It's the late 1980s... Eric Simmons is searching for his lost brother on a mountain in the Himalayas named Chomolonzo, which the natives call it the "The Sacred One"... because his brother retrieved a sacred artifact called a terma and because of this, the goddess of the mountain became angry, and she bestowed a powerful curse upon Chomolonzo, making him not to escape from it... but Eric Simmons still wants to find him in that mountain...

Story
Story wise, it's not that bad, in fact, it's very engaging for the most part, the game is told with a mystery narration and plot that it does make you get interested with it's story and in fact, there's one part in the game in which you will participate in a story driven gameplay part of the game, but sadly, apart from the fact that there isn't a lot of these moments in the whole game, but you don't do much in them either, you can only walk forward to a path or just do a gesture move on the controller, but as I've said, the game's story is not that bad.

Gameplay
Cursed Mountain plays like survival horror adventure game, requiring you to use the Wii remote and nunchuck, and to be honest, the gameplay feels a little similar to Resident Evil 4, since you control the character like a tank (or in other words, "Tank control") and that the camera is, for most of the game, centered behind your character in third person view and also, the game has a few puzzles thrown in the game and while some of them are not bad, the game's puzzles are pretty much action oriented and not cleverly oriented just like in a point and click adventure game.

The game includes exploring and combat as their main part, but let me explain on how the exploring part feels like first, you can explore around a level in order to continue on, the game is a little linear, but there are a few parts of the game which tries to not to be like such, be it by doing actions like climbing a ladder, opening a door or you're just picking an item up and the puzzles that I've mentioned before, while the game is fine with this there are a few problems with it, like for example, your character walks very slowly, there is a run button (again, just like RE4), but it doesn't make him a lot faster, granted it looks realistic, but it just slows things down to the point that the game feels somewhat slow paced, and another problem I have is that the controls are somewhat clunky, not because you control like a tank, but because there's a slight problem where you reverse and turn at the same time, but as it is, the whole exploring element is is pretty decent but with a pretty excellent environment that makes this game look incredible, but I will mention that later on...

In the combat part, you fight  with the angry souls of monks and climbers who were trapped in Bardo which is a "spiritual realm in between this life and the next", you can attack them with your weapon, but at certain moments, you can't see them ! but luckily somewhere around the beginning of the game, you will have the ability to use the "Third Eye mode", which will let you see the world in a 'spiritual dimension', making it easy to look for hidden ghosts, you use it by holding the C button and you can look in all directions using the analog stick, but you can't move while doing so, and once you get a certain weapon, you can actually purify objects/ghosts or also attack differently by aiming with the pointer and "shoot" a Spiritual Attack to the ghosts (again, just like RE4...), and along the way, you will find other weapons each with a different way to damage a ghost, and you can also do the Compassion Ritual, which is a finishing move in third eye mode, what it is is when your enemy's weak enough, you'll see a red symbol on it in third eye mode, and aim at it with the pointer and press the A button to perform the Ritual, which consists of having a "bullet time" like game slow down and then do one or multiple quick movements with the wiimote and sometimes the nunchuck depending on how long are you far in the game, in which it can be annoying to do it a lot and may tire you from, since you're going to do this a lot if you're planning to just free the ghosts by just doing the compassion ritual, and not to mention that the gesture movements need to be in a certain manner, you must  be moderately slow and be very deliberate in making the gestures, which can annoy a lot of people too ! oh and you need to do this in order to regain health, since the game doesn't have healing items but instead it's healing Shrines you found throughout the game, which you need incense sticks in order for the shrine to heal you or you can also stand still and you'll regain health, but only about 1/3 of your initial health, the combat is pretty simple and kind of mediocre, and it would've been better if I didn't have problems with the controls that I've mentioned earlier and a few others.

When talking about both the exploring and the combat part of the game, they're both decent but that's because it would've been a lot better on certain areas and problems I had with the game and while it doesn't hurt the game a lot in my opinion, it just makes the game look a little mediocre overall...

Graphics
Now this is where the game truly does an amazing job ! the graphics in this game are truly amazing ! it's definitely one of the best looking games on the wii ! there's a lot of detail in a lot of things, and the shade is placed correctly and the character models look really good ! the only thing that i don't like is that the cutscenes are represented on these still shots that blur and are very bright that makes the scenes hard to watch, but other than that, the game looks really good !

Music and Sound
The music in this game is alright, it does set the mood for this type of game very well, but the thing is... is not very memorable, in fact, I think you will forget about it very quickly once you're done with the game...

The sounds are very cool, having a very effective sound effect implemented in every action you do and it sounds very satisfying if when you're slashing a ghost and such, but some don't sound very satisfying, like when you're doing the compassion ritual and a few others, but the sounds are alright and as for the voice acting, they're very good, but the best part is, it has a very nice variety of the languages ! What I'm saying is that I live in Mexico (obviously), and most videogames don't get translated in Spanish, but once they do, for the majority of the times it's not "Latin" Spanish but "Spain" Spanish in which, of course, they are NOT the same ! I know they sound alike, but it's a different accent ! and besides, that's like saying Australian English is the same as US English ! but enough about my ramblings let's just go on with the review...

Presentation
When talking about the game's atmosphere, it does an incredible job at it ! the game's levels are very huge and it actually feels how big the whole place is ! The mountains, the temples, the caves, the villages, all if it are very well designed and they really create an amazing feel of great horror environment ! and with graphics that are as amazing as well to boot, that's just something that you just have to give credit for !... Except for the menus though ! the menus look very simple to the point that they look like something out of a cheap game...

One thing I would like to mention is that the game was branded as a scary game, hence it's genre "survival horror", but to be quite honest... it wasn't scary for me, sure there were a few jump scares and the environment as I've said does a great job at having a horror environment, but none of the key points that were supposed to be scary really didn't affect me much, well it really only depends whether you're kind of easily scared or not... but the only thing that really gave me the creeps was the wii channel for the game when the disc is read...

As for the replayability... there are books and lost expeditions to be found, but the game doesn't allow you to go back in a level or anything like that, so once you've beat the game, you can never go back and retrieve the last missing books, so the only way to get them all again is that if you start a new game all over again !... so yeah that's the whole replayability...

Overall
The game is ok, but there are several problems with the gameplay that makes it almost mediocre, like the amount of gestures you need to do when you're doing the compassion ritual and the way you were supposed to realize them and  the somewhat faulty controls ! of course, the other thing's such as story and music are good and the graphics are amazing, but this is just another example that gameplay is what matters the most in a videogame, but this game wasn't very successful when it came out, in fact it sold so poorly that the studio was closed down... and this was their first game ! so if you happened to find this game out of luck in you're game store, then give this a rent if the graphics, the music and the story sound appealing to you, but as for everyone else, you may as well skip it, as for me this game gets...


a 7/10

7- Good This game may have a few flaws or may have somewhat shoddy controls, or minor sound/graphics flaws, but the game itself should be fun if you like the genre, and can overlook the potential flaws!