Fatal Frame

You just stumble around a mansion and some other places, and try to solve boring puzzles, mostly with your camera. Once in a while, a ghost shows up and you have to snap a crapload of pics of it, like it was some supermodel, and then see it disappear. Your character is a soulless doll with no personality. The story is a snoozefest and the gameplay is just pathetic. My character only died once during the hours of playing and the dying part is also pretty weird. Health runs out and then nothing happens. Just a GAME OVER screen comes up and then you're taken back to the main menu.

And this is all coming from someone who really likes survival horror games, especially older ones.

Can't say it enough - by far one of the best of the genre I have played. The sequel (crimson butterfly) reminded me too much of a Resident Evil knockoff to hold my attention, but I plan on getting a copy of this earlier one to own.

Everything was done perfectly *except* the dubbing (hopefully game developers will follow the subtitling trend demanded by fans of anime, allowing both). Plenty of replay value w/ the special features.

The game is kind of hard to find b/c it's out of print presently and that's a damn shame - definitely as worthy of rerelease as, say, castlevania symphony of the night.

Also, I have to say that the avatar for the main character Miku

was one of the best I've played with - very lifelike, especially compared to other games in this genre.

Those who don't think a video game could scare them need to sit through a battle with "Eyeless" in this game.

The game says "based on a true story" on the cover but don't buy that. There's a real house in Japan that's said to be haunted and that's about it. The game, however, has a very inventive plot that keeps you guessing as the pieces begin to fall together. The graphics are excellent and the sound effects are beautiful.

Rent this game and play it with the volume turned way up and the lights turned off. It will blow you away.

This game outshined Resident Evil with the scare factor. The ghost were creepy. The voice acting lacked somewhat, but not enough to hurt the game. The camera worked well. The sounds made this game scary alone. A great scary game that screws with your mind alot. I hope the sequel comes out soon.

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<