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21 of 21 found the following review helpful:
 Great...and Really Scary!!Sep 28, 2002
By A. Griffiths
"Adrian"
"Fatal Frame" is a game that definitely delivers. Although it does not have any particulary impressive premise (young girl with a camera investigates a haunted house) , it doesn't take long for you to really get into the game, and the scares start coming thick and fast.
The plot is fairly simple: main character Miku has come to the house to find her missing brother, so it's mostly a matter of making your way through the mansion, solving puzzles that will open doors, and trying to piece together the grim history of the house. But to do this, you have to be prepared to encounter a wide variety of ghostly apparitions, and it's here that the game really excels. The appearances of the ghosts are almost always a surprise, and it has to be said that they look and sound terrifying. After recovering from the shock, your next task is to quickly equip your camera and try and snap the ghost within the frame. This task can be very challenging, as more often that not the ghost will dart around, disappear completely and materialize behind you, or lunge at you unexpectedly and start throttling the life out of you! The idea of using a camera to fight is unusual and works well...by holding the ghost in constant view as it approaches, the camera will "charge up" and you can release a more powerful attack when you finally press the shutter-but are you brave enough to do that?. The best thing is that once you have completed Miku's first night, the ghostly appearances are far more randomised, and as you search the house once again (every chapter has new items and tasks appearing in places you have already explored), you will feel the tension as your camera suddenly lights up, and the controller throbs in your hands...oh no, another one! But, in a great additional aspect, the more ghosts you snap, the more points you score, which can be used to enhance the capabilities of the camera, so you have an element of levelling up which heightens and extends gameplay.
My only criticisms are that the game is quite short, and Miku is quite hard to control as you continually run in to bits of furniture, and she often rotates all over the place every time the camera angle changes. Plus, her "run" mode is no more than a gentle jog...no good for escaping evil ghosts! Still, I suppose it would have made the game even shorter were you able to dash through the mansion in no time at all...The graphics are great, the mansion looks suitably decrepit and sinister, and the secret behind the house's evil reputation (as it is slowly revealed) involves some truly sickening and creepy events...you have been warned!
Do yourself a favour and ONLY play this game after dark, with the lights off, you won't be sorry. It's easily as scary as "Silent Hill", in places more so, so I wholeheartedly recommend it.
16 of 16 found the following review helpful:
I NEED BATTERIES FOR MY NIGHTLITEJun 11, 2002
Folks theres only one work to describe this game... CREEPY CREEPY CREEPY I am an adult and this game freaked me out. Much scarier than Resident Evil and seriously challenges both Silent Hills as well. You play as a young girl who must find her missing brother in a haunted mansion. Her only weapon a frieken camera. Sounds lame right? WRONG!!! Its actually pretty damn cool. The way it works is you capture and kill ghosts by taking pictures of them with your camera. The more pictures you take and ghosts you catch, the more advanced and powerful the film in the camera gets. But the film isnt the only thing that gets stronger the Ghosts do too. And man these ghosts aint what you would call friendly in fact theyre mean... no brutal and theyre pretty damn determined to kill you. The game gets tough. The story gets better and better. Can you survive? I did manage to beat the game but frequently check under my bed and in my closet during the night as if I were five again. I give this game my highest recommendation!!! Praise to TECMO for producing such an awesome game
10 of 10 found the following review helpful:
The Grand high Empress Of All Horror GamesNov 24, 2003
By Review Lover
"ReviewLover"
Surely, Fatal Frame (Project Zero here in PAL-region countries) is, without a doubt, the single greatest Horror game ever to grace the Playstation 2. Or any other console, for that matter. It's beautiful to watch, smooth to play, emotionally involving, and, most importantly of all, genuinely terrifying.The plot concerns Miku, who has come to a haunted Japanese mansion house in order to search for her lost brother Mafuyu. From a family of psychic spirit-communicators, Miku is soon absorbed in unravelling what happened not only to her borther, but to a team of paranormal investigators, and to the original family. It's a beautifully grim tale of ritualistic suicide, demon-worshipping and powermongering, and I promise you, it's worth the ride. The control system, like all horror adventures in this mold, will never be perfect, but FF goes a huge way towards redressing the balance by removing traditional weapons like guns and replacing them with a Camera. Yes, a camera. Your ammo is differnet exposure-speed film and you upgrade the tool with the amount of souls you manage to capture with it. Ghosts are already dead, and it's up to you to exorcise them. The fluidity of movement involved with a weapon of this nature is a huge relief from the slow aiming and reloading process so long associated with the pistols and semi-automatics from the Biohazard and Silent Hill games. The graphics, too, deserve a special mention, becuase they're beautiful. The monochromatic minimalism and traditional Japanese design seem all the more upsetting for those of us not from that culture, and the ghosts themselves are a truly disturbing mix of traditional Shinto folklore and tortured, Francis-Bacon-esque faces. The sound works on the same principle. All is silent until something upsetting tears through that silence and forces us to look. Droplet effects and various footstep sounds have also been used to create a magnificent aural atmosphere, the best I've ever witnessed. And I've played plenty. My only complaint is the difficulty level. It takes a huge step up after the Second Night, and chances are you'll have wasted all of your stronger film on the earlier demons. Play it often and frugally, however, and you'll avoid this fate. For atmosphere and sheer terror alone, Fatal Frame deserves the crown of Survival Horror. Happily, Tecmo have given us a beautiful and innovative game to go with that atmosphere. I can't recommend it highly enough.
