I was fortunate enough to get my hands on a brief demo of Hudson’s upcoming horror game Calling for Wii, in which you play as various characters transported into an alternate world via a mysterious website rumored to link the dead to the living. In this build, I got to play a segment called “The Posession,” in which a curious otaku is transported into a spooky old house filled with creepy dolls.

After a brief introduction of the main characters, who are all chatting in this Black Page chatroom, the game cuts to someone just waking up to the sound of a cell phone ringing.  The scene is blurry until the character’s eyes adjust to the surroundings.  “Where am I?” he wonders.  Soon the game switches to a first-person view, as you gain control of the character named Shin.

Although I haven’t yet had a chance to play Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, so far Calling seems to play similarly in a lot of ways.  You use the Wii pointer to guide your view around the room, and the nunchuck to walk around.  When the cursor of your pointer falls on something you can search, a little magnifying glass will pop up (along with a low rumble of the remote), to let you know you can explore further.  Clicking A will either pop up some text describing the object (i.e., “An old rotary phone.”), or it will give you an action prompt to pull or push (i.e., pull open a drawer, push open a door).  Once you find a flashlight, you will use it to illuminate the darkness and search areas previously too dark to explore.  Occasionally you will find an object that merits even closer inspection, and a special mode will pop up enabling you to manipulate the object to search for more clues.  In this segment, for instance, you find a doll that you can inspect to find a name written on the bottom of one of its shoes.  What that name means is something we’ll have to wait for the full game to find out.

Overall, this basic exploration control scheme works well.  I personally found it a little finicky at times, but that could be me (due to the placement of my IR sensor) or due to this being a demo and not the final game.  Still, it feels nice to be able to manipulate the environment instead of just clicking.  It can also increase your immersion in the game, as you will have to struggle (just as you would in real life) to find the door and open it when you are trying to flee, which does add to the tension.

So, being a horror game, there nearly always has to be ghosts, right?  Calling delivers. From what I’ve seen in this build, what you experience in this game will feel very familiar to anyone who has seen a few Japanese-style horror films, or who has played games like Fatal Frame.  Occasionally, while you’re exploring, a ghost will attack you.  If you press the indicated on-screen button at the right time, you can escape without harm; otherwise, you have to shake the Wiimote to escape.  You may also have segments where you go into “alert” mode, where you are frozen in place and must examine the immediate area around you for a clue.  In the demo, finding the right object triggered an escape sequence, where the screen tinged red and I had to flee or it was “game over.”

Calling utilizes a “panic” scale of sorts, that registers your level of fear.  If, for example, you fail to escape from a ghost immediately, your fear level will increase.  If your fear gets too great, your game will end.  However, if you are able to find a safe place to rest, your level will return to normal.  Although this idea was introduced in the demo, there really wasn’t time to experience it, so it’s too early to say how this system will work in the final game.  Also, whether “game over” will mean starting from a check point or restarting a whole segment is not clear at this point either.

The game does utilize the Wii remote’s speaker as a cell phone, and you will occasionally get mysterious calls (from ghosts, presumably), leaving you cryptic messages.  It’s an interesting concept (although not entirely novel, seeing as this is post-Silent Hill), and it will be interesting to see how well this is integrated into the final game.  You can also use your phone to take pictures, although you are limited to one at a time.  Although the ability was introduced (through text tutorials) in the demo, it wasn’t a part of the gameplay, so I’m not sure how they work.  My suspicion is pictures are just for fun (you can upload them via the network, I believe), rather than being essential to the game as they are in Silent Hill.  However, only time will tell on this.

Right now, voice acting is limited primarily to the ghosts, with your character only making a few sounds or saying a word or two.  Hopefully this will be remedied when the game is released, as I was a little disappointed by the lack of voice.  Except for a few areas without any sound at all (something I’m guessing will be fixed), the sound was pretty good throughout, with realistic rings for various phones, creaking floors, and creepy music.  A few times sounds felt a bit off, but again, I’m confident this will be polished by the time the game releases.  Graphics aren’t stellar, but they do the job for the most part of conveying a spooky environment.

As far as scare-value goes, this demo was really short, a little too much so, in my opinion, to get a good feel for the way the game will play out.  Still, it wasn’t particularly scary, and I say this as a person who startles very easily.  The only portion I found really scary was the end of the demo, in which you must hurry to escape the ghosts that are chasing you.  I know I found myself fumbling trying to open doors and get back to the safe room.  However, the fear was diminished by the fact that, when you get to the “safe” room, it switches to a movie (and third-person), which pulled me completely out of the moment.

Nevertheless, I did find myself (when the demo ended), saying, “That’s it?” and wanting more.  I’m confident that Hudson will work out the kinks and that Calling could still be an engaging game.  I don’t think it will be perfect, but I think the story has the ability to be interesting enough that even with a few bumps along the road, it will be worth the ride.

Special thanks to Hudson for providing the preview code.

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Tags: Hands-On, Hudson Soft, Preview, Surival Horror, Wii

This entry was posted on Friday, January 15th, 2010 at 8:14 pm and is filed under Featured, Impressions, Previews, Wii. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.