Taking photos of my junk with the camera obscura because my shit be lookin' HAUNTED
Add Fatal Frame to the list of games I was acutely aware of at the time of its release but completely skipped over for reasons unknown. I had a PS2 and a Blockbuster card, I could've picked this up, it's not like it reviewed poorly or anything. Instead, I just kept renting the live action Cromartie High movie over and over again. Well Blockbuster doesn't exist anymore, and I've had the iso for Fatal Frame chilling on this hard drive for the better part of the year, so now seemed as good a time as any to take some gosh damn pictures of ghosts.
For the first three hours of snapping glamor shots of spooky specters, I was having a lot of fun. There's a lot more Resident Evil and Sweet Home here than I was expecting, and much like those games, I was having a blast exploring the Himuro Mansion and solving its many puzzles. Sure, there's a few too many locked doors that require the same solution, and the numerical codes you need to glean from scattered research notes and diary entries are always input in the same tiresome way, but the real meaty puzzles - like collecting and arranging masks or tying topes to Budda status - feel ripped straight from Resident Evil, and I ate that shit up. If I'm reflecting on the order in which I tackled a sequence of obstacles or the path I took to and from key locations and piecing together a more efficient route in my mind, that's a sign that your survival horror game is tickling the right parts of my brain.
Unfortunately, the deeper you progress into the Himuro Mansion, the more Fatal Frame urges you to use the Camera Obscura to take down hostile ghosts, and I think this is the weakest part of the entire experience. It is also Fatal Frame's core gimmick, and that's not great!
On paper, the Camera Obscura is novel. Line up your shot, keep the ghost center frame while building charge, then snap a picture when the reticule turns orange for higher damage. There's a good balance of risk and reward inherent to the way combat operates, and ghosts are capable of warping around and turning invisible which keeps the player on their toes. The penalty for screwing up your shot, however, is anywhere from 1/3 to 1/2 of your overall health, which is steep when you consider how rare healing items are.
You can upgrade your camera's stats and assign abilities that slow, reveal, or track ghosts (though these are also tied to finite items), but it doesn't really solve some of the issues with Fatal Frame's combat, which become especially problematic around chapter four when the game makes a hard shift towards being more combat oriented. A lot of mandatory battles take place in enclosed spaces which are so tight that ghosts tend to float completely out of bounds, requiring you to stand around and wait for them to come back. It's difficult to outmaneuver ghosts when they're about twice as fast as you and aren't encumbered by clumsy collision detection, and when the Camera Obscura fails to stun theme due to uneven attack priority resulting in half your healthbar getting eaten, it just starts to get frustrating. Doubling down on an unforgiving and clunky combat system during the last two chapters really soured me on Fatal Frame.
At least Fatal Frame's atmosphere is immaculate. The lighting, transparency, and warping effects are all really impressive for the time, and the deliberate use of whites, blacks, and reds give the game a very unique look. I feel like I'm going to fall through the damn stairs or get a hand full of splinters if I touch anything in the Himuro Mansion. Everything is creaking horribly, falling apart, and is covered in blood, mold, and moisture. Even without the ghosts, the estate is delipidated and dangerous in ways that are believable. Not that I've made a habit of it, but I've done a little night urban exploration into condemned properties before, and I feel Fatal Frame does a good job of capturing the anxiety that the floor might cave beneath you at any moment.
It's a bummer that Fatal Frame's combat works against its other qualities. Had a great time with this for the first few hours but it just became inconvenient and annoying towards the later third, and that really gets in the way of me ever wanting to pick it up again. If only I was taking pictures of Mechazawa instead....
Add Fatal Frame to the list of games I was acutely aware of at the time of its release but completely skipped over for reasons unknown. I had a PS2 and a Blockbuster card, I could've picked this up, it's not like it reviewed poorly or anything. Instead, I just kept renting the live action Cromartie High movie over and over again. Well Blockbuster doesn't exist anymore, and I've had the iso for Fatal Frame chilling on this hard drive for the better part of the year, so now seemed as good a time as any to take some gosh damn pictures of ghosts.
