Curse: The Eye of Isis

My honest first impression of Curse: The Eye of Isis is that it's a time capsule someone forgot to bury properly - and I mean that in the most affectionate way possible. This is a mid-tier early-2000s survival horror game, originally released in 2003, that was quietly ported to Steam years later. If you go in expecting a forgotten masterpiece, you will be disappointed. If you go in expecting a gloomy Victorian ghost train ride that lasts an evening, you might have a genuinely good time. The setup is exactly as pulpy as it sounds: archaeologist Darien Dane and museum curator Victoria Sutton get caught up in an Egyptian curse that floods a British natural history museum with a yellow mist, turning staff and thugs alike into zombies and reanimated mummies. The structure is fixed-camera, third-person, with ammo preservation and a separate curse meter that drains your health the longer you breathe in the mist - a mechanic that works on paper but can turn punishing fast if you run dry on cure items. Combat covers roughly six weapon types including a pistol, shotgun, and a grenade launcher that is almost comically useless against the game's scorpion boss - you are better off circling it with a pistol and targeting its stinger. Boss fights occasionally require hitting specific body parts to deal damage, though this targeting mechanic only shows up in a handful of encounters across the whole game. Puzzles lean toward the fetch-and-key variety and rarely slow you down. The best thing Curse does is its atmosphere. The darkened museum opening genuinely sets a grim tone, and the environments - a sewer-linked train station, a large cargo ship, and an Egyptian pyramid tomb - each carry a consistent, gloomy Victorian-gothic feel. Dramatic lighting and shadow work hold up better than you might expect from something this old. What does not hold up is the camera, which fights you in cramped corridors, and the aiming system, which forces you to stand still while a reticle slowly lines up on an enemy that is already closing distance. There are also reported inventory bugs that can lock progress, so saving often is less a tip and more a necessity. The story itself is thin. You are chasing a stolen statue through four locations with a villain who barely registers and a plot that peaks at setup and coasts to its conclusion. The two playable characters are split unevenly - you spend the vast majority of time as Darien, with Victoria available only in specific sections. Abdul, the roaming NPC who acts as save point, inventory keeper, and occasional guide, is genuinely the most useful presence in the game. At roughly six to eight hours total, Curse does not overstay its welcome, which is probably what keeps it from fully collapsing under its own roughness. Who is this for right now, in 2024? Horror completionists with a soft spot for the PS2 era, players who have already exhausted Resident Evil 1 through Code Veronica and want something in the same key, and anyone who finds the Victorian-Egypt crossover setting irresistible. Everyone else should probably look elsewhere. The jank is real and the scares are mild, but there is a scrappy, low-budget sincerity here that earns it a pass for the right audience. Alex, Scout Team