Pirates, swashbuckling, and RPGs, oh my! Aside from robots, zombies, dinosaurs, and all the other stereotypical “awesome” monsters joining forces to create the penultimate side-scrolling beat-’em-up, an open world RPG following the exploits of those who sail the high seas is one of the better ideas anyone could come up with. Enter Risen 2: Dark Waters, one of the first games of its kind since Redguard tested the waters. Piranha Bytes’ sequel to the 2009 RPG is an ambitious one, approaching a familiar genre and a road less traveled. But when you look past the tropical veneer and sea foam clouding your vision, is Risen 2: Dark Waters really the lost treasure gamers have been looking for?

There’s certainly much here to celebrate – if you picked up the first game, you’ll notice an immediate improvement in both tone and aesthetics. Right off the bat, Risen 2 is mysterious and gripping. It’s as if your secret pirate fantasies have come to life in the form of the perfect fan-servicing interactive adventure – you’ll dig where “X” marks the spot, recruit fellow pirates for your crew, Unfortunately, it’s not exactly accessible – or intuitive. There’s plenty of potential here, squandered fruitlessly on some rather bizarre design decisions that both directly and indirectly affect the player. And then thewalls come tumbling down.

A quick tutorial ensues after the scene is set at the port of Caldera. As a fellow member of the Spanish Inquisition, you’re tasked with offing a bevy of malicious sea monsters that have been threatening the safety of arriving ships. You’ve only just arrived and have been assigned a life-or-death mission to carry out. It’s too bad then, that the hero of our story is rather ill-equipped to stand up to the woes of the sea. On his search for the pirate legend Steelbeard (who may well have a way to vanquish the water-bound denizens), “Your Hero Name Here” runs into plenty of danger here and there, allies to run with, and plenty of irritating monsters that need a good felling. All good signs, and the mark of a pirate adventure that’s about to unfold in an intriguing way.

It’s after that where things slowly start to crumble. If by the first run-in with acquaintances whose painfully exaggerated gestures haven’t put you off yet (seriously, who moves around that much when speaking?), you’ll soon be puzzling over Risen 2′s core mechanics. Right off the bat you’re introduced to basic functions such as attacking, movement, and what-have-you – with more to come as you stumble along, making your way to Steelbeard and doing your best to discern what it is, exactly, you need to do in order to flesh yourself out more fully as a functioning pirate.

Earning Glory points (or experience points in pirate talk) is a bit of a process: it’s not as easy as slashing a foe to ribbons and racking up the bonuses. You need to spend it in order to up specific stats – say, you want to raise your Cunning skill. That requires strategic usage and spending of Glory points to beef up your expertise. But that’s not all. You also need gold to spend in order to attain certain skills, which isn’t always so readily available. This leads your incredibly vulnerable avatar susceptible to death by even the demonic-looking anglerfish early in the game.

It’s not that you can never level up, either, it’s just that the game makes it difficult to do. Not only do you need gold and Glory, but specific coaches (trainers) to help you attain the skills necessary to own this particular pirate quest. And when you need to choose between what’s going to make you money and what’s going to keep you safe, it’s not always easy to make the smarter decision. Therein lies a frustrating conundrum, and not one I wanted to see through to the end. When combat is mindless and repetitive as it is, you aren’t exactly compelled to press on.

It’s funny: I could do the same things in a game like Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, or The Witcher 2, and have a blast. With Risen 2, I only ever felt as if I was performing a chore. A chore that required me to kill as many humongous spiders as possible while dancing the dance macabre – letting my health refill enough to tackle my next bounty, then repeating the cycle over and over again.

Failing the conventional RPG trappings that Risen 2 relies so heavily on, the narrative keeps the rest of the game afloat long enough for you to decide whether or not you want to see this pirating adventure through to the end. You do all the piratey things that’d make a landlubber blush. There’s intrigue. There’s a “sexy pirate” companion (par for the course for these kinds of games) and plenty of great scripted dialogue that furthers the illusion that you’re playing your favorite pirate movie in a neat way.

