Fatal Frame

BY THE WAY. I realized by the end of this I nearly hit 1k words so if you don’t like reading huge ass long stuff BYE BYE. Also most of these reviews will not go into detail about mechanics and is simply about the overall game (though when I tell you if its a buy or headdesk I do take into account various things). Why? Cause I could write a thesis about why something is bad probably.

Why Fatal Frame as my first game? Simply because my guild mama decided that horror would be the most awesome of dinner conversations (in which now I shall cry and hide underneath my covers). Fatal Frame so far has 4 games out (the 4th game is sadly only in Japanese at the moment but I hear there’s an English patch for it) and what I shall be talking about is the first one. Some facts about it:

Came out in 2001
Console of choice was the ps2.
In Japan its known as Project Zero.
What makes this unique compared to other horror games? You’re a little girl who runs as fast as my pet turtle killing ghosts with a camera. Lovely.

I shall be truthful with you. I don’t watch or play anything that has the word horror in it. My little pony defeats horror mountain? Out of the window. BUT. But. A few years ago a good friend of mine convinced me into keeping her company while she attempted to kill ghosts with a camera. So here starts the beginning of the last horror game I shall talk about (I may have to eat my words in about a year, probably).

Fatal Frame is unlike any other horror game I have played (typical essay start…Jesus I haven’t even PLAYED A HORROR GAME BEFORE). In majority of the games I have seen (as in, watched on youtube), not many consist of a girl with a camera who tries to kill camera shy ghosts in some haunted mansion. This game does so much good, its really REALLY difficult to find what’s bad about it. No games that I have seen, and I mean NO OTHER GAME, can keep you on your toes like fatal frame. The makers take advantage of everything, from the dimly lit broken down environment they throw you into to annoyingly slow speed your character walks at as the ghost slowly but surely the ghost catches up and eats your brains (wait, zombies, never mind).

What’s Good.

Everything, BWAHAHHA. Ok to be more specific a few things. This is a standard answer for majority of horror games but the environment was definitely a killer (quite literally). Sure, all horror games have a good environment etc etc, but fatal frame pulled off the camera angles for each different stage REALLY WELL. Why? In some horror games (such as FPS horror games) IF you wanted, when you know you’re doomed you could probably simply aim at the wall and not watch the horror that is coming to tear off your head. In THIS game, oh no they don’t give you that pleasure. They make sure you’re screaming at the T.V as this one ghost, just barely visible, slowly catches up with your character no matter how hard you try to run (I mean walk, seriously, the main characters walk. Then when you press a button a button to “run” they simply take bigger steps) towards that door. Not only that but the minute you turn around to take a picture of it, all your neighbours will hear is: FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU. The last thing I want to talk about is the Psychological factor. There are games which are horrible simply cause this thing made out of guts and gore and is completely disgusting rushes at you with a chainsaw. Fatal Frame does that to an extent but doesn’t build a game solely on it. Though they’ve made it such that there are two types of ghosts (ghosts that don’t give a shit about you and ghosts that REALLY give a shit about you) you end up treating every ghost you meet as the second type. And even though you KNOW something is around the corner waiting to kick your ass, the game seems to be able to force your guard down in which for that one second before that monster jumps you, you stare hard at the screen going “what the hell is that?” (which is usually followed by an AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHhhhh- *by now the guy is 5 miles from his house*). Even small ghosts that appear for 1-2 seconds would make a grown man (me) jump up and go mad (yes I am a grown man shut up ;~; ).

What’s Bad.

I’m actually not too sure. All in all it was a really good game and probably one of the things I simply didn’t like was the shift in camera angle may make your character go somewhere you didn’t want to but only for a split second. Slow movement was irritating but to be honest if you could outrun ghosts what kind of a horror game would that be?

Headdesk or to the Game store?!

You see we have a problem here. I WOULD buy it if I wasn’t such a pussy and didn’t play horror games. This game has been arguably one of THE best horror game when it was made (I only played fatal frame 1, 7 years after it was made, still fucking freaked me out. I shall not play the others). I didn’t talk much about the story here because I didn’t finish the game (I like happy dreams with ponies thank yo- I mean transformers thank you) and I simply don’t intend to (however from what I heard the story is disturbing and awesome like. Yeah, not finishing it). So I guess I’d buy the game, give it away to someone, then head desk when they ask me to play it with them. Awesome game but I like not having heart attacks thankyouverymuch.

Cause I’m Just That Fucking Scared of Horror Games.