The audio is quite jarring. The gameplay would have been better if not for the aiming mechanic and the overall jank of the game. There was a game-breaking bug with a key I didn't pick up from a safe which set me back 2 hours' worth of gameplay. The story wasn't interesting to me either.
A fun little survival horror game based around a cursed statue that radiates an aura bringing the dead back to life and possessing innocent people for the dark deeds of...Seth? Set? Not certain tbh...
The game is set in 1890's England, back when Egypt was THE topic everyone was obsessed with and after a thief's failed attempt to steal an artefact known as "The Eye of Isis" (despite it looking like Bast, which'd make more sense) ends off setting off a curse that floods the museum killing, possessing and reanimating the dead everywhere it goes.
Meanwhile our hero is stopped by the police who say the museum is closed and the staff will be helping with their enquiries, however, after they disappear, our hero just opens the door with no issue and gets inside. Afterwards, he ends up on a journey and getting haunted by this curse as he attempts to return the statue to it's rightful place back in Egypt. Now if curses were real, I'm sure many items in the Natural History Museum would be sent back as it's not worth having visitors getting poisoned, possessed or mutated just to keep a valuable artefact on display.
The gameplay is your typical 3rd person survival game, borrowing elements from games like Resident Evil 4 and others, only the inventory is nowhere near as limited as the RE games and closer to that of Dino Crisis, but ammo and healing items are limited to make sure to take precaution in when you wish to heal up and when not to. Some of the monster designs are very good and it's a shame I hadn't played this game before, because it really was a lot of fun and certainly a nice little distraction if you want to play another PS2 generation survival game without replaying Resident Evil 4, Code Veronica or event Cold Fear for the fifth time!
Stream + gameplay
The game is set in 1890's England, back when Egypt was THE topic everyone was obsessed with and after a thief's failed attempt to steal an artefact known as "The Eye of Isis" (despite it looking like Bast, which'd make more sense) ends off setting off a curse that floods the museum killing, possessing and reanimating the dead everywhere it goes.
Meanwhile our hero is stopped by the police who say the museum is closed and the staff will be helping with their enquiries, however, after they disappear, our hero just opens the door with no issue and gets inside. Afterwards, he ends up on a journey and getting haunted by this curse as he attempts to return the statue to it's rightful place back in Egypt. Now if curses were real, I'm sure many items in the Natural History Museum would be sent back as it's not worth having visitors getting poisoned, possessed or mutated just to keep a valuable artefact on display.
The gameplay is your typical 3rd person survival game, borrowing elements from games like Resident Evil 4 and others, only the inventory is nowhere near as limited as the RE games and closer to that of Dino Crisis, but ammo and healing items are limited to make sure to take precaution in when you wish to heal up and when not to. Some of the monster designs are very good and it's a shame I hadn't played this game before, because it really was a lot of fun and certainly a nice little distraction if you want to play another PS2 generation survival game without replaying Resident Evil 4, Code Veronica or event Cold Fear for the fifth time!
Stream + gameplay
Victoria keeps Dariens balls in her purse! He's fucking useless and she's constantly making him a potion to save his sorry ass.
This review contains spoilers
Curse: The Eye of Isis is a "survival horror" game by Asylum Entertainment developed for Windows PC and Xbox Original as well as for Playstation 2 in Europe only; here's what I can tell you about this game: I put quotations around survival horror for a reason. It's a game that wears the skin of an old survival horror game, it has the fixed camera angles and the inventory management, puzzles, all the nine yards. But let me introduce a concept, have you ever heard of Asylum Films? Their movies consist of low budget knock offs with poor special effects, hammy acting, and strange design choices that reek of low effort cash grab and are definitely not scary. This may have had some effort but I can't think of anything more fitting considering Asylum Entertainment (probably not related) made this game. I'll start with the plot here:
The plot involves a thief breaking into a museum in London during the 1890s to steal the titular Eye of Isis statue, the dumb f u c k breaks it or something and a curse is released. Things go haywire and young Darien Dane goes to the museum to meet up with old childhood friend Victoria Sutton. I can't remember too much in terms of plot stuff, but you meet up with a guy named Abdul (the only actual source of real scares in this game) who can hold items and you both go search for Victoria. Hijinks happen I guess, there's stuff with the actual thief (named Le Chat here), mummy monsters, goons with guns roaming around, Darien gets cursed at one point and Victoria has to cure him three times. There's notes about the curse and how originally the Sutton and Dane families found the Statue in Egypt and then took it I guess? Eventually they chase after the thief who boards a boat led by some Humpty Dumpty lookin f u c ker named Bupo. You go through a ship to do....something? Whatever the case, you finally pop back to the actual Pyramid in Egypt to find both the thief, Bupo and MORE magical monsters who want to breathe on you harder than Matt Gaetz at a day care center. You finally go through all of that to stop this curse and you learn some stuff like Le Chat is actually Victoria's twin sister? Where this came from I don't know, and also Bupo turns into something akin to The Master from Fallout and after putting the statue back the curse finally comes to an end.