The Blast Factor: But stilted presentation, muted visuals (I refer back to awkward character gestures), muddy textures, and over-used combat dialogue combined with a combat system that just isn’t remarkable in any way, shape or form doesn’t exactly an epic pirate adventure make. There was much that could have been accomplished here, and at times you catch a small glimpse of greatness. With a bit more polish and care, Risen 2: Dark Waters could have knocked it out of the park. Opt for other RPGs that arrrrren’t as underwhelming.

With impressive sales and even a film adaptation on the horizon, Deep Silver and Techland are pretty high on Dead Island, so it’s only fitting that a sequel may be in the works, and now we may be getting our first hint of news.

Techland, the game’s Polish developer has trademarked a new game name, Dead World, which sure sounds like a fitting name for the franchise. I imagine it would be bigger, badder and there would be a lot more deodorant to steal.

Read our review of Dead Island here.

Source

Dead Island is a classic example of art imitating life. By the very definition of the term, Dead Island can easily be considered to be a bit of a  zombie itself. Originally scheduled for release in 2008, the game was repeatedly delayed and assumed killed off until a new emotional trailer featuring a family fighting for their lives against a horde of undead invaders hit the web and instantly went viral. Back from the proverbial dead, Dead Island was set to be an emotional and gripping take on the zombie formula.

Or at least it was supposed to be.

Half a year and a ton of hype later, Dead Island’s final product isn’t what you thought it would be – and that’s not an incredibly terrible thing. With its interesting twist on the growingly stale zombie apocalypse genre, Dead Island has some great ideas, they just don’t feel as well thought out as they could be. At its best moments, it’s a thrilling horror survival game, but at its worst – it’s a dated, limited, lethargic and confusing experience.

The clear strength of Dead Island lies within its setting. The isle of Banoi is lush, tropical and offers picturesque views, an significantly different world than most games dealing with the zombie apocalypse.  The change in setting works wonders for the game’s survival horror feeling as you’re not (well, at least for most of the game) looking around the same corners as you would in most games as the tourist resort is full of small twists and turns that you’re not going to expect. Some of the best moments of the game involve walking past an area dense with hills and trees and you’re suddenly startled by the scream of the undead when you have absolutely no idea where it’s coming from.

Perhaps that’s the genius of Dead Island, rather than focusing on merely wailing on zombies at every turn, the focus is clearly on survival. You’re rarely ever going to run into a horde of undead and have to fight your way through (though, fear not, it does happen), rather the game throws a few zombies at you, but places them in all of the right places. It’s an extremely cool feeling to round a corner and see a ton of bodies, and one of them slowly gets up, looks at you and begins to charge.  It’s a frequent occurrence to hear a growling undead from somewhere and then have to quickly adapt your strategy.

It may have the walking dead featured prominently, but Dead Island feels like no zombie game before it. It’s probably easiest to describe the game as Fallout meets the zombie apocalypse. You choose your character based on skill specialty (one for example is more proficient than the other in throwing weapons, while the other’s specialty is brute weapons) and level up as you progress through the game’s sidequests and finding items. As you level up, you’ll gain access to new weapons and the ability to combine these weapons at workbenches found throughout the island.  While this may sound great, it’s also where the game begins to fall apart. The game puts absurd restrictions on the weapons you can use depending on what level you are. Like an old wrench for example.. You mean I can’t just pick up a rusty wrench from the ground and start wailing on zombies? Nope. You’ll have to unlock certain levels first. I get it, I really do; it’s a way to progress through the game, but it’s a little frustrating when you’re searching for weapons as you’re being chased down by zombies and the only thing you can find is something you’re not able to use.

