Those who know me will recognize how much I admire innovative and unique ideas in a game. I mean heck, look at what my favorite horror game of all time is and you’ll see what I mean. However, I feel there comes a point where the innovation isn’t enough to sustain an otherwise lackluster game, and thus that brings us to the topic of Spirit Camera.

For the record, I haven’t played a single Fatal Frame game. I know that this game is a spin-off of that series but outside of this title, I know nothing about Fatal Frame as a series. This is all I have to go off it. I have a vague understanding of the premise: you use a special camera to take pictures of the supernatural and fight off ghosts, but that’s all I know. This game in particular is entirely controlled by the 3DS’s camera. You use button controls for contextual actions but by and large, the camera is the main way you interact with the game. This game also comes with a special booklet with surprisingly high-quality illustrations and creepy artwork, and this book is needed for the game to work. Without the book, you can’t play the game. The main premise is that you interact with the book by using the 3DS camera to project images models and events in the real world, similar to the AR games you screwed around with for 5 minutes before never touching them again. Turning that into a horror game is a super creative idea, using the camera to make different creepy events unfold, solve different puzzles, and view pages in the book differently or more interactively.

In terms of combat, I don’t know how well this game translates Fatal Frame’s combat to the 3DS, but from my experience, it was fun enough. Tracking ghosts to build up power and releasing that built-up power right as they attacked for a strong counter was decently enjoyable…if a little clumsy. The combat, of course, uses the 3DS camera as your weapon, and the Ghosts are projected into your house. You essentially need to play this game like you play the special stages in the 3DS version of Sonic Lost World: by tilting and moving the system up and down and all around. It worked for what it was and that’s all I can say about it in the end. Unfortunately, I can’t exactly say the same for the game itself.

While the premise is very creative, this is way too technologically demanding of a title for the poor 3DS to handle. Perhaps soon with VR or something I can see this concept coming to fruition, but for a 2012 3DS title, it just wasn’t feasible at all. Like, yeah, it “works” on a surface level but it’s way too jank to be considered immersive by any stretch of the imagination. The book needs to be placed in an extremely well-lit room to even work, already ruining the sense of atmosphere it might’ve been going for, but even then, I’ve documented countless times where the 3DS failed to read the book or it struggled to trigger events outright because I wasn’t viewing it in the exact angle it wanted. That boss encounter with the hands felt outright broken with how the game wanted me to keep rotating the book to face them as they rotated unnaturally, and again this is ON TOP of the book frequently not being read by the 3DS while this fight occurred. This is why the regular camera fights work a lot better as they don’t rely on the book to work, but they’re still plagued by the 3DS’s camera being as sluggish and as dim as it is, and the fact that fighting supernatural demons in my bedroom with Sonic the Hedgehog posters and my sweet gaming PC and Xbox Series X setups in the background don’t capture the immersive atmosphere I think they were hoping for. The puzzles aren’t much to write home about, the most you do with these is tilting the book in a specific direction for the solution to work. Other than that, you use different lenses to view puzzles differently but the game tells you when to use them so they aren’t used in any creative way either. The game also kinda runs like crap, a part of it is because of the 3DS's camera not being very good at all but playing it feels fairly sluggish all things considered.

The campaign is also pathetically short. I managed to beat the main story mode in a couple of hours, and the game doesn’t have much to offer outside of the main campaign. You do get a hard mode where Maya dresses in a different outfit and the ghosts you fight take and deal more damage. Still only takes around 1-2 hours to beat, and that’s IF you’re going for the optional collectibles the game pops up periodically. There are a couple of gimmicky photo filters where you can take a picture of your surroundings and it overlays a PNG of a creepy image. That’s about it. There are a couple of minigames to play with increasing difficulty modes but half of them are ripped straight out of the main campaign. There’s just not much content to keep you satisfied, and this is on top of the plethora of issues the main campaign already has. Again, cool idea and I love the effort that went into this little project so I’ll give it some brownie points for that, but was just too ambitious of an idea to be fully realized.

A cool concept, but the gimmick barely has legs to wobble on, nevermind stand.

I loved the idea of AR and a physical book to have it interact with, but the lighting has to be just right for it to find anything, and even when you get all the conditions lined up, the execution is so flaccid. Spinning on the spot trying to find a ghost looking completely out of place against the mundane backdrop of your home. Click oh wow, better repeat that for an hour. A story cobbled together in an afternoon is fitting for a game that can be finished in one.

The scariest thing was a child ghost emerging from a pile of dirty clothes on my floor.

You know what? I actually really loved this, this game makes really clever and well-executed, as well as impressive, use of all the 3DS gimmicks and translates fatal frame combat pretty faithfully. You can tell they wanted this to be a bigger experience, as this includes a lot of things that are only used once or that appear to be there yet aren't (it does the collecting XP animation for no reason?), But I still had a lot of fun with all the puzzles and the surprisingly interesting story.
Don't get me wrong, this isn't a reason to buy a 3DS or anything, but this was definitely a fun evening of spooky camera moments, and with extra modes that let you just do the combat or AR puzzles, it gives me reason to come back to it in future. If nothing else, this is basically all there is for horror representation on the 3DS and I'm glad it's one of the most '3DS' games there is, if you catch my meaning.
It's 2:30 in the morning now so I should probably get to bed, but I'm really glad I stayed up to get this all done in one sitting.

For negatives, there's issues with the AR, gyros, translation and voice dub but these are all things where, if you know what to expect going in then they're not really a bother. The real big issue is the hand-holding, each plot point is repeated to you in excess of three times each for minutes on end, and sometimes it doesn't trust you to remember the mechanics of the game so it stops you being able to use those mechanics in order to tell you about the thing it's stopped you from using to tell you this, it's really bad but not something that hugely impacts the experience.