So what did I think of this plot? It's confusing, forgettable, most of the characters don't have much in the way of personality, and I truly struggled understanding what's going on most of the time and even while reading notes it's just kind of boring. Like where did the twin sister thing come from? That plot thread felt forced and hammy. Who is Bupo other than some random collector guy? Actually I'm gonna combine the plot section with sound design, art design, and everything else because I don't have too much to say here other than this game feels like it was supposed to be more of an Indiana Jones film than anything else, just dressed up with a "horror coating", the VA is ok, the locations (The Museum/Sewers, The Ship, the Pyramid) are boring and one note for the most part, again there's not much in the way of personality for anybody really (like I don't remember Darien saying much other than "Great Scott" til the end of the game) and keep in mind I'm not gonna really remember the plot as much as I will the gameplay: or better yet my janky experience thereof.
The gameplay was...mixed for me to say the least. The first I'll go into was glitches, I couldn't even get this game to load updates properly because it would sit in the install update thing for hours which I didn't find a fix for so that it probably contributed to glitches in my actual play through. For starters, I literally couldn't play the game past the first save area because it kept crashing until a friend sent me her save file (shoutout to Jinx btw thank you), when I pause the game it'll randomly just boot me out at strange times, legs would randomly spin around in a helicopter motion on the pause menu and continue until later in the game (more funny than anything else), one enemy who was chasing me decided to run back in the opposite direction into a wall or something and kept running in motions; in the Egypt levels Victoria won't go through the spinning doors properly, I could've been softlocked because Abdul wouldn't pop through the revolving door so I couldn't get a flamethrower to light up some candles but luckily I did, the Scorpion boss made me crash three times towards the end. It's
hilarious how many I encountered playing this game, and I'll post some later here at the end.
The actual gameplay you'll do some survival horrorey stuff like solve puzzles, conserve ammo and health, etc. It's not awful the way they do it, of course I broke out a guide (this is a good one: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=942210108) to figure out what I was doing so I can't say much cause I suck. What I can say is that enemies consist of undead mummies or corpses for the most part, which is fine but they also have one special ability: the ability to breathe on you and give you the curse which will slowly lower your health over time unless you use amulets you pick off of dead bodies (which heals you and gets rid of curses but I don't think that was explained well) or menthol jars. I don't mind combat being mixed up but in certain cases I would get cursed because the cameras were orientated in a strange manner, which when moving between cameras have this thing where instead of continuing to move in a consistent manner in that direction makes you move in the other way so then you have to kind of spin and reorient yourself and it just feels weird. Speaking of controls? The PC controls f u c king blow and the controller support is worse so I had to buy this app- https://store.steampowered.com/app/367670/Controller_Companion/ (great by the way) and used this guide: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=648605819) to put in good controller support stuff so I could actually play the game in a comfortable manner. When fixed camera angles are done well it can be atmospheric and great but in this it's more of a detriment to fight against, the gun combat (though maybe a glitch) I had trouble locking onto enemies sometimes and would aim next to them even if there's no other enemies in the room. I guess if I had to add another thing is that with the limited inventory space you have to go to Abdul in order to switch out items as well as save your progress, and let me tell you this guy is dedicated to his job. He literally provides 100 percent of the scares coming out of strange places and hiding spots, yelling your name and plot exposition while some goofy genie music plays in the background. It can get kind of tedious but overall it was tolerable for the most part.