For the first three hours of snapping glamor shots of spooky specters, I was having a lot of fun. There's a lot more Resident Evil and Sweet Home here than I was expecting, and much like those games, I was having a blast exploring the Himuro Mansion and solving its many puzzles. Sure, there's a few too many locked doors that require the same solution, and the numerical codes you need to glean from scattered research notes and diary entries are always input in the same tiresome way, but the real meaty puzzles - like collecting and arranging masks or tying topes to Budda status - feel ripped straight from Resident Evil, and I ate that shit up. If I'm reflecting on the order in which I tackled a sequence of obstacles or the path I took to and from key locations and piecing together a more efficient route in my mind, that's a sign that your survival horror game is tickling the right parts of my brain.
Unfortunately, the deeper you progress into the Himuro Mansion, the more Fatal Frame urges you to use the Camera Obscura to take down hostile ghosts, and I think this is the weakest part of the entire experience. It is also Fatal Frame's core gimmick, and that's not great!
On paper, the Camera Obscura is novel. Line up your shot, keep the ghost center frame while building charge, then snap a picture when the reticule turns orange for higher damage. There's a good balance of risk and reward inherent to the way combat operates, and ghosts are capable of warping around and turning invisible which keeps the player on their toes. The penalty for screwing up your shot, however, is anywhere from 1/3 to 1/2 of your overall health, which is steep when you consider how rare healing items are.
You can upgrade your camera's stats and assign abilities that slow, reveal, or track ghosts (though these are also tied to finite items), but it doesn't really solve some of the issues with Fatal Frame's combat, which become especially problematic around chapter four when the game makes a hard shift towards being more combat oriented. A lot of mandatory battles take place in enclosed spaces which are so tight that ghosts tend to float completely out of bounds, requiring you to stand around and wait for them to come back. It's difficult to outmaneuver ghosts when they're about twice as fast as you and aren't encumbered by clumsy collision detection, and when the Camera Obscura fails to stun theme due to uneven attack priority resulting in half your healthbar getting eaten, it just starts to get frustrating. Doubling down on an unforgiving and clunky combat system during the last two chapters really soured me on Fatal Frame.
At least Fatal Frame's atmosphere is immaculate. The lighting, transparency, and warping effects are all really impressive for the time, and the deliberate use of whites, blacks, and reds give the game a very unique look. I feel like I'm going to fall through the damn stairs or get a hand full of splinters if I touch anything in the Himuro Mansion. Everything is creaking horribly, falling apart, and is covered in blood, mold, and moisture. Even without the ghosts, the estate is delipidated and dangerous in ways that are believable. Not that I've made a habit of it, but I've done a little night urban exploration into condemned properties before, and I feel Fatal Frame does a good job of capturing the anxiety that the floor might cave beneath you at any moment.
It's a bummer that Fatal Frame's combat works against its other qualities. Had a great time with this for the first few hours but it just became inconvenient and annoying towards the later third, and that really gets in the way of me ever wanting to pick it up again. If only I was taking pictures of Mechazawa instead....
6 Comments
@RaffiTheOwl From what I've gathered, Fatal Frame 2 is the one everyone is way into, so maybe they balance a lot of the camera obscura stuff out? Not sure. But I think either are worth a try. Never know, you might actually find more to like there than I did.
I loved this game. My rose tinted glasses will never not see this as a 10/10.
Fatal Frame II is a 12/10 🧐
Fatal Frame II is a 12/10 🧐
@FallenGrace I am looking forward to 2, seems like people really like that one in particular and there's some good stuff with the Camera Obscura that I just think needs a bit of balancing, which a second pass could definitely provide.
Me and my friend almost got softlocked somewhere in the last 3rd by a particularly persistent ghost that followed us into a save room. Being in a "combat state" meant we couldnt use some doors and we were low on useful ammo, and the save room was a round room that was the perfect size to shield this monk ghost that orbits in a circle around you.
I dont know how we finally got out of that encounter but it was almost a playthrough ender.
I dont know how we finally got out of that encounter but it was almost a playthrough ender.
@_YALP There was a couple instances where a common ghost randomly spawned during boss encounters, and trying to deal with one constantly warping behind you while another is doing crazy katana slashes is unmanageable. I can't believe they didn't put some kind of a flag in to mitigate that, so it doesn't surprise me they can apparently get in save rooms, too.
RaffiTheOwl
6 months ago