Despite repeated attempts to lighten my workload and appease attention deficit, I’ve never successfully produced a one sentence review. If I had, I believe Hudson’s horror Wii title, Calling would earn “the not-so-bad game that should have been great but was likely going to be so-so and finally ends up dipping more toward terrible with a fleeting few sparks of creativity worth noting.”
After a short and lagging introduction about a website where people can speak with the dead, known as “the Black Page”, Calling drops players into a darkened room with a first person perspective and plenty of space for optimism about the experience to follow. That first-person Wii perspective is the most ideal setup for a horror game to date, the player forced to sit with more attention and focus than usual while aiming the WiiMote, ripe for the attacks of designers suddenly in possession of a more captive audience.
That controller determined position also forces the idea that playing horror is very different from simply watching it, with the player no longer a passive observer of another person’s misfortunes, challenged to push themselves forward even while knowing the game is out to get them as they move ahead.
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