Calling (video game)

Calling
Developer(s)	Hudson Soft
Publisher(s)	WW: Hudson Soft EU: Konami
Platform(s)	Wii
Release	JP: November 19, 2009 NA: March 9, 2010 EU: March 19, 2010
Genre(s)	Survival horror
Mode(s)	Single-player

Calling, also known as Calling: Kuroki Chakushin (CALLING～黒き着信～, lit. Calling: Dark Message) in Japan, is a survival horror video game developed by Hudson Soft exclusively for the Wii console. The game was released in Japan on November 19, 2009,^[1] in North America on March 9, 2010,^[2] and in Europe on March 19, 2010.

Gameplay

In Calling, players assume a first-person perspective, exploring various haunted locations within the Mnemonic Abyss. Locations include a doll-filled house, Shosei High School, an internet café, a hospital, a bedroom, and a hair salon. Interacting with objects and navigating through the game is done through the use of the Wii Remote's pointer function. Additionally, the controller doubles as a mobile phone through which ghosts communicate with the player character via the speaker. The phone also provides a means of transportation between locations, and functions as a tool for capturing photographic evidence and recording ghostly voices.

Throughout the game, players will face various ghostly entities in designated "fight events", where they must act swinging motions with the Wii Remote while following on-screen button commands in order to fend them off.^[3]

Plot

Rin Kagura, Shin Suzutani, Chiyo Kishibe, and Makoto Shirae visit "The Black Page," a mysterious website that displays a death counter. Rin is compelled to visit the site because of a promise she made to a sick girl, Kureneko, six years prior over an online chatroom. Upon entering a chatroom on the site, the four friends are transported to the "Mnemonic Abyss," a purgatory-like void between life and death that materializes memories of the deceased. The group attempts to escape by using their mobile phones as teleportation devices.

Shin finds himself in the home of a doll-maker, who is obsessed with creating lifelike dolls. Later, he discovers Chiyo unconscious on the floor, surrounded by the doll maker's eerie creations. He flees back to where he began and is attacked by the ghost of a little girl holding a black cat doll. Rin is the next to enter the Abyss, finding herself in a school after having a recurring dream. Shin soon joins her, and they encounter Makoto, who explains the connection between the Abyss and the Black Page. Rin sees the ghost of Kureneko, who accuses her of breaking their promise before disappearing.

When Shin suffers a stroke and vanishes, Rin learns that using their phones to teleport will kill them if they attempt to phone themselves. She uses the number on the Black Page to teleport to a room full of dolls, where she meets Chiyo. Later, Chiyo follows a ghost of a mailman into a void that leads to the hospital she was meant to be staying at before finding the Black Page. Rin follows her and discovers a phone number on a note left in Chiyo's place. Dialing the number, Rin teleports to a 2-story house and eventually contacts Kuroneko, with whom she had made the promise six years ago.

Kuroneko tries to jump out of the window, but Rin stops her by grabbing her wrist. Both girls fall to their deaths. The scene rewinds itself to show Rin arriving at the hospital, and then Makoto waking up in an otaku's room. At school, he meets his deceased partner, Sadao, who kills him, wanting to be "partners" again. In another timeline, Rin apologizes to Kuroneko and reenacts the previous scene, and just before Kuroneko jumps, we see what happened to them both in the hospital. Rin hugs Kuroneko's black cat doll in a post-credits scene.

Development

The game was first unofficially unveiled when gameplay footage was leaked onto the internet in October 2008. Hudson reported that the footage was stolen from a PR company's servers.^[4] It was later officially revealed in Famitsu in July 2009.^[3]

Reception

Calling has received a mostly mixed reception from critics. Based on 28 reviews, the game holds a Metacritic score of 49/100,^[6] and 51.40% on GameRankings based on 20 reviews.^[5]

Annette Gonzalez of GameInformer gave the game a 4.5 out of 10, stating: "Exploring Calling's generic locales to interact with countless objects and engage in uneventful set pieces is hardly enjoyable. The game suffers from slow pacing throughout the eight-plus hour experience, which fittingly ends with an anticlimactic scene."^[9] Jack DeVries of IGN scored the game a 3.5 out of 10 and called the game worthless, saying: "The acting is terrible, it controls poorly, and it's chock full of dumb clichés. It’s the videogame equivalent of the more recent Asian horror remakes."^[8] Nathan Meunier of GameSpot gave the game a 3.5 out of 10 and criticized Calling's sluggish pace and needless backtracking. He however noted that the game's controls were responsive in the exploration sections which made "the awful wagglefest that ensues during every single ghostly encounter a big disappointment."^[10] Jon Wahlgren of NintendoLife scored the game a 5 out of 10 concluding that "Sometimes things without the most original ideas can still elevate themselves higher than the sum of their parts through tight execution, but unfortunately Calling fails to keep things together for more than an hour."^[11] James Stephanie Sterling of Destructoid gave the game a 3.5 out of 10, stating that the game "traded in the scares for grinding repetition and long walks down black hallways that stop being creepy as soon as you realize that the game is just stalling for time and has no intention of surprising you."^[7]

References

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