When you go home at night and pass by a street where there is no one and you hear nothing, don't you feel that you have to look behind you every so often, or that you look everywhere, as if you feel you are being watched? Fatal Frame is that same feeling, but constantly, and I don't say this as an "average horror review", but because the controller literally vibrates when there is a ghost nearby, and if it's not hostile, you just have to take the camera out and aim until the static tells you where it is.
While that's just for the collectibles, since hostile ghosts usually make a sound, playing this game without a controller is the worst thing you could think of (though tbh I guess it's not something emulators let you do lol). While it sure is easier to aim with a mouse, when you eat a jumpscare (not screams, but a loud sound and a ghost showing you where to go lmfao), or when you're fighting, the controller starts vibrating intermittently to simulate the protagonist's heart and make you think you feel that way too and I love it. It makes the fights with the ghosts SUPER TENSE, since you don't just have to fight in a mansion, aka hallways/rooms with spaces for 1-2 people, making everything super claustrophobic by having to fight ghosts that move around a lot and--yeah, idk how it works really well, but I love it.
Another thing I love is that if you're afk a ghost spawns sbddsbsbsbs
the other time i was with a friend on discord because i was scared and out of nowhere he said "haha look at this little meme" so i did that and also replied some dms, the thing is that out of nowhere i hear the sound of the ghost talking + the joystick vibration and i shit myself, i legit the fastest alt + tab in the west because i was low on life lmfao
my friend ended up getting scared of my scream XDD
If you pause the game, the screen fills up with more and more handprints of blood, which I found super cool to keep the player immersed and as a way to say "not even pausing is safe"
I have to say that the puzzles, the speed of the character/camera and the super limited resources were brutal. Like sure, they give you items that basically fill up all your life if you run out, so you don't die, but you can only carry 1 and I found more of those than ammo for my camera lol but still, I was scared to death because I had to shoot accurately with a crappy stick on the gamepad, so I suffered a lot.
And speaking of suffering a lot, did you know that when emulating it in PCSX2 there is a bug where the ghosts are invisible? Well, I didn't know it until the final stretch of the game 😭 in my head invisible ghosts = all the sense in the world 👍 and it wasn't until I saw a playtrough in youtube bc I got stuck in a puzzle that I said "wait.... why can this person see the ghosts???? " so nothing 🥲 i fixed the bug by changing a few things in the video renderer and ready, but a shame bc all the ghosts have their own designs, while i just saw them as pngs when they moved bc they left an aura that followed their body asdbababsbsbasdb legit i had to use that and the sound and thank god both headphones work, i can't imagine people in 2001+ playing this with the tv speakers, a horror not knowing where the fuck is the ghost.
Anyways, highly recommended. Some people complain that the voice acting is a bit low budget, they really try to do it right instead of doing it wrong "for the sake of the script", so it's not like silent hill 2 where it's done on purpose.
While that's just for the collectibles, since hostile ghosts usually make a sound, playing this game without a controller is the worst thing you could think of (though tbh I guess it's not something emulators let you do lol). While it sure is easier to aim with a mouse, when you eat a jumpscare (not screams, but a loud sound and a ghost showing you where to go lmfao), or when you're fighting, the controller starts vibrating intermittently to simulate the protagonist's heart and make you think you feel that way too and I love it. It makes the fights with the ghosts SUPER TENSE, since you don't just have to fight in a mansion, aka hallways/rooms with spaces for 1-2 people, making everything super claustrophobic by having to fight ghosts that move around a lot and--yeah, idk how it works really well, but I love it.
Another thing I love is that if you're afk a ghost spawns sbddsbsbsbs
the other time i was with a friend on discord because i was scared and out of nowhere he said "haha look at this little meme" so i did that and also replied some dms, the thing is that out of nowhere i hear the sound of the ghost talking + the joystick vibration and i shit myself, i legit the fastest alt + tab in the west because i was low on life lmfao
my friend ended up getting scared of my scream XDD
If you pause the game, the screen fills up with more and more handprints of blood, which I found super cool to keep the player immersed and as a way to say "not even pausing is safe"
I have to say that the puzzles, the speed of the character/camera and the super limited resources were brutal. Like sure, they give you items that basically fill up all your life if you run out, so you don't die, but you can only carry 1 and I found more of those than ammo for my camera lol but still, I was scared to death because I had to shoot accurately with a crappy stick on the gamepad, so I suffered a lot.
And speaking of suffering a lot, did you know that when emulating it in PCSX2 there is a bug where the ghosts are invisible? Well, I didn't know it until the final stretch of the game 😭 in my head invisible ghosts = all the sense in the world 👍 and it wasn't until I saw a playtrough in youtube bc I got stuck in a puzzle that I said "wait.... why can this person see the ghosts???? " so nothing 🥲 i fixed the bug by changing a few things in the video renderer and ready, but a shame bc all the ghosts have their own designs, while i just saw them as pngs when they moved bc they left an aura that followed their body asdbababsbsbasdb legit i had to use that and the sound and thank god both headphones work, i can't imagine people in 2001+ playing this with the tv speakers, a horror not knowing where the fuck is the ghost.
Anyways, highly recommended. Some people complain that the voice acting is a bit low budget, they really try to do it right instead of doing it wrong "for the sake of the script", so it's not like silent hill 2 where it's done on purpose.