Ju-On: The Grudge

To further keep you on your slow-moving toes, you must also trawl the environment for new batteries, as your frankly useless torch somehow manages to drain one in about three minutes. Perhaps it's bored. Between hunting for keys and batteries, shambling along like a pissed-off ghoul and flailing the remote wildly, you have The Grudge experience summed up in a sentence.

Joking aside, it's a shame, because the developer seems to be aiming somewhere between Fatal Frame and Siren, and that sounds promising. Making the protagonists everyday citizens who can't adequately fight back is interesting, as we delve into the moribund lives of rather helpless individuals caught up in the creeping dread of something they don't understand. I mean, it doesn't work at all in the actual game, and in reviews it really isn't the thought that counts, but somewhere out there in the real world it is.

So it's perhaps unsurprising that The Grudge also fails to make the Wii break sweat in technical terms. Although supposedly based on the real Saeki residence featured in the movie, its approximation of grimy Japanese suburbia is at best generic, and now something of a tired genre cliche. That said, the real problems stem from the fact that exploring these dismal locales is so laborious and slow. You simply have more time to notice how boring the environments really are than you do in a game with a run button, or even normal walking.

But at least there was some unintentional comedy to enjoy as I gallantly battled through the game, like the discovery of future possible internet memes - the regular appearance of a small boy who shrieks like a scalded cat, for example. The game also spreads long black hair over the walls and doors occasionally. It's like a crap cheese dream rather than a nightmare.

Like a cheap ghost train ride, The Grudge also throws in the odd misguided 'BOO!', like a hand grabbing at you from an air vent, or an object lobbed in your direction. Probably the tensest moment in the entire game involves little more than keeping your cursor trained on a moving, contracting circle for a few seconds while Ms Allen whines about how you never make her scream.

And what about the positively miserly two hours it takes to play through the four main episodes? A fifth episode eventually unlocks once you've scoured each and every other one for photo fragments and the like, but it amounts to a flob in the face after repeated knees in the groin. Playing it once through is enough to send you googling for the nearest therapist.