There are certain things that diminish over time. In the gaming industry, the idea of a scary video game seems to be such a thing. Even the Resident Evil franchise, which many consider to be the definitive survival horror experience, has become nothing more than a run and gun shooter, stripping away all that might cause someone to jump with fear. Some enjoy the departure, calling the old methods archaic, and some wish that games would, more often than they do, try and scare players. Deep Silver's Cursed Mountain speaks to the second group, with the developers attempting to create a game  unique to the Wii. With a good amount of positive buzz leading up to launch, Cursed Mountain looked like a perfect title to kick off the Wii's holiday lineup, hoping to snag gamers before they got pulled into whatever the winter season may hold.

After being hired to find a mysterious artifact hidden atop a mountain in the Himalayas, Frank Simmons goes missing. Before long, his brother Eric attempts to find him, retracing his sibling's path and attempting to learn what secrets the mountain holds. The secret, as it turns out, is right in the title: the mountain is cursed. Different types of ghosts and creatures protect what they call "The Sacred Mountain," trying to stop Eric at all costs. Before long, they confront the hero, only to be warded off by a monk, who teaches Eric rituals to destroy the monsters that roam the cliffs. By wielding a ritualistic pickax, which is upgraded at several times throughout the game, Eric can destroy his opponents by either slashing them or firing red bolts of energy. After a few hits, he's able to use a ritual to destroy them completely. It works fairly well, bringing somewhat unique combat to the horror title, though it gets old fairly quickly. While the enemies Eric fights change from time to time, the methods to defeat them never really differ. Because of wonky controls, the strategy in defeating one ghost or five ghosts is essentially the same: stand in a corner and shoot them a lot, perform a melee attack if anything gets close, and then run to an opposite corner to repeat while the ghost(s) are stunned.