I don't hate this game, but truthfully it's obtuse, confusing to fix up and patch and generally kind of dull. Also my playtime didn't count (I had 5 hours) so I had to leave the start up menu on so I could write this up. It came out in 2004, I know some things were a product of it's time and if you're willing to put in the time and effort to fix the damn thing in certain spots for 2.99 it's not the worst price but there are better and more interesting games you could be playing. Here's some guides I found (not the ones above) and videos I recorded.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1683612384
https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Curse:The_Eye_of_Isis#Unable_to_Execute_error.28Steam_Version.29
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kRd3GtFtokNNtmjlb-W5uonsghVGpLvf/view?usp=sharing (If you keep crashing after trying to save with Abdul the first time)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cB3ImoxUBsM&ab_channel=gamemast15r
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hn6gqZ4phQE&ab_channel=gamemast15r
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xz1gIE1CUlo&ab_channel=gamemast15r
From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/
The plot involves a thief breaking into a museum in London during the 1890s to steal the titular Eye of Isis statue, the dumb f u c k breaks it or something and a curse is released. Things go haywire and young Darien Dane goes to the museum to meet up with old childhood friend Victoria Sutton. I can't remember too much in terms of plot stuff, but you meet up with a guy named Abdul (the only actual source of real scares in this game) who can hold items and you both go search for Victoria. Hijinks happen I guess, there's stuff with the actual thief (named Le Chat here), mummy monsters, goons with guns roaming around, Darien gets cursed at one point and Victoria has to cure him three times. There's notes about the curse and how originally the Sutton and Dane families found the Statue in Egypt and then took it I guess? Eventually they chase after the thief who boards a boat led by some Humpty Dumpty lookin f u c ker named Bupo. You go through a ship to do....something? Whatever the case, you finally pop back to the actual Pyramid in Egypt to find both the thief, Bupo and MORE magical monsters who want to breathe on you harder than Matt Gaetz at a day care center. You finally go through all of that to stop this curse and you learn some stuff like Le Chat is actually Victoria's twin sister? Where this came from I don't know, and also Bupo turns into something akin to The Master from Fallout and after putting the statue back the curse finally comes to an end.
So what did I think of this plot? It's confusing, forgettable, most of the characters don't have much in the way of personality, and I truly struggled understanding what's going on most of the time and even while reading notes it's just kind of boring. Like where did the twin sister thing come from? That plot thread felt forced and hammy. Who is Bupo other than some random collector guy? Actually I'm gonna combine the plot section with sound design, art design, and everything else because I don't have too much to say here other than this game feels like it was supposed to be more of an Indiana Jones film than anything else, just dressed up with a "horror coating", the VA is ok, the locations (The Museum/Sewers, The Ship, the Pyramid) are boring and one note for the most part, again there's not much in the way of personality for anybody really (like I don't remember Darien saying much other than "Great Scott" til the end of the game) and keep in mind I'm not gonna really remember the plot as much as I will the gameplay: or better yet my janky experience thereof.
The gameplay was...mixed for me to say the least. The first I'll go into was glitches, I couldn't even get this game to load updates properly because it would sit in the install update thing for hours which I didn't find a fix for so that it probably contributed to glitches in my actual play through. For starters, I literally couldn't play the game past the first save area because it kept crashing until a friend sent me her save file (shoutout to Jinx btw thank you), when I pause the game it'll randomly just boot me out at strange times, legs would randomly spin around in a helicopter motion on the pause menu and continue until later in the game (more funny than anything else), one enemy who was chasing me decided to run back in the opposite direction into a wall or something and kept running in motions; in the Egypt levels Victoria won't go through the spinning doors properly, I could've been softlocked because Abdul wouldn't pop through the revolving door so I couldn't get a flamethrower to light up some candles but luckily I did, the Scorpion boss made me crash three times towards the end. It's
hilarious how many I encountered playing this game, and I'll post some later here at the end.
The actual gameplay you'll do some survival horrorey stuff like solve puzzles, conserve ammo and health, etc. It's not awful the way they do it, of course I broke out a guide (this is a good one: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=942210108) to figure out what I was doing so I can't say much cause I suck. What I can say is that enemies consist of undead mummies or corpses for the most part, which is fine but they also have one special ability: the ability to breathe on you and give you the curse which will slowly lower your health over time unless you use amulets you pick off of dead bodies (which heals you and gets rid of curses but I don't think that was explained well) or menthol jars. I don't mind combat being mixed up but in certain cases I would get cursed because the cameras were orientated in a strange manner, which when moving between cameras have this thing where instead of continuing to move in a consistent manner in that direction makes you move in the other way so then you have to kind of spin and reorient yourself and it just feels weird. Speaking of controls? The PC controls f u c king blow and the controller support is worse so I had to buy this app- https://store.steampowered.com/app/367670/Controller_Companion/ (great by the way) and used this guide: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=648605819) to put in good controller support stuff so I could actually play the game in a comfortable manner. When fixed camera angles are done well it can be atmospheric and great but in this it's more of a detriment to fight against, the gun combat (though maybe a glitch) I had trouble locking onto enemies sometimes and would aim next to them even if there's no other enemies in the room. I guess if I had to add another thing is that with the limited inventory space you have to go to Abdul in order to switch out items as well as save your progress, and let me tell you this guy is dedicated to his job. He literally provides 100 percent of the scares coming out of strange places and hiding spots, yelling your name and plot exposition while some goofy genie music plays in the background. It can get kind of tedious but overall it was tolerable for the most part.
