About 10:30pm. Dark out obviously. Few friends over, roommates home. I tell everyone I'm going to play The Grudge game. They all seem fairly interested and excited to see how it's going to be. Everyone gathers around the t.v., we turn the lights off to set the mood, and start. The game starts out in an old factory. No story line at all told, you just dive right in.
Read the rest after the break......
I plug in the nunchuck assuming that I'll need it to walk around. Wrong. To walk, you aim where you want to go with your flashlight, and you hold the B button down. It's very touchy, and if you go outside the intended virtual walking/aiming circle you completely lose control and the flashlight aims at the ceiling and you spin slowly. Now the flashlight batteries are basically your health bar. Once you run out of battery power, your light flickers out and you get attacked by a creepy teenage girl and you lose.
The walking. The walking is painfully slow. There is no running. No walking faster. It becomes very annoying when you have to check out an area. You find a door that's locked, and you have to find a key, then go back to the door. It takes forever. I feel as if they made the walking so slow to build the suspense, but it just becomes very annoying. At this point in the game, none of us are impressed, no one is scared, and I am yelling about how slow I'm walking.
The scares. Are very planned. You'll hear some horrible music, and it completely cuts away from you and shows you some once scurry past, or stick their head out. You'll hear something fall, and you feel like you should turn around to check it out, but the controls are too slow to let you.
The 2nd level is a hospital. From the start you hear a phone ringing. It doesn't stop. It annoys the shit out of you. You find it, walk up to it, and it stops ringing. God damn it. Then you hear some other phone ringing, annoying. After that the fire alarm goes off, ANNOYING. In this level you see a lot of the naked underage meowing boy running quickly past you. We thought we shouldn't be watching this because we could get arrested for Haunted House Simulator child porn maybe.
In the next level you are in some creepy apartment building. You hear a door bell ringing for a while. ANNOYING. Game over. No more. As quickly as I could have finished the game, we stopped playing.
A second player can join in and aid in scaring the 1st player. The issue with that is, the controller vibrates when you are supposed to click the button to scare player 1. That would be cool if maybe the 1st player didn't know that was an option and you hid the 2nd controller and clicked it when they weren't paying attention.
On the box is says "JU-ON The Grudge Haunted House Simulator". I feel they added Haunted House Simulator last second as to try to stray from the fact that the game is so terrible. The only "gore" you see are some dead rats, and bloody hand or foot prints. Don't get me wrong, the level design is creepy, and it takes place in places I wouldn't dare venture into alone. But that isn't going to make the game.
If you do want the game you can pick it up now for 30 bucks. If you think it's worth it. If you tear ass through this game, you could probably be done in less than 2 hours. If you could actually walk at a respectable speed, you could beat this game in under an hour. I honestly had decent hopes for this game. I only saw the 1st 2 movies, and I liked them, but this game really did nothing for me. I was never scared, never surprised, every level has basically the same scares. You spend your time wondering back and forth in the same area looking for batteries and keys. Oh here is a door I can't open, better go into that room I missed and grab the key and slowly walk back to the door. Grabbed again by the creepy teenage girl, shake the Wiimote, and she's gone. When I played this game, the whole time I'm just thinking about how I'd rather be shooting something.
That's too bad, but I'm not surprised. Japan is filled with numerous video game oddities like this, games that would never do well Stateside...yet somehow this one made it over due to it's popular movie connection. In Japan, playing video game "novels", train conductor simulators, "romance games" and other such "boring" idea are everywhere. Just goes to show that no matter how much awesome stuff comes from Japan, we're still two separate cultures and some of the products will reflect it.
Does anybody remember the weirdness of The Ring for Dreamcast? Yikes! Even though that was a little more what western gamers look for in horror games...
Geez, I'm sure this game is pretty crappy but clean up what you write. At times your writing makes no sense, and other times it's like William Shatner is behind the keyboard.
The Scares. Are very planned.
I'm pretty sure Nintendo Power Nailed it with a 6.5...Fun and scary the first time through, but that's it. Once you're done, you're done. Short but kind of sweet, as to why it has a cheap price tag.
BurnTheBlueSky...welcome to the BD comment sections! A wonderful ride full of negative assholes who have nothing better to do than criticize everybody for everything! "J23325" will be your guide on this tour, please keep all arms and legs inside the tram at all times...
lol Sorry that I like to actually understand what people are writing. Especially considering you posted this on Bloody Disgusting. My bad. "Ultrazilla2000" is more keen on Coloring Books and picture books though so maybe next time you could lose all the words and add some more pictures and colors.
You have to be logged in to comment! If you don't have an account register now for free! Your account allows you to post comments and reviews, upload videos and images, access or our forums, write personal blogs, and maintain your profile.
