Calling (video game)

Did You Know?

• Gameplay footage was leaked onto the internet in October 2008, which Hudson reported was stolen from a PR company's servers.
• The game was officially revealed in Famitsu in July 2009.

Gameplay

Players explore haunted locations in the Mnemonic Abyss from a first-person perspective, including a doll-filled house, a school, an internet café, a hospital, a bedroom, and a hair salon. The Wii Remote's pointer function controls object interaction and navigation. The controller also serves as a mobile phone for ghost communication, teleportation, and capturing photographic evidence and voice recordings. During fight events, players swing the Wii Remote following on-screen button commands to fend off ghosts.

Plot

Rin Kagura, Shin Suzutani, Chiyo Kishibe, and Makoto Shirae visit a website called The Black Page, which displays a death counter. Rin is drawn there by a promise she made six years earlier to a sick girl named Kureneko in an online chatroom. Entering a chatroom on the site transports the four friends to the Mnemonic Abyss, a purgatory between life and death that manifests memories of the dead. They try to escape using their mobile phones as teleportation devices. Shin arrives in a doll-maker's home, finds Chiyo unconscious among dolls, and is attacked by a ghost girl with a black cat doll. Rin enters a school and meets Shin and Makoto, who explains the Abyss's link to The Black Page. Rin sees Kureneko's ghost, who accuses her of breaking their promise. After Shin vanishes, Rin learns that phoning oneself while teleporting is fatal. She uses the Black Page's number to reach a doll room and meets Chiyo. Chiyo follows a mailman ghost into a void leading to a hospital; Rin follows, finds a phone number, and teleports to a house where she contacts Kuroneko. Kuroneko tries to jump from a window; Rin grabs her wrist, and both fall to their deaths. The scene rewinds: Rin arrives at the hospital, Makoto wakes in an otaku's room, meets his deceased partner Sadao at school, and is killed. In another timeline, Rin apologizes to Kuroneko, and before Kuroneko jumps, the hospital scene is shown. A post-credits scene shows Rin hugging Kuroneko's black cat doll.

Reception

Calling received generally unfavorable reviews on Metacritic. Famitsu gave it a score of 28 out of 40. Annette Gonzalez of Game Informer criticized the generic locales, uneventful set pieces, slow pacing, and anticlimactic ending. Jack DeVries of IGN called it worthless, citing terrible acting, poor controls, and dumb clichés, comparing it to recent Asian horror remakes. Nathan Meunier of GameSpot noted responsive controls in exploration but found the ghost encounters a disappointing wagglefest. Jon Wahlgren of Nintendo Life said the game fails to keep things together beyond an hour despite lacking original ideas. James Stephanie Sterling of Destructoid stated the game traded scares for grinding repetition and long black hallways that stop being creepy once the player realizes the game is stalling.