Whether you think Ju-On or The Grudge are scary movies, the Ju-On The Grudge: Haunted House Simulator isn’t.
However that doesn’t mean that it’s not enjoyable, if you’re drunk or high with a group of loud friends that enjoy making fun of things. Lets face it, that’s every game should be played.
I’m going to start from the basics about what’s wrong with this game. There is one element in this game that basically ruins the entire thing. What do you think that is? If you’re thinking the Wii contols, you’ve guessed correctly! You move around the character with the joystick while pointing in the direction that you want to go with the Wii-mote. The nun-chuck controls are responsive, albeit the character moves extremely slow. The Wii-mote on the other hand barely works. You’ll often times find yourself struggling to rotate your character. I never knew pointing the Wii-mote to the left and right side of the screen could be so exhausting. I think I understand why the movements of the character are slow, it’s a haunted house simulator – not a survival horror title. A game is only scary if you can’t move the character. Right?
The focus of this game is to explore the small enclosed levels as the boy and the woman haunt you. Besides getting from point A to point B, your objective is to recover as many batteries as possible to ensure that your flashlight has enough power to last the level. The only other way to die in this game is if the ghosts attack you and you don’t shake them off with your Wii-mote.
There are several other modes besides playing through the main story. Courage Test Mode will prevent you from saving your game as you replay the story mode. I guess that’s fun? The other mode that’s actually worth playing with a buddy is Panic Mode. This enables the second player to trigger events that are meant to scare the first player. Sadly these events can’t be repeated until 15 seconds after they are triggered. Imagine the hilarious amount of fun that you could have had if you repeated these events one right after the other. It’s a shame that they added this time constraint.
I can’t recommend that anyone purchase this game, but it’s a decent Saturday rental.