In games like Dead Rising and its sequel, you were similarly asked to look throughout the environment for weapons and items to help fight off the undead horde. In those games, the question instantly became “Can I do this?” and the answer was mostly yes, but in Dead Island, it’s a frequent no. See that surf board leaning up against the lifeguard tower? Wouldn’t it be swell to take that and beat the hell out of a few zombies? Well…you can’t. That’s just a piece of the scenery, have this canoe oar instead.  Oh, that pool umbrella over there? The one with the pointed end that could impale a zombie? You can’t use that either, can I interest you in this canoe oar instead (yeah, there’s a lot of those in the game).

It all plays a part in just how dated Dead Island feels. A good majority of the weapons feels remarkably the same, and you’ll end up grinding your way through a good portion of the game.  A lot of my play time went like this: grab weapon, swing wildly, clear area, repeat. You can make the point that this is the point of a game like this, but here, it all feels so uninspired.  On the same note, the island and its sweeping vistas may look impressive, but the characters and their animations look like they’re straight out of the early days of this console generation.  The voice acting is rather well done though.

My final complaint about Dead Island may be a small one, but it’s just as important. Now, I’m the guy who when given the choice, will normally choose the “good guy” route in most games, but even though I wasn’t given the choice in Dead Island, I felt like a douche the entire time. Regardless of what character you choose, you wake up in your hotel room unsure of what’s going on, you know nothing about the undead roaming around; all you really know is that something is going on and it’s probably a good idea to get up. That doesn’t stop you from digging through people’s bags and luggage to find supplies and money, oh, and deodorant. Lots of deodorant.

The Blast Factor: Dead Island is like no other zombie game you’ve played, and that’s both a good thing and a terrible thing. At its best, it’s a zombified take on Fallout, but at its worst – it’s a dated and uninspired action title with little to offer in the end. Regardless, if you’re a fan of zombies or action games, you should at least check out Dead Island, even if it is disappointing.

Deep Silver sent over the above trailer, celebrating their upcoming zombie getaway game, Dead Island which comes out Tuesday, not now — as the trailer suggests. Watch for a review early next week.

Publisher Deep Silver announced today that Square Enix would be distributing its upcoming zombie shooter Dead Island.

“Square Enix’s impressive distribution and marketing capabilities, combined with their  proven success with launching top-notch AAA titles, makes them the absolute best partner for Dead Island,” said Deep Silver Chief Operating Officer Geoff Mulligan. “We’re thrilled to be partnering with their dedicated and talented team and look forward to collaborating with them in order to bring Dead Island to gamers.”

Dead Island is expected to release later this year for the PS3, Xbox 360 and PC.

“Dead Island is a truly extraordinary title and we couldn’t be more excited about leveraging our unified Square Enix resources in bringing it to audiences in the Americas.” said Mike Fischer, president and chief executive officer, Square Enix, Inc.

Fresh from the island, here’s three new screens of Deep Silver’s zombie vacation title Dead Island. You might want to be worried about that giant zombie in the straight jacket. Just sayin’.

You’re a stowaway on a boat that has just been through a storm and an attack by a sea monster.  Now you find yourself washed up on a beach where ruins have recently "risen" out of the ground and caused creatures to come into existence in this land. A group called the Inquisition has come to take control over the local town, removing its Don, controlling the gold and artifacts from the ruins, and forcing anyone who opposes them to be sent to a monastery for a "mindset adjustment."  The exiled Don and some of his men now live in one of the ruins in the swamp area. The game is open world and the choices you make effect the storyline. You can help the Inquisition which leans more towards magic and combat. Alternately you can help the Don who has more of a combat and hunting approach.

Quests consist of gathering items, killing monsters collecting information, shaking down shop owners for protection money, sneaking around, stealing, and general helping out. You can also see two sides of one quest depending on who you speak to. So if you help out one person instead of the other for similar goals, you will never be able to help the other person with conflicting interests.

Character interactions were also enjoyable and realistic to a point. If you robbed someone right in front of them they will likely not talk to you and will remember what you did. This sometimes leads to quests that cannot be finished. Luckily though there are spells that can be cast to force someone to forget any misdeed. Pick pocketing is an enjoyable and useful technique that allows you to recover items stolen from you.  This skill has different levels and has a bit of a learning curve; once you initiate a pickpocket attempt, you only have a certain amount of time to grab what you want. Pick pocketing is also useful if you know someone stole one of your items when you were knocked out to get them back.

