Thursday, July 19, 2012

Fatal Frame II

This authentic remake is an eerie game developed by Tecmo, and apparently, Nintendo has bought the rights of the franchise now. Fatal Frame II is most likely the scariest and most qualified experience you will get out of your Wii console.

Twin sisters stumble upon what seems to be a deserted town, and the night is dark everywhere surrounding it. Mio and Mayu feel strangely attracted towards it, and together, they must try to escape and along the way, uncover the hidden intentions of the town's former people.

Fatal Frame II's weapon of choice is the Camera Obscura, capable of observing different