I picked this game up about a year ago and completed it for the first time precisely on 07.10.2007. I remember how scared I was during game-play and I do remember how I fell in love in this original masterpiece as well.
From the very start this game delivers to the player concentrated product, dripping of pure J-Horror – from the very first cut scene till the credits - everlasting Horror. And I do prefer J-Horror (Silent Hill), not American way of horror (Evil Dead, Resident Evil, n-stuff) – so, this game delivered for me all the beauty of J-Horror I wanted. Up to this point I haven’t played much of J-Horror games – except Silent Hill series (my favorite), which just creeped me out with its unpredictability, complex story, lots of unexpected events, environments, etc. But then I started to play this game and I was creeped out EVEN MORE, although this game is more linear in terms of story and various events. But this doesn’t make Fatal Frame a bad game. In fact – this game is just brilliant (see my given score) – it kept on the edge of my seat for all the game-play time and those cut scenes just blew me straight down on my knees, he he. Pure essence of Horror – delivered in interactive manner straight to the nerves of player. Due the fact of interactivity I find playing J-Horror much more scarier than watching it (although Gin gwai is a Asian Horror killer machine - recommended). I love this game because of the story to – its complex and twisted enough to make you solve this puzzle-like story – one of the beautiful aspects of Survival Horror genre (my favorite, again, he he). And I love this game because of the intense atmosphere, sound and graphic design, because of the game-play and pitch-black darkness, experienced throughout this game. And design, sounds and appearance of those ghosts, stories behind them (told in ghost list and various documents/notes), combined elements of Japanese mythology, legends, horror stories within the story of this game + the beautiful translation of these aspects into the game medium – wow, this just rocks and kicks those cutely shaped asses of Survival Horror and J-Horror fans, indeed!
Recently I completed this game for the second time (09.13.2008) and again I was scared so nicely and so much – awesome experience which can be improved, if the player plays this game in proper condition – alone in dark room, some lit candles (brings the game closer, because the only lighting in this game comes from in-game candles and moonlight), 5.1 equipment – volume turned up. This is universal recipe for Survival Horror gaming, which shall be obeyed!
And for me – there is only one flaw in this game - those long and annoying dying scenes. Some may consider the backtracking to be a flaw too, but in my opinion – this is just the structure of this game, which works very, very well!
Brilliant, beautiful, dark, mature, and amazingly scary game, which spawned a whole pentalogy (Fatal Frame 1, 2, 3, sequel on that Wii-sh** and game on Japanese 3D-enabled mobile phones where phone camera is the Camera Obscura - how cool is that?!). Sadly that this Wii-sequel isn’t on PlayStation 2. But maybe this is just a matter of time, maybe there will be a port to home-console – PlayStation 2. And I hope that this series will continue on PlayStation 3, 4, 5…
>Originally written for gamespot.com<