Risen takes place in a setting that looks very much like South America. The lighting in the game is rather dark making monitors with high contrasts or deep blacks rather hard at times to see what you’re playing unless you turn the brightness settings way up; unfortunately this washes out some of the great graphics and cinematic lighting. Some parts of the game are intentionally left dark as you need to use torches to see where you are going inside of caves or the catacombs of the ruins. The ground in the light has a lush glow and the city looks great in the moonlight. In fact I rather enjoyed the graphical style, though I wish I could have customized my look a bit more as I look like the main character of the show Prison Break with my ultra short buzz cut look.  The water was also well rendered and the thunderstorms and rain effects at night have to be the best I have seen in a game, with the whole setting going from really dark to super bright all around me when the lighting clashes. The games NPC’s were also more detailed and much easier to tell apart than similar games I have encountered.

The game leveling up is done with experience points, but other attributes like strength, dexterity, and weapon and crafting skills are gained by talking to people and asking them to train you. This, of course, will cost you a bit of gold. There are 3 types of close combat weapons such as swords, axes and blunt objects. For attacking from a distance you can use bows, crossbows or magic. Casting spells will use up Mana that needs to be replenished with potions and the like.

The game also has a cooking system in which you can take the meat off killed creatures  and cook it to regain heath or Mana. You can also obtain special recipes and collect the ingredients to make special foods. The same principles can be applied for the alchemy for potions and smith skills for making weapons and armor.

The combat for handheld weapons is done with the left mouse button for attack and the right mouse button for shielding or blocking by turning your weapon on its side. You can also parry the attack if you press the right mouse button just before the enemy is going to attack. The system for locking on enemies is automatic and very well executed. I rarely found my back turned to one enemy while fighting another. For bow attacks you go into a 3^rd or first person view to fire. The closer you are to hitting the enemy’s head the more damage the enemy takes.  Casting spells can be very useful while fighting in hand to hand combat.

One thing I really liked about Risen was that the enemies don’t seem to fall into too many western RPG stereotypes—sure there were gnomes and ghouls but the majority of them seemed very fresh. The AI was also well done; even though you could figure out some of the enemy attack patterns it never seemed monotonous, always giving a good challenge as these patterns were never set in stone and could always be a bit random.

Blast Factor: Besides some slight graphical issues and lots of trouble with the game’s DRM (which they will hopefully have fixed by the time you read this) I really enjoyed the game and can’t wait to play through it again following a different storyline path.

Risen is available on the PC, and an upcoming Xbox 360 version. It retails for $49.99; a copy of this game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes.

Role-playing-games are long affairs. They can’t usually be completed in a sitting or two. Gamers invest serious amounts of time and effort into them, and rightfully so. When executed correctly, they can be the most rewarding games.

But before you can play a game you have to buy it, and before you do that, sometimes you can even try it.

That’s the news today, as Deep Silver announced that their RPG “Risen” has a demo for PC users, and it’s available right now. It clocks in at an acceptable 1.1GB, but you should check the system requirements first.

The demo, according to Deep Silver, “lets players experience the dramatic introduction of the game where the nameless hero survives a shipwreck in a storm and lands on the shore of the Island of Faranga. Numerous decisions must be made within the course of the adventure, each one influencing the storyline in different ways.”

Start your Risen download over here at the Risen Blog

Deep Silver unleashed the launch trailer for the epic role-playing-game “Risen” today filling our void until the game officially releases this Friday.

Developed by Piranha Bytes, the RPG features a nameless protagonists and as the trailer describes “Humanity is Dying,” leaving you in charge of defeating the enemies and saving the land. Well, at least you’ll have Gollum and Gimli to help you out.

