GameSpot editors' review
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CNET editors' rating:
stars
Good
Detailed editors' rating
- Reviewed on: 11/12/2003
- Released on: 10/21/2003
- Originally published on GameSpot: Curse The Eye Of Isis (PC) Review
Remember Resident Evil? Although the Capcom series achieved legendary status in the mid-1990s, both it and the survival horror boom which it spawned have decidedly quieted down in the past couple of years. However, Asylum Entertainment is not following the prevailing trends. The small British developer, best known for a handful of kid-friendly PlayStation games, like Powerpuff Girls: Chemical Xtraction and Teletubbies: Play With the Teletubbies, has just released a very mature-themed survival horror game called Curse: The Eye of Isis. Despite the company's lack of experience with this sort of game-making and a few noteworthy miscues, the designers have traced the footsteps of Resident Evil as carefully as a chiropodist. This leaves the end result without even the tiniest smidgen of originality, though it is an acceptable memorial to a classic genre.
What would an Egyptian-themed horror game be without mummies and old-fashioned flamethrowers?
Curse veers outside the lines just enough to stave off Raccoon City déjà vu. Stereotypes, like genetic-experimentation-gone-wrong, have been exchanged for an Egyptian theme that combines a Victorian penny dreadful with The Mummy series of movies (the ones starring Brendan Fraser). The year is 1890, the place is the Museum of Great Britain, and the mystery involves a gang of thugs who are out to steal a statue called the Eye of Isis. You play as Darien Dane and Victoria Sutton, childhood friends who met in the land of the pharaohs while their parents were supervising archaeological digs. Just before a reunion, and during a private showing of the Eye, something strange happens involving the relic and a custodian is killed. Darien then sneaks into the locked museum and begins to investigate.
Unfortunately, what initially seems like a fresh take on an old standard goes nowhere new. This may be the first use of Egypt as a survival horror plot device, as it seems the Eye of Isis is best at--wait for it--animating zombies! And animating mummies that act like zombies in rags! In addition to looking for keys to locked doors, you seem to spend the entire adventure shooting, beating, and flamethrowing the undead back to the grave. What few puzzles have to be solved are made simple by the inclusion of a gleam of light that spotlights important objects. If you've got the gray matter needed to install this game, you can effortlessly solve the puzzles!
The only significant change to the Resident Evil formula is an Indiana Jones-style chase that leads from the museum to the London sewers to a train station to a cargo ship headed to Egypt. Fittingly, the finale takes you to a pyramid. Since all the locales you visit later are explored in the same fashion as the initial museum, there isn't anything that really stands out, aside from some slightly different enemies and some slightly different gloomy backdrops.
There are also a few issues with mechanics, as Asylum has mirrored the clunky Resident Evil control system for the PC. Camera angles are more about being cinematic and are not about ease of use. You typically face the camera, with no idea what's in front of you, and often run into unseen objects and battle offscreen enemies. Even worse, you can't reassign the movement keys. Although the action and inventory key settings can be changed, movement is locked on the directional arrows. As a result, you feel like you're playing a game designed for southpaws. Thankfully, you can ditch the mouse and keyboard if you have a gamepad.
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