Cursed Mountain - first look

Fighting ghosts by taking photos of them in the Fatal Frame games was pretty novel, we’ll admit. But Cursed Mountain may very well take the cake for the most unorthodox method of ghostbusting in the horror game pantheon. When battling crowds of undead spirits in Cursed Mountain, you do what any god-fearing person would do to make the scary ghosts go away: you pray.

Sounds weird, but it fits pretty well with the game’s premise. It’s the 1980s, and you’re a mountain climber in search of his younger brother, who went missing while exploring a remote mountain in the Himalayas for an ancient Buddhist artifact said to grant god-like abilities. Oh yeah, and the mountain’s cursed. Old ghosts and wandering spirits trapped in a purgatory/shadow world called the Bardo haunt the place. Since they’re only looking for a little peace in the afterlife, sending them off with a combative prayer is only the nice thing to do.

Cursed Mountain’s a Wii exclusive, so you can expect that it all involves lots of wacky Wii Remote swinging. When exploring the mountain, you occasionally wander into thick black fog and spot weird anomalies in the air. Hit the B trigger to switch to ghost vision, and suddenly you’re surrounded by the ghosts of dead monks and villagers.

From there, you aim the Wii Remote at the screen and use different combinations of motions to perform complex prayer hand-motions and send the ghastlies to a better place. The game’s still in early stages, and all the prayer motions seemed pretty simple and not totally precise, but we were assured they’ll all be ship-shape soon enough.