Its Basically Resident Evil with a touch of Silent Hill and a Pinch of Fatal Frame Baked Egyptian style
User Rating: 8.2 | Curse: The Eye of Isis XBOX
Upon reading many of the reviews after I completed the game, I began to see the reason why this game would be called a "Resident Evil Clone" although while playing it I was not taken back to focus on how Curse was like RE, I was actually less draw to viewing the comparisons then the first time I played Silent Hill, and spent the first two hours saying, wow its like Enemy Zero in a city. I really cannot take a pot shot at this game for taking a similar survival horror plot, and expanding on it, if you had to strive to be a surivial horror game you could have done a lot worse then being an RE clone. The Gameplay suffers from the same awkward camera angles and funky controls as the Resident Evil as well as the Silent Hill series do, but it hardly stopped any of us from playing those titles and hardly led to any frustraion after the 30 minutes it took me to get it down cold, (Believe me when I say playing Silent Hill on XBox will help you master the controls on Curse, but of not you will figure it out) The story was well done, and even though it did sort of follow the "T-Virus " path of Resident Evil only with an Eqyptian twist, I find that the characters were much more developed in Curse then Resident Evil or even Silent Hill. The story was interesting enough that it kept me playing and had a few interesting twists along the way that did keep it fresh, I don't think its fair to say if you played resident evil you have played Curse, because there are similarities but just similarities. I found the puzzles to be a bit offensive, they were easy and seemed tacked on. Graphically, It was good for a game of its Genre but nothing revolutionary, but in all fairness a game does not have to redefine the genre to be a good game, The character themselves are nothing great, but the location detail and the lighting effects are worth the cost of the game alone, among the best I have seen this generation, and it really does add to the gaming experience, Silent Hill should borrow a page from Curse for lighting effects because they are just off this plant impressive, which is something I don't normally expect from a game that was released with little fan fare, and sort of faided into the background. Also the enemies were well done but repeat over and over again. The one aspect which I found to be very well done to the point where I may even say on the level with a game such as GC's Eternal Darkness is the Sound, from the echos of foots steps to the sounds made when various stone or metal items are hit, and the accurary of that sound to the chilling voice acting, this aspect of the game was done by Asylum to perfection, I found it hard to believe that this was their first venture into "M" games because they work they did on this aspect was breathtaking, The Surround sound does benefit the experience but any gamer will enjoy it no matter what you are using for sound output. Value is tricky, for 10 bucks this game was a steal, I would say even at a 29.99 price point this game is worth it, the play though is long enough that you will enjoy yourself and the storyline is truly truly first rate, most of the issues with the game can be forgiven because of this very well done storyline, and its that storyline that makes it worth it, better then most movies for less then the cost of two admissions and popcorn, The reply value is hard to gauge when I was done, I was done. but if you replay your other survival horror titles then you will replay this one, Overall: Overlooked, and underrated because it happens to be a Survival Horror that came after Resident Evil? If you can find it I would be very suprise if you didn't enjoy it, -Z
