Fatal Frame III: The Tormented Review

There are plenty of good scares to be found in Fatal Frame III: The Tormented.

The Good

  • Creepy, scary atmosphere  
  • Engaging story that ties in to previous Fatal Frame games  
  • Forgiving item distribution.

The Bad

  • Controls sometimes not up to the challenge of rooms with fixed viewpoints  
  • Ghosts like to be cheap  
  • Constant travel to "real world" diffuses some of the tension.

It's one thing to be all brave in survival horror games when you're able to level a rocket launcher at your foes, but when all you're armed with is an ancient camera and a well-practiced ability to gasp in terror, it's a bit more intimidating. Tecmo's Fatal Frame series taps the Japanese occult to provide chilling tales of secret rituals and the ill-fated individuals sacrificed to serve them, and Fatal Frame III: The Tormented treads the same terrible path. Enjoyment of the game's dark subject matter is diluted slightly by some awkward controls and strange pacing, but there are still plenty of good chills to be had.

Sometimes, it's just better to let loved ones go, especially if they're drawing you into a cursed nightmare that wants to kill you.

Freelance photographer Rei Kurosawa is dealt a severe blow when her beloved fiancé, Yuu Asou, dies in an ugly car accident when she's at the wheel. She cloisters herself in her home, letting her able assistant Miku schedule assignments and take care of the daily chores. One such assignment takes her to a reportedly haunted mansion, and while there, she sees a vision of Yuu. This incident touches off a series of disturbing dreams where Rei arrives at a decrepit, sprawling estate, chasing the specter of her former lover. She's not alone, however, as the manor is full of other ghosts who seem a bit on the unpleasant side. One such ghost is a mysterious woman whose skin is covered in blue tattoos--she reaches out to touch Rei in the dream, and Rei then begins to wake up with similar and painful spreading designs on her own body. Apparently the dream is part of a curse, tied closely to an old mountain ritual involving sacrificing a priestess by impaling all her limbs and staking her to the ground. Needless to say, matters get increasingly unpleasant, and Rei has to fight to learn as much as she can about the history of the ritual and the dream before she gets trapped in it forever.

Fatal Frame fans will quickly recognize some familiar names and faces right off the bat. For example, Rei's cheery young assistant, Miku Hinasaki, is actually the heroine of the first Fatal Frame. Rei's deceased fiancé was friends with one Kei Amakura, a man whose niece is Mio, survivor of the second Fatal Frame game. The stories of these games, all of which have involved some kind of painful loss, fold into each other to supplement the main storyline of Tormented, where you will also play as Miku and Kei at certain points. There's almost a sense of too many stories converging, though the main theme of Tormented manages to carry them off well. And if you haven't played either of the previous games, you won't be lost, as there are plenty of supplemental materials to bring you up to speed on former events.

The camera obscura is a delightful device.

The camera obscura makes its return as your ghost-banishing weapon of choice here, though apparently the creator produced a number of them, and one ends up falling into the hands of each playable character. Pressing the triangle button will bring up a viewfinder mode, where you can center your view and take photos while moving at a walk. The camera's exorcismal power depends on the strength of the film you use (higher-grade film does more damage) and to some extent on which character you're playing, since different characters have variable amounts of natural spirit power. There are a few ways you can boost the oomph of the camera. One is through upgrading it by earning points as you take photos, and then spending those points on upgrades to the camera's max power, range, and charge time (each character has different camera upgrades, but they all share points). The other is by careful timing in battle itself. While you can take just any old photo of a ghost and do at least some hurt, you're going to get the most points by centering the ghost in the shot, waiting for it to get close, and then capitalizing on a shutter chance. A shutter chance turns the viewfinder red and increases the damage you do--sometimes, you'll get a fatal frame as well, which is a moment in the shutter chance when you can do massive damage. Successful fatal frames will knock a ghost back, but you'll often get a chance to shoot another fatal frame for combo damage.

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Fatal Frame III: The Tormented

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