8 of 8 found the following review helpful:
 Survival Horror takes a turn...Mar 13, 2002
If you liked Silent Hill 2, this game is definitely up your alley. Nearly everything in the game, from the grainy B-horror movie textures to the heartbeat in the controller, make this a Silent Hill clone. So... If you are a fan of the genre, and are not more than happy to plug a box of shells into a zombie before it falls to the ground (only to knaw on your leg once it's there), then the combat system is a welcome change. Granted, a camera is not the weapon for those of us with missile launchers in our hearts, but it adds to the atmosphere of the game. Rather than watching your character from a third-person perspective dripping blood and limping all over the place, you get to meet your attacker face to face. And as they fade in and out of focus, it certainly increases the jump factor when one suddenly flies toward the screen. That's another thing. Silent Hill, probably the most psychologically disturbing game out there, still had typical creatures to face. Wrap a different character model around Resident Evil's zombies (more intense of course), and that's it. When you see a monster in a room, you know what to do. Draw your weapon and stay out of its way. But in Fatal Frame, ghosts (more often than not) simply appear right in front, or behind, you. And then they phase out of focus and appear somewhere else. The major flaws in the game are not overly destructive. The voice acting is horrid, but fans of RE shouldn't be too disappointed. Also, the characters move very slowly, though once you play for a while you get the feeling that this was done on purpose. No sense running into a ghost when you don't have to. And then there's the memory card space, 1800KB for one save. The reason, however, is that the last 24 photographs you take are saved, and you can protect certain shots that you want to keep. All in all, it's an interesting game, much like Silent Hill 2. Whereas SH2 frightens you with the surreal setting, light sources, and disturbing story, Fatal Frame does it with sudden ghost appearances that make your heart skip a beat.
11 of 12 found the following review helpful:
Yikes!Mar 27, 2002
Don't let the "Teen" rating fool you! I expected this to be a "kiddie" game, but I found it to be every bit as creepy and disturbing as Silent Hill. The character's slow movements are annoying at first, but you actually WANT to go slowly so that you don't miss any clues or accidentally run head-long into a ghost (like you can avoid them!). This is a game where you have to pay attention to every little detail. If you see a distorted object, take a photo of it. Some are very well hidden! The game is very different from anything else out there, since your "weapon" is an antique camera, not a gun. It sounds corny, but once you get into the game, the camera adds to the creepiness. When you take photos of a ghost, it often swooshes towards you, and the camera gives you a close-up of the ghost's face. Yikes! And the ghosts appear ANYWHERE, in front of you, then it de-materializes and reappears behind you ... and don't think you can get away by running to another room. They can go right through the walls! Many of the ghosts moan and scream about how they were tormented ... and once you get further into the story and understand what they're talking about, their words and facial expressions make it that much scarier. The puzzles aren't very hard at all; most are fairly simple. Capturing the ghosts is more challenging than the puzzles, especially once you're further into the game. There were only two minor things that bugged me ... the camera angle glitching when you go up and down a flight of stairs. Sometimes you're heading downstairs, and the camera changes, and you're suddenly going back upstairs. Not a big deal, unless you're running from a ghost! The second thing is that they didn't put enough power-ups in the game. If a ghost grabs you, it often takes a CHUNK of your power. Use those power-ups wisely and sparingly, and save often! Due to some of the violent mini-movies in the game, I really feel like they should've rated this game "Mature" instead of "Teen". I don't want to give any game secrets away, but I'm 33 years old and this game TOTALLY creeped me out, especially once you get to the masks.
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