Ju-On: A Shot in the Dark Preview
- September 09, 2009 00:00 AM PST
Once dawning the Silver Screen, Ju-On takes it to the Wii just in time for Halloween.
On a stroll through a seedy neighborhood, your precious yellow lab has an urge to run off and break into an abandoned building. How do you react? Follow it! That's the premise of Ju-On. Bad things continuously happen around you and yet you go against your better judgment taking on heart attack after heart attack.
As you set off on a thorough search for your pesky pooch, odd things begin to occur, heads falling from the ceiling and creepy eyes staring you down. Now this is normally when you whip out your crowbar and cave in some faces. But this isn't the purpose of Ju-On. What is the purpose of Ju-On then? A flashlight. You walk around at the pace of a slug and shine meager light at apparitions. That didn't sell you? Let's raise the stakes a bit. Your battery is constantly draining with every step you take. The search no longer is for your dog but batteries to keep your one "weapon" alive. This normally wouldn't be an issue but groping around in the dark at negative 10 mph starts to lose its charm after the first, I don't know, five minutes.
Games like this are usually played while others watch. An interesting aspect found in Ju-On is that a friend can take up a second controller and press a button at anytime to scare you -- as if you weren't already trying to keep your heart from popping out of your chest. At first the scares are menial: things fall from the ceiling, creepy ghosts wait for you on the other end of the door, etc. -- but it gets better. After spending a good 30 minutes or so walking around looking for a way to power the elevator and getting it up and running, you know something's coming. Sure enough, you open the door and a disheveled looking woman comes crawling at you, ready to eat your soul, which. In the end, she unfortunately doesn't, reiterating the point that I'd about had it with Ju-On. So once again I try the door and lo and behold my puppy is there. How he got into a locked elevator no one knows. All I know is I fear the day this game hit shelves - that's about as scary as it gets.