Risen releases exclusivley on PC this Friday October 2 with an Xbox 360 version promised for “early next year.” Bummer, this is my sleeper title of the year, I want it now!

Deep Silver and “Risen” developer Piranha Bytes released a new trailer for the game upcoming role-playing-game today, but don’t worry, they’ve supplied subtitles for us non-German speaking folk.

In the video, project director Bjƒ¶rn Pankratz and game designer Mike Hoge explain the game’s free exploration design, a bit of background story, as well as why the main character remains nameless throughout.

It’s a mammoth of a video, over 10 minutes to be exact, so kick off your shoes, grab a recreational beverage, bask in the glory of “Risen,” and remember that Gollum and Gimli are in the game too!

Risen is due out on PC October 2, with an Xbox 360 version dated for “sometime next year.”

We enjoyed Cursed Mountain and the breath of fresh air its setting provided for the survival horror genre, so we spoke to the executive producer of the game, Hannes Seifert of Deep Silver, to get an idea of how this project came to be, and how they were able to deliver this unique story and experience to Wii owners. (Read our review here).

BLAST: Tell us a little bit about Deep Silver.

Hannes Seifert: Deep Silver is the games brand of Koch Media group. We run Deep Silver Vienna, and our job is to create games that interest a broad, international audience.‚  Right now we’re working on expanding internationally and opening an American office and working on games that we hope interest an American audience, and one of the key parts of that is our role as producers in Vienna’s studio.

BLAST: Cursed Mountain takes a different environment for survival horror than we are used to seeing. How did the idea of the Himalayas as the background for a survival horror game come together?

HS: At Deep Silver Vienna we have a very specific approach to new IP and new games. It’s very setting-driven; we are looking for settings that feel fresh and haven’t been overused, and Cursed Mountain’s was one of those. The first idea was to use something well known, like Katmandu, which is the capital of Nepal. So what we were looking for is something that stands out and still provides an environment where you can play with imagination, hallucination, and horror that’s potentially based on real religious beliefs, which makes it very plausible. That came altogether then, and in the end became Cursed Mountain.

The decision for a platform was also, perhaps, an unusual one. When we were doing the research regarding Tibetan Buddhism and the story and everything, we discovered that a lot of the defeating and protecting against ghosts in real life was done through mantras, prayer gestures and chanting. The prayer gestures are the link back to the Wii. When we had been working on games before that, people would use the controller to protect their bodies from the screen, and what appealed to me when we were pitching the concept of how to fight was that you would need to open your body and perform these gestures. And that was back then only possible on the Wii, and that was how we made the decision for the platform.

BLAST: Cursed Mountain has a creepy aesthetic and there are a lot of supernatural elements, despite having an everyman lead character”"he’s a famous mountain climber, but he’s still pretty much a regular guy. What were inspirations for both the supernatural elements as well as the main character, Eric Simmons?

HS: There’s a lot of inspiration coming from the famous mountaineers. They all had that near-death experience where they wrote about it or talked about it, and when you combine that with the hallucinations and the very hostile environment you’ve already provided that creepy background. And all of them seem to be guy, whether it’s Hillary or Bishop or whoever. The decision to make Eric a Scotsman, well, all of the famous mountaineers are either Swiss or Austrian or British, and you can’t have a Swiss or Austrian character in English because they instantly sound like the bad guy because of their accents, so we decided to go for a Scottish character which made him pretty appealing and stand out.

The inspiration for the enemies, the ghosts and the demons, that was very heavily influenced by Tibetan Buddhism. A big part of that is based on this Buddhist text called the Trip, which is not as peaceful as is normally conveyed in the west. Each religion has its peaceful and brutal aspects, and what we tried to do, we went through and researched”"we spent 10 months on this in the pre-production phase”"researched Trip and studying that. We didn’t copy one-to-one what we found, but we were heavily inspired by it so that we didn’t upset the believers but still use things that are powerful and as close to the truth and research as possible, and we think the combination worked out pretty nicely.

