Wii U Critic Reviews

Instead of the in-your-face outright scare without substance, Maiden of Black Water goes for a sense of dread paired with an insatiable curiosity to know what happened next. It's a welcome re-introduction to the franchise in the West, a hit for the Wii U, which is still trying to prove it can appeal to "Mature" gamers.

With all this said, Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water is easily one of my favorite Wii U games to date. It feels like an old-school horror game but has the modern twists such as GamePad use and HD graphics to make it stand out in the gaming world today.

After the attention-grabbing opening, the greatness of the story never lets up for a moment. [Issue #18 – November/December 2015, p.22]

Its atmospheric horror, improved camera combat, fancy HD graphics and intense story make this the best entry in the classic horror series yet. [dec. 2015 / page 059]

Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water finds a wildly effective new way to utilize the GamePad as the Camera Obscura, and builds some great story and atmosphere. Barring an odd control scheme and some tedious missions, this is a stellar horror title for any Wii U owner.

Despite these nitpicks, this game is a triumphant revival of a series that has remained dormant in North America for several console generations, and for those who did get to play the Wii iterations there is much new spooky fun to be had.

Yes, it still does retread a lot of what the series has always been known for, and can comes across feeling as more of the same. This doesn’t matter though, Fatal Frame has been the top tier of ghostly survival horror adventures, and Maiden of Black Water proves you can’t keep a good franchise dead, even when that’s what its entire premise is about.

The Wii U GamePad fits very well, especially in Off-TV mode. Apart from that, it doesn't add many new features to the series, but it's still a worthy entry.

Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water is going to be a tough sell for those who aren't familiar with the franchise. It's got a lot of questionable design decisions and feels like a more bare bones experience than past games of the series. But it's Fatal Frame, these games only come along in a blue moon these days, so savor them while they still exist.

Overall, Project Zero: Maiden of Black Water is a superb return for the series, and while it will undoubtedly frustrate most players with its archaic and downright atrocious control scheme, it makes up for its shortcomings with a fun and intuitive combat system, a scary and obscure story and stunning sound and art direction