It's easy to make light of a horror game when you've only got screenshots and the odd video to go by. AJ testified that Calling has some genuinely scary moments during her preview of the game, so chances are I'll stop laughing the moment the game starts. Then I will play until the first scary bit, take the game out, and play something with stuffed animals in it.

As the name suggests, there's an awful lot of cell phone usage in the horror/adventure game. During a demo given to games journalists by the Japanese director, a poor woman finds a haunted cell phone that just wouldn't stop ringing. Even worse, she keeps answering it and the ghost on the other end keeps giving her updates on its progress (e.g. "I'm on the second floor landing..."). I imagine it would have been scarier in context, but at the time, it was downright funny. Especially because I had no idea which floor the girl started on, so I wasn't sure if the ghost was really close or just taking forever to climb the freaking stairs.

Also, if that haunted phone was the ghost's phone — and she said it was — what phone was the ghost calling from to provide the status updates?

What Is It?
Calling is a horror/adventure game with four main characters for the player to guide through a branching storyline. There are multiple endings, ghostly encounters and creepy environments to explore and hopefully survive.

What We Saw
After watching the demo, games journalists were given the chance to play through a single level starring a male character trapped in the empty apartment of a traditional Japanese doll maker.

How Far Along Is It?
Still in alpha — the game isn't due out 'til some unspecified time in 2010.

What Needs Improvement?
A Little Bit Waggly: For the most part, the Wiimote's motion controls are limited to gentle flicks to open doors or slide screens aside. However, there were two instances in the level where a ghost got the jump on the player and to get free you either had to mash the A button with perfect timing (like a quick time event), or just waggle furiously until the ghost let go. Guess which method is easier?

What Should Stay The Same?
It's Actually Kind of Scary: There was a part in the game where a guy comes upon a room where the sliding doors only open partway. Looking through the door and down, you can see the dead body of the doll maker. After sighting this grisly thing, I turned the character around to go into another room — but I stopped because I heard shuffling and giggling behind me. So I turned the character back around and — gah! — there were dozens of the creepy little dolls filling the slit of the partly-opened doors. Their hair fluttered and their eyes blinked and they were tittering at me in the creepiest way. It was genuinely upsetting.

Movement Is Controlled With The Analog Stick: This is the best possible way to control motion from the first person perspective, I think.

Final Thoughts
I came down pretty hard on Ju-on not because it was a nuanced Japanese horror experience (which Calling also strives to be), but because it fell flat on its face in the scary department. I realize minimalist storytelling is a big part of Japanese horror films — but I think this cost Ju-on dearly in the gameplay department. So already, Calling is a cut above where Ju-on wound up even in this early stage of development. Here's hoping the final product goes even farther toward that ideal scary experience.

The Calling plays on classic Japanese horror films like Ringu, with a mysterious website called the Page of Black. A simple black page with a counter in the center, rumor says that those who gain access to the linked chat room soon die after the onset of a mysterious, unexplained coma. The player wakes up in a strange room and receives a phone call from a ghostly voice. Soon they find themselves drifting in and out of a state of limbo known as The Border, where lost spirits roam, some communicating with the player, and others taking violent exception to their presence.

It sounds to me an awful lot like a Silent Hill title, with a mix of puzzles and exploration in a nightmarish world, but with Konami Digital Entertainment distributing the title in Europe next year, I doubt it's all that derivative. If anything it looks slightly scary, but we'll have to see more before we decided whether or not to run screaming.

Calling all Cars hit the Playstation debugs last week to mixed, very mixed reviews and David Jaffe was, well, he was himself.

His two post response raises some interesting issues, if you can get through all the crap. (Like Jaffe telling some gamers to 'GO FUCK YOUR MOTHER UP HER JIGGLY ASS TWAT' ? Seriously? That's just sad. I expect more from Jaffe.)

The first post is far less rambly, but it too suffers from the same issue, it comes off as Jaffe being incredibly defensive.

Essentially Jaffe argues that the game is worth the price and that it's unfair to knock its review score for a lack of content since it only costs $10. The thing that seemed to get Jaffe's goat specifically was Gamespot's score of 6.7/10.

While I think their score is a little low, I have to agree with them. Calling All Cars is a fun game to play for a short period of time, but its limited maps really hurt the game. And I don't buy into the it's-only-$10 argument. The game could have been made a lot more sustainable, a lot more fun to play with just a few more maps and maybe an extra game play mode or two.

I really enjoyed playing with Calling all Cars, but with only four maps and one gameplay mode (offline and online) it kinda got old quick. The different cars are nice, but they didn't seem to handle differently enough to change the gameplay experience.

What I suspect, and I could be totally wrong here, is that new maps and new modes will be hitting the game for extra pay. Something that would mean, to at least me, that the game is in fact being released piecemeal and that we don't yet know the true final price.

If that's the case I'd probably lower my impressions of the game, which I'd currently give a solid 75 to 80 percent, to something closer to the Gamespot score.

As for the Jaffe outburst, it's great to see a developer so passionate about his trade, but I just wish he wouldn't dip into those juvenile tirades. Brian Crecente

Ugh! No Fucking More and My Response to Gamespot [Jaffe's Game Design]