N-Philes

Wii PREVIEW – Calling

Posted February 4th 2010 by Brandon Schmidt.

Survival horror games, by and large, have been an equal blend of shooter and scarefest.  Lately, though, the Wii has seen a few deviations in the genre with the release of Silent Hill: Shattered Memories and the upcoming Calling.  These types of games retain an investigative element but have you react to conflict by running away rather than trying to put a shotgun blast through it.  I recently had a chance to play a demo build of the game that, while needing some polish, definitely had me curious to see where the story would go and the means by which the developers would attempt to creep me out.

Calling is highly influenced by Japanese culture and that is apparent from the moment you start the game.  The introduction is a lengthy text dialogue between a number of characters in an Internet chat room.  The dialogue is pretty stilted and doesn't sound anything like a normal conversation, but it's important to sit through the whole sequence just to get some backstory.  The premise is that their mutual interest in a website called the "Black Page" has brought them all together.  The rumor is that this website will allow select people to enter an alternate world where they can meet the dead.  The game focuses on the stories of four characters, each of whom has a different reason for seeking out the "Black Page".  This particular demo features Shin Suzantani, a young Japanese guy with a number of stereotypical interests for a young Asian male including anime and action figure collection.  Shin finds out about the website through another hobby - reading occult magazines. 

The playable part of the demo begins with Shin waking up confused in a bed in a room he does not recognize.  The inspection of his immediate environment sets the table for some of the basic game control tutorials.  Calling utilizes both the Wii Remote and the Nunchuk  You'll need the hardware of both in order to pull open doors, aim your flashlight, and control basic movement.  The internal speaker in the Wii Remote is also used on occasion to answer mysterious phone calls - a fun if not wholly original idea.  The new control elements are introduced as they are needed.  I found this helpful in that I wasn't overwhelmed all at once with a bunch of information I'd forget two minutes later.

As you and Shin make your way through your strange surroundings, a growing sense of creepiness ensues.  Most of the building is without power making navigation slow and uncertain even when you finally do find the flashlight.  Little touches here and there like phone warnings to not enter certain rooms or small handprints appearing on windows add to the tension.  There are other more potent visual and audio scares more closely tied to the story that I won't spoil.  Whether or not you are spooked by these kinds of scare attempts, your character is not immune.  There's a meter at the top of your screen that basically functions as an indicator of your fear level.  If you let it get too high for too long, then it's game over.  This dynamic often forces you to flee encounters with supernatural elements.  This creates a stress of a different kind and is a welcome change in a genre that typically has the player trying to outright destroy the source of conflict.  I was reminded strongly of the sanity meter in one of my all-time favorite games, Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem for GameCube.

This demo left me with mixed feelings.  Even plodding through it, it was very brief - maybe 20 minutes all told.  It's hard to get a lot of engaging story in that amount of time which makes caring about the characters a minimal concern at best.  What did hook me, however, was how some of the horror/scare tactics played into the current story.  Without giving too much away, the first spirit you encounter had a fascination with dolls that comes into play.  What I love about horror games is when there are some creative, original scares, and not the typical 'something jumps out at you' type of fright.  It's hard to get a feel whether the game can keep this up, but with what I've seen, Calling will be a game to keep an eye on in the coming weeks.

Website

Tags: Calling

Posted in: Gaming, Features

Comments (0) | Permalink | Digg | Reddit