I don't hate this game, but truthfully it's obtuse, confusing to fix up and patch and generally kind of dull. Also my playtime didn't count (I had 5 hours) so I had to leave the start up menu on so I could write this up. It came out in 2004, I know some things were a product of it's time and if you're willing to put in the time and effort to fix the damn thing in certain spots for 2.99 it's not the worst price but there are better and more interesting games you could be playing. Here's some guides I found (not the ones above) and videos I recorded.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1683612384
https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Curse:The_Eye_of_Isis#Unable_to_Execute_error.28Steam_Version.29
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kRd3GtFtokNNtmjlb-W5uonsghVGpLvf/view?usp=sharing (If you keep crashing after trying to save with Abdul the first time)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cB3ImoxUBsM&ab_channel=gamemast15r
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hn6gqZ4phQE&ab_channel=gamemast15r
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xz1gIE1CUlo&ab_channel=gamemast15r
From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/
Has the good old ps2 feel to it
This review contains spoilers
Very good horror game, kinda great i'd say. The OG RE-isms were apparent with stuff like the item management and the savepoints (as long as savebro Abdul is there, you can save indefinitely and he serves as the game's item box). Combat was good fun, incorporating a "choose-which-limb-to-aim-at" which some bosses made fun use of it. Of course melee will be made redundant at some point (you only have the bat i believe) and you'll have to mostly rely on gunpower. Atmosphere was yummy, barely any music outside of certain sections, only you and the sounds of footsteps. Story was neat but during the last half it started to lose me with Darrien conveniently getting knocked out so you'd have an excuse to switch to the 2nd character and i had no idea what the deal with the thief's identity was (like maybe they referenced it very early on but kinda smells of very rushed i have no idea)
Never heard of this game and was very excited to get to it this October and boy lemme tell ya, there is a good reason I have never heard of it.
As I booted it up it had the worst sound mixing with audio messing up and speakers crackling constantly and sounded like I was playing a N64 or PSX game. The game just feels very wonky and clunky and gets pretty repetitive with the same plot points happening throughout each of the three areas you go through. I have to say the worst part about this game was the lighting and darkness. I get the game means to make a more scary/horror atmosphere by making it dark, but when it makes it nearly impossible to see where you are going or what you should be doing it becomes a problem. I like how they tried to make fixed camera angles like silent hill and resident evil, but they honestly do more harm then good. So many times the camera angles would swap and spin me around to where I was going into a door I just left from or getting hit from an enemies attack I would of easily dodged.
I want to give it the benefit of the doubt because it is an older game and some things can change in the future and mistakes happen, but I feel like this just doesn't cut it. Too many issues soil the experience of this game which also suffers from its own mediocrity. I would say its more like an Indiana Jones type of game then a horror one. Even if you like Indiana Jones, hell I would say play something else.
As I booted it up it had the worst sound mixing with audio messing up and speakers crackling constantly and sounded like I was playing a N64 or PSX game. The game just feels very wonky and clunky and gets pretty repetitive with the same plot points happening throughout each of the three areas you go through. I have to say the worst part about this game was the lighting and darkness. I get the game means to make a more scary/horror atmosphere by making it dark, but when it makes it nearly impossible to see where you are going or what you should be doing it becomes a problem. I like how they tried to make fixed camera angles like silent hill and resident evil, but they honestly do more harm then good. So many times the camera angles would swap and spin me around to where I was going into a door I just left from or getting hit from an enemies attack I would of easily dodged.
I want to give it the benefit of the doubt because it is an older game and some things can change in the future and mistakes happen, but I feel like this just doesn't cut it. Too many issues soil the experience of this game which also suffers from its own mediocrity. I would say its more like an Indiana Jones type of game then a horror one. Even if you like Indiana Jones, hell I would say play something else.
Incredibly similar to eternal darkness in terms of atmosphere and feel. I almost thought it was made by the same devs tbh. Survival horror/RE Clone junkies should check it out.
Pretty boring. Every single door is locked, except the one you should go into