Whereas Silent Hill's recent reinvention, Shattered Memories, was bold enough to discard the shackles of the genre's ancient history, Tecmo strides back into the old frontier, shirt tucked into its stonewashed denim. It's clear from the outset that the developers are content to stick to what they know and repeat the creaking formula. The air of dark mystery remains an engaging hook, although some may find it a little over-familiar - particularly grizzled survival-horror veterans who eat crazy conspiracies pieced together via flashbacks and endless journal fragments for breakfast. Set 10 years after the incident, three of the girls return to Rougetsu Island ("the island nearest the underworld"), followed by a detective who's still investigating the man behind the mayhem.īroken down into chapters, Fatal Frame IV takes a similar approach to its predecessor, with each of the main characters starring in rotation and gradually peeling away the layers of obfuscation. Still, with a tone as unremittingly bleak as ever, this is about as far from Dan Aykroyd and Bill Murray as you could imagine, focusing on a bizarre ritual that robbed a group of young girls of the memories of a kidnapping and the events surrounding it. The setting shifts and the cast changes, but essentially Fatal Frame is still content to be Ghostbusters with a magic camera, frail high-school girls and a penchant for knee-high socks. But it's actually surprising how little has changed in years since the original. Having gone to all that effort, one would assume that the collaborative efforts of Grasshopper Manufacture's Goichi Suda (aka Suda 51) and series developer Tecmo must be amazing. Undeterred, a talented group of fans set about developing an unofficial English-language patch which, remarkably, also manages to circumvent region-locking shenanigans, giving import gamers peace of mind that they can go ahead and buy the game without having to consider shady hardware modifications. Passed around no fewer than four publishers for its first three incarnations, the fact the Fatal Frame series - known as Project Zero in Europe when it bothers to show up here - never gained more than a loyal cult following has been a perennial source of frustration for survival horror fans.Īs if that wasn't bad enough, Nintendo has elected to deny Western gamers the Wii-exclusive fourth chapter in the series, The Mask of the Lunar Eclipse. However, the rooms are often cramped, meaning you often have little time to charge your camera and react once the ghost appears.Rarely has a such a great series been dogged by such careless disregard. However, they have no hang-ups about appearing deep within the walls, so you have to just follow the markers at the top of your camera and wait for them to clip into the environment. Ghosts appear at seemingly random distances and slowly glide toward you. The downside of the combat is it’s a huge, vacuous suck. The fact that they have actual defined traits make them more interesting than just normal enemies, as you have a chance to connect with them as you read their diaries and learn of their torment. These are characters within the backstory, and you can read about each of them after you’ve snapped their portraits. Rather than simply put them down as monsters, you keep bumping into the same ones. While the camera mechanic is fine, I mostly just appreciate the level of detail in the ghosts. It’s like Pokemon Snap, but all the Pokemon are tortured, malicious spirits. As with previous Fatal Frame games, you defend yourself from ghosts by using a special camera.
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