Fatal Frame is an essential survival horror game. If you are a fan of the genre you simply can’t miss out on this game.
The controls aren’t the best I’ve seen and neither are they the worst. Being a young Japanese girl you wouldn’t expect her to be running like an athlete but then again you wouldn’t expect her to run at a snail’s pace. Walking is simply out of the question, it would take days to get around the mansion and the running isn’t a whole lot better either. You hold down the X button to run straight forward then it’s simply a case of tilting the left thumb stick to turn which can get a bit annoying when the camera angle changes as you end up running in unwanted directions. Also you can get stuck when running near corners; it’s a minor bug but still annoying. I think this slow pace was deliberate because when you encounter ghosts its difficult to quickly run away from then which heightens the tension.
Now the ghosts are the only enemies you will encounter. Phew I hear you saying, well think again because these ghosts can pack a Mike Tyson punch. Essentially there are two types of ghost, aggressive and non aggressive. The non aggressive ghosts are scattered throughout the game in mini set pieces, they appear for a short moment for you to quickly snap them to receive spirit points, which I’ll discuss later, and then they vanish. Be quick otherwise you’ll miss the snap. The aggressive ghosts is where all the fun begins. All sorts of things happen with different ghosts but that’s something to experience for yourself as later in the game they become much more interesting and difficult. Essentially they appear as a faint shimmer on the screen so you have to quickly press the B button to open viewfinder mode which is simply a first person view through the camera. You have a target reticule and you need to try centre the reticule on the ghost using the right thumb stick. Once that happens your reticule will begin to charge with spirit power, once it’s full you pull the right trigger to damage the ghost. You can pull the trigger whenever you like but when it’s fully charged you get a core shot and receive more spirit points. If you feel daring you can wait till the ghost comes very close and before its attacks and you can receive a zero shot, your reticule turns red and you deal maximum damage and receive maximum spirit points, but the downside is more often than not the ghost will damage you as split second timing is essential.
A small RPG element introduces itself into the game in the form of spirit points. Think of them as experience points, you accumulate then as you snap ghosts and then you can spend them on your camera as you wish. You can upgrade the speed for the reticule to fill up, you can increase the size of the reticule, you can increase damage dealt by the camera and you can also buy special functions. These range from slowing down ghosts to paralyzing them and even automatically tracking them. But these functions can cost a lot of spirit points and requires a spirit stone every time you use the auxiliary functions. You can only hold up to 10 spirit stones and you won’t find many of them. Also health items are scattered sparingly throughout the mansion so careful inventory managing is required but again this is simply to heighten the tension. There are three types of film in the game. Type 14 (weak), Type 37 (strong) and Type 74 (very strong). They are basically like your ammunition. The latter two are found more frequently towards the end of the game and can deal out a lot of damage; this alongside a fully upgraded camera with powerful auxiliary functions will turn you into a walking ghost tank. The RPG elements work very well, there’s always a constant need to get that perfect zero shot so you can upgrade your camera to the next level.
The sound in this game is excellent and I was only playing it on stereo. If you are fortunate enough to have state of the art Dolby surround sound then you are in for a treat. The music has that perfect tense/eerie feel to it and the occasional murmur or whisper is frightening. You pick up a tape recorder early on in the game and you occasionally find a tape to play on it. Whilst the voices of people like the author add authenticity to the story it still feels very boring and dull because like any other survival horror the voice acting is rubbish. But you can’t fault the developers going all out to make a rich, engaging storyline.
The game play is decent. It falls down to a simple mundane task. Go from door to door, pick up some items, solve a few puzzles and deal with ghosts in between. A few hours into the game and this can quickly become very tedious. But the exciting, scary ghost battles keep the game fresh.
At the end of the day this is a survival horror game but one that thankfully takes it away from zombies, guns and guts and in a whole new direction. 75% of fear is based on anticipation not what actually happens, this game fully realizes that and goes all out for nail biting tension. The story is well written and highly engaging. The camera is a stroke of genius with all the RPG elements it entails. The sound remains excellent if only let down by bad voice acting. This game can appeal to all gamers and it deserves to be played, a thoroughly enjoyable and unique game all round.