The main inspiration, the source as you could say, was the experience of climbers, especially in the 70s and 80s, before chopper rescues up high and GPS systems. The other thing was the Tibetan Buddhism, with the architecture connected to it, and the demons and the ghosts and the goddesses. It’s a very, very rich thing to be inspired by.

BLAST: You can see the entire game world from any level in Cursed Mountain. How did you approach accomplish this goal”"it’s not the kind of thing we’re used to seeing in games.

HS: The basic thing we wanted to add as you climb the mountain is the summit ahead of you”"it looks so unbelievably remote, but it’s always there. When you look back, you see where you came from, and this is something else we wanted to achieve. Of course there are parts of the game that are indoors that you won’t see, but in principal if you can see it in the game you can see it. We started out with a real mountain, because Chomolonzo in the game is a fictional mountain. We used Ama Dablam’s satellite data, and with that we created a valley that we modified for game purposes. Having this valley as a backdrop for geometry was a very good start because it’s a natural environment, and everything fits together when you work like that. Then we placed the city, and the villages, and all the experiences up to the summit. So the levels themselves are also based on that, and the backdrop is as well, so my favorite part of the game fits together with the backdrop, and this is why you can see everything from any position. We avoided things like fog, because we wanted to show this off in the game. We also made the landscapes pretty versatile, they go from cities to fields, it’s not all just mountains. We set out to set enough memory aside for a streaming engine that allows us to have the geometry we want in the game for the player to walk around but also lets you see the backdrop from everywhere.

BLAST: There were a lot of hands worldwide working on Cursed Mountain, as you had multiple development houses working on it. What was that like, working on this project in so many places at the same time?

HS: The short answer is “exhausting”, but we knew that and knew that it was going to be difficult. ‚ We’ve worked like this in the past”"we used to be with Rockstar Games, so we worked with other tech teams in San Diego and with Japanese partners and such, so we were used to remote producing. Having that many companies, doing this for the first time for us in that scope, it was quite an experience, and we of course made mistakes. One of the things that might be interesting is that we worked with a lot of different cultures with different expectations and different ways of communicating, which was one challenge. Another thing on the very good side is that it allowed us to take the people we wanted to have work on specific parts of the game. A very good example is the props for the game world and most of the characters. We deliberately were looking for an Asian company to do that, because of the style and having the feeling for the statues and the hundreds of props in the game. Since the game had a Tibetan topic, no Chinese supplier would even touch it or hear a pitch for it for political reasons, so we went with an Indian company, and I think in the end it came out pretty well. That’s one of the strengths of working like that.

Our producing team was on video conference, phone calls or answering e-mails almost 24/7 because, for instance, our motion capture was done in the states, and our offices are here so we worked with them remotely in time shifts starting in the afternoon and working until midnight. Working as a team when you live in different time zones is exhausting, but it’s also very interesting, and it allowed us to produce something in a pretty short amount of time that became a pretty big game.

I’m a big fan of survival horror games–I’m the kind of person who will play one alone in the middle of the night with all of the lights off and windows closed. Any game that wants to play ball with my desire to freak myself out is good by me, but as a fan of the genre, I will admit that there is a lot of sameness in these games. Similar creatures, similar circumstances, similar scares, and sometimes similar stories detract from the shock value and emotional affect these games are supposed to have on you–if a psychological thriller isn’t thrilling anymore, it’s not doing its job. Cursed Mountain probably fits more into the “thriller” camp then the “horror” one, but you will have to fight to survive in extreme conditions regardless, and in an original, refreshing setting with a story that will keep you in your seat.

Cursed Mountain is a creepy game, thanks to its atmosphere, its setting, and the nature of your enemies. Ghosts are an entirely different breed of enemies than something like a zombie, which has become the go-to horror game opponent. Ghosts can disappear, they can move through walls, and they possess things, while a zombie just kind of lumbers at you. When you combine ghosts and their abilities with a mountain setting, one that, despite its massive scale and open space, feels claustrophobic, then you’ve developed a creepy atmosphere that will keep your gamers uneasy throughout. While the game isn’t outright scary, it does a great job of leaving you feeling unsettled and uncomfortable with your situation, and it does try to mess with your head in a psychological manner that keeps both you and the main character, Eric Simmons, guessing about what’s going on.

