Curse: The Eye of Isis

Curse: The Eye of Isis is a survival horror video game that was developed by British studio Asylum Entertainment and published by DreamCatcher Interactive and Wanadoo for the Xbox, PlayStation 2 and Windows. It was released stateside for Windows in October 2003 and for Xbox in April 2004. The PlayStation 2 version was only released in Europe.

It shares the same sort of atmospheric setting, gameplay, fixed camera angles, and ammo preservation as the earlier Resident Evil games, as well as many other archetypal survival horror games in the genre, such as ObsCure and Silent Hill.

The Xbox version of the game was very briefly backwards compatible with the Xbox 360, but was removed from the list because of glitches on December 1, 2005. The game remains unplayable on that system.

Story
The game is set in 1890s victorian London. Darien Dane was invited by his childhood female friend Victoria Sutton to see the egyptian exhibition at the British Museum, where an ancient and valuable statue known as the Eye of Isis, recovered by Darien's father, the archaeologist, Dr. Stanley Dane. However, upon arriving, he finds the museum is closed, because some thieves break in and steal the statue and unleash a powerful curse that brings back to life the mummies and other dead. Darien is also trapped in the museum and, with the help of Abdul Wahid &mdash; a friend of his parents &mdash; faces thugs, mummies and revived dead, seeking to save his female friend and to end the curse.

Reception
The game received mixed reception upon release.

TeamXbox gave a mixed review, categorizing many aspects of the game as "average" or "decent." The reviewer praised the game's voice acting, but stated the game overused its "random freaky noise effect." He also found the graphics generally acceptable but they "seem[ed] just a tad too flat" and had "little life". His overall opinion was that gamers looking for an "el cheapo title" might consider it "worth the twenty bucks".

Game Informer gave a generally negative review, comparing the game to a "B-grade horror movie" and a "19th century version of Resident Evil", and stated that "the menus are clunky, the map is useless, and combat is too easy", although the controls were noted as above average, especially compared to the Resident Evil series.