he was too modest to say he battled an entire village of wandering souls as well as conquering Everest for the first time. Whatever the reason, Deep Silver are giving you the chance to do that very thing on the Nintendo Wii.

You'll play as mountain climber Eric Simmons, as he embarks on a quest among the chilly Himalayas to find his brother. Frank, an experienced mountain climber, has gone missing, and it's up to Eric to find out what has happened to him. Starting in the village of Lhando, Eric finds himself surrounded by ghosts, headless corpses and more scary nooks and crannies than he can shake a stick at. And there is work to be done.

Early during our hands-on, we found our way to a magic ice pick, which is pretty handy for taking out the lost souls wandering about. They don't like Eric stalking around their homes, so it's important to be able to protect yourself. There were also a lot of books lying around, which give a bit of background and lay the story out from a range of perspectives. Interspersed with the gameplay are some artfully rendered cutscenes, and more than a few snap suddenly into life (no pun intended) with a ghost screaming at you as you enter a building or cross a certain patch of ground. In a manner not unlike Resident Evil, the enemies usually appear when you least expect them, and the sound effects the developers have used to precede their arrival are certainly chilling.

You can expect to be able to use the Wii's controls for a range of in-game actions. Eric is told by a monk he finds in Lhando (one of the only living people in the game... or is he!?) that he has a gift called the Third Eye. Everyone has the gift, and through about four seconds of teaching, the monk manages to help Eric unleash his potential. This done, Eric has the ability to sense where special moves are required to open doors, or set up shrines so they can be used as healing bays. This adds another dimension to the gameplay which helps to make Cursed Mountain more than your average action adventure. When using the Third Eye, you'll be called on to flick, push, pull or otherwise manipulate the Wii Remote to perform progressive actions. Without them, you can't move on.

How many times do we have to talk about the lack of graphical oomph in Wii titles? Can we stop now? It would seem at this stage that Cursed Mountain is going to be another addition to the long line of Wii games that fall short in terms of their visuals. That said, what we played of the game had some nice atmosphere, despite a real lack of interaction with the environment. It's not exactly petrifying, but some of the areas you'll need to explore in the game will be approached with some apprehension. The developers really seem to have driven for these effects, and it looks like they may have got there. I am sure real Wii fans can forgive some pre-21st century graphical breakdowns in light of this.

You won't be stopped at the ice pick. More bashing weapons are reported to become available the further you get in, and through your Third Eye you'll also have access to a few nice projectiles. Despite what we've said here about visual impressions, there was some passable battle whiz-bang, and some more than passable mechanics. At times we found battling a number of enemies to be a bit jerky and random, but suppose that's all part of the experience. How easy is it, after all, to fight of pure evil in real life?

Real life... it ain't. But Cursed Mountain seems to be something a bit different. Look out for it real soon.