Lawrence.com

This self-proclaimed “haunted house simulator” will have you screaming, no doubt, but likely for all the wrong reasons.

Ju-on: The Grudge for Wii is derived from the series of Japanese movies of the same name. The Japanese term “ju-on” translates to “curse” or “grudge” in English. The premise of the films is that a curse afflicts a house in which a violent murder took place, affecting all of its subsequent inhabitants. The game follows the story of the Yamadas, a Japanese family who, over the course of the game, fall further under the house’s curse. Each level has you assume the role of a different Yamada family member, and you eventually end up in the series’ iconic house after scaling abandon warehouses, vacant apartment buildings and other eerie settings.

The gameplay of Ju-on is pretty basic. You move the Wii-mote to control the game’s essential item, the flashlight, as you move slowly through the haunted environments. You must find spare batteries to keep your flashlight functioning, and use your light-source to find necessary keys and passageways. As you progress through the game, pre-determined scares and visual effects are triggered, ranging from creepy images of faces flashing on the screen, random falling items, and strange bloody hands grabbing your arms as you reach forward to open doors.

These stock scares get repetitive and predictable, and because they act as pre-determined cutscenes in which you do not directly control your character, there is a level of immersion and surprise missing that is simply necessary to the horror gaming experience. The only deviations from this formula are occasional “combat” sequences, in which the player simply shakes the Wii-mote to get away from ghostly figures. In all, the gameplay is too repetitive and simplistic to keep gamers interested for very long.

The gameplay is not aided much by frustrating controls. The movement of the flashlight seems to snag as you aim the controller at the screen, and ultimately results in an unresponsive feel. Moving forward is assigned to the B button and backward to the down direction on the d-pad. This control layout is as awkward as it sounds — the plodding, frustrating movement in the game could have benefited from the use of the Wii-nunchuk. I am not sure if the makers of the game were intentionally aiming for deliberate and slow character movement to emphasize spooks and scares, but if that is the case, they failed to implement this well.

Sound is a crucial element in the horror genre, and can really make or break a game’s ability to elicit anxiety and fear. Unfortunately, here too Ju-on is not up to par with its rivals Resident Evil, Dead Space and Manhunt on the Wii. From the outset, the sound effects have a cartoony, mechanical feel that just aren’t convincing enough to spook.

The graphics aren’t much to write home about either. You would expect a solid lighting system in Ju-on since the gameplay hinges on the use of the flashlight. This is not the case, though, as the flashlight seems underpowered, and its effects pixilated. The beam of the flashlight illuminates a grainy and poorly textured environment that is simply inexcusable in the current generation of game consoles. When combined with the clumsy controls, the visuals leave the player feeling disoriented in overly dark environments, and not in a good, frightening, way.

From a seemingly solid premise to work from, this game simply does not deliver an experience on par with The Grudge films. Nor does the game rival the exciting and well-paced action that characterizes the best horror games on the Wii. The game will certainly elicit nightmares, but the type born of simple game design, poor pacing, and overly complicated, unresponsive controls.

Graphics: 4.5

Sound: 4.5

Gameplay: 3.5

First play: 4.0

Replay value: 2.0



Overall: 4.2