The setting is also successful in replicating the area it represents. Deep Silver went to great lengths to research Buddhist and Tibetan ideas and beliefs, as well as the region they lived in; this shows up in the villages, the insides of houses, the monasteries, and the mountain paths. One nifty item is that you can see the game world from anywhere in Cursed Mountain. If you’re at the bottom of the mountain in the village, you can see your destinations alongside the mountain, and as you climb up, you can see where you used to travel getting smaller and smaller as it moves further away. You get a sense of your accomplishment as well as the scale of your undertaking and the mountain this way; it’s a unique item that adds to the game experience, especially when you look back or forward to take it in.

Not everything works this well though. It’s a bit annoying when there are doors you can’t open though–not locked ones either, just ones you can’t interact with–and also when a path that appears open is unable to be accessed by your character–invisible walls, of sorts–and these moments do break up the atmosphere and remind you that you’re in the middle of a game. The controls also need some work, though this is a common complaint for this type of game–in fact, it has the same tank-like movement issues that plagues most survival horror. Eric Simmons might be a normal person, but he should be able to turn around faster than he does, and he walks and jogs a bit slow for my liking–the game suffers from some pacing issues already, and this doesn’t help. The motion controls work pretty well though–you use them to banish ghosts, releasing them from their prison in this world. Deep Silver wanted to use Wii Remote and Nunchuk gestures to perform a ritual for removing these ghosts, and you do this by moving both controllers side to side, diagonally or up and down, depending on the markers on-screen. There’s one Nunchuk motion that sometimes gives me trouble, and I have to do it 2-3 times before it works, but it’s never a game-breaking issue. The IR implementation is probably the smoothest portion of the control scheme, as you can fire bursts of energy at these ghosts or throw a sort of capture net around them so you can banish them quicker.

Even if the controls or pacing frustrate you a bit, the story will more than make up for it. Simmons is trying to locate his lost brother, who was scaling the mountain in order to find a sacred and secret item. Things are not what they seem from afar, as Eric finds the village empty save for one person, with ghosts coming at him from all sides. From there, he searches for clues about both the appearance of the ghosts and the disappearance of his brother, sometimes finding help along the way, but often finding himself outnumbered and the object of scorn for both the living and dead. I don’t want to spoil any plot details, just know that the story is worth your attention.

Graphically, Cursed Mountain looks pretty good. There’s a lot of detail in the setting, and as stated, viewing the entire game world at once is a wonderful trick that the game benefits from. Eric’s animations are sometimes stiff though, and I feel like a lot of the game looks dark in places it doesn’t need to. Overall though, it’s well above-average for a Wii game, especially a third-party one, and does a far better job than most of the realistic-styled titles on the system.

Blast Factor: Story, setting and atmosphere are the keys to Cursed Mountain. The gameplay works but has its issues, and the pacing is sometimes a little too slow, but there’s more than enough good to make up for those minor problems. Here’s a quality, realistic, mature title for the Wii that wants nothing more than to creep you out while it tells you a fine story, and that’s good enough for me.

Cursed Mountain is available exclusively on the Nintendo Wii, and retails for $49.99

Risen, the seemingly ambitious, yet ultimately secretive RPG from publisher Deep Silver and developer Piranha Byte’s got a whole lot more interesting today as the publisher revealed that Andy Serkis and Rhys Davies will lend their voices to the game as lead roles.

Names don’t sound familiar to you? How about Gollum and Gimli from the Lords of the Rings film trilogy? Ahh, there we are.

Serkis will play the role of “The Inquisitor” and Davies will surrender his voice to bring “Don Esteban” to digital life in Risen, but, as is par for the course with Deep Silver and Piranha Bytes, that’s all we know so far.

But wait, ever watch the television Terminator spin-off “The Sarah Connor Chronicles”? If so you’ll be delighted to learn Lena Heady, Sarah from the show, will play the role of Patty in the upcoming game.

Look for Risen exclusively on Xbox 360 and Windows PC October 5.

Deep Silver and Piranha Bytes today unleashed an interactive, rich, sonorous, and beautiful website for the impending Risen role-playing-game due out later this year on Xbox 360 and PC.

The website is a mini-game (but not in the Wii sense of the phrase) in itself as you’re given choices of directional travel and, as you’ll quickly learn, the island you’ve been so unfortunately washed onto is not a pleasant place.

Risen is an ambitious project, and one that developer Piranha Bytes has been tirelessly designing for the past 2.5 years.‚  The game, from the words of early previews, is ambitious, full of moral objectivity, ghastly creatures, rich storytelling, and all takes place in the confines of a Mediterranean island during the Middle Ages in a sort of Fable-esque art style.

Have a look at the new website here, and enjoy the glorious trailer for the title below.

Think you’ve got what it takes to be the human incarnate of Duke Nukem?‚  Want to get paid to travel the world acting as the face of the franchise?‚  Sounds like a lofty endeavor, I know, but Deep Silver and Apogee Software, the folks who bring you all things Duke, have simplified the process allowing anyone, anywhere the ability to audition.

Fans are encouraged to send a short video of themselves acting out the mannerisms of Duke to DukeisBack.com, where the videos will be judged by a panel of “Duke Experts”, with the winner granted a job of a lifetime traveling the globe being Duke.

While the feminine half of the world is not ruled out for consideration, I just don’t see it happening.‚  Prove me wrong!

No word on what the actual compensation rate is, but hey, to be the face of one of video games’ most iconic cigar smoking bad-asses has got to be worth it.‚  And judging by the videos submitted thus fan, the competition is weak.‚  If you have Duke in you at all, head on over to the site and check it out.

DukeisBack.com

Deep Silver, Inc has released their game lineup for the 2008 E3 Media & Business Summit for both PC and consoles. Although Deep Silver publishes games for all platforms, this year their big console releases are solely for the Nintendo DS and Wii.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky is a survival first-person shooter game released for the PC based on an alternate scenario of 1986′s nuclear reactor incident in the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the Soviet Union. Clear Sky is the official prequel to 2007′s S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, released by GSC Game World studio. The prequel introduces an alternative look onto the events of the original game and allows the player to be a mercenary stalker in search of his own path. The game is expected to be released worldwide on August 29, 2008.

The PC-hit Secret Files: Tunguska was released for the Nintendo DS and Wii in May. Secret Files was the most successful adventure game of 2006, Deep Silver said in a recent press release. The game delves into the mystery of Tunguska where, in 1908, a massive explosion of unknown origin triggered a flaming inferno caused massive amounts of death and destruction. Players follow a kidnappers’ trail through ancient secret passageways in Irish castle ruins, through the flickering heat of Cuba, and aboard the legendary Trans-Siberian Railroad to discover the truth behind the catastrophe.

On December 31, 2008, Deep Silver will release Gravity simultaneously for the DS and Wii. As a puzzle game, it has over 100 levels that can be completed in multiple ways, plus 10 “sandbox” levels and a custom-level editor, allowing for hours of replayability.

Pet Vet: Down Under for the Nintendo DS uses the stylus functionality to allow players to interact with six different Australian animals as a veterinarian. The game’s target audience is young children. It contains extensive information about Australia and its wildlife, which players can read in order to treat the animals and successfully grow their veterinarian business.
Deep Silver develops and publishes interactive games for all platforms. Working with its various partners, their products are designed to appeal equally to all video game lovers.

Since 2003, Deep Silver has published about 40 games. Their internal development studio, Deep Silver Vienna, opened in 2007.