Fatal Frame

Through careful scripting, disturbing audio-visual tricks, solid gameplay and a judicious use of cinematics, Fatal Frame manages to convey the disarming sense of feeling one's sanity crumble under the assault of otherworldly influences...At least, that's what the Voices told me to say.

Genuinely disturbing survival horror, dripping with menace. [Jan 2007, p.106]

Beyond seriously creeping me out, Fatal Frame made me feel like a wuss of a gamer: Put simply, it gets tough. [Apr 2002, p.102]

Quite an inventive piece of survival horror, managing to keep the fright up and the frustration down with a few smart design decisions and an abundance of creepy style.

You'll honestly find some sequences rather creepy...As far as horror-themed games go, Fatal Frame is one of the most interesting--in regard to its premise and the way it plays--to surface in a while.

Miku might be doing the same thing over and over through four chapters (divided in the game as 'Night 1-4'), but the tension and atmosphere of dread that this game continually builds is about on par with that of an interactive version of "The Sixth Sense".

With gameplay as shallow as this, you’d expect it all to work smoothly. Unfortunately, it doesn't.

My favorite game/series in the world. The first PS2 game I played, so it touched my heart. The story is intense, read all the files you get in the game, is great.

Fatal Frame released in 2001 on the PS2 and thus was heavily influenced by both Silent Hill and Resident Evil. You will oftentimes feel that you are in both games while wandering through the Himuro Mansion. Fatal Frame is not without its own unique element though. It has the Camera Obscura, a really cool idea to combat the ghosts by taking photos to exorcise their spirits. However, the Camera Obscura requires that the ghost’s face be showing in order to get a shot. It’s not too bad on the first night but the second night onwards, all bets are off. As we now have swooping, speeding, disappearing through walls and floors, and the best, ghosts without heads! The game has no difficulty setting, and thus the health system is truly horrendous; ghosts can take half health in one attack, but there’s hardly any health drops. Save points are few and far between and half-way through the game I started backtracking to save as much as possible for fear of having to redo significant portions of the game over. To add onto everything else, we’re in full tank controls here and you will forever walk through doors and walk straight back at them as the camera changes. Not to mention combat with this poor camera. The English voice acting is truly horrendous. Miku and Kirie aren’t too bad but everyone else sounds as if they’ve never spoken aloud to another human being before. There’s no emotion coming through and there are long pauses between words and sentences. For some reason, the numbers for the puzzles were never translated and thus are still in Japanese. I had to look up the translation and once I solved the first puzzle, I was able to do the rest without any problem. The story was pretty interesting (why the Western release claims it’s based on a true story is beyond me) though it was few and far between. The game concentrated more on its scary atmosphere and jump scares than fleshing out its story and characters. I mean we never get a satisfactory answer to Miku and Mafuyu’s mother, in addition to why the brother and sister can see supernatural occurrences. As another reviewer said, after a certain point I wasn’t willing to walk away from this game. I couldn’t let this game defeat me! I do feel proud that I managed to finish it, almost by the skin of my teeth at times. Fatal Frame I is a pretty good game for its time. Today it’s a little hard to play. A remaster that fixes the game’s controls, camera, and gives it bigger maps and difficulty settings would significantly improve this game. Some new voice acting would be wonderful too.

Fatal Frame is a very good entry into the survival horror world during a time where Silent Hill and Resident Evil reigned. It features a young girl searching for her brother in a haunted mansion, fighting enemies with only a special ghost camera to defend herself. The story is good albeit simple, with a focus on what happened before you arrived in the Himuro Mansion. The gameplay was a good change of pace, focusing on first-person camera shooting to defend yourself from ghosts, and incentivizing you to stare at your horror while fighting it rather than running away. All the ghosts are relatively unique characters and you can even find out their background and how they died. The puzzles are decent as well, but they really don't do much or involve any unique mechanics. Usuaully to unlock doors you don't get keys but rather find a blue zone, aim your camera at the blue zone, and that unlocks it. You have an upgrade system as well but it is very basic, and it is more making you more powerful rather than changing how you play and creating unique playstyles. The NG+ content is good as well, but the location being only one place that you've already gone through multiple times in one playthrough makes it seem like it simply wasn't big enough for what they wanted, and that shows. For a first game though they created really good bones, and it certainly did a good job sneaking its way into the third-place survival horror spot on the PS2, beating out Obscure, Siren, and more.

O delay dos disparos da câmera de Miku são terríveis, a ponto de acabar com a graça do jogo. Se tivesse começado a jogar a série pelo primeiro jogo provavelmente não jogaria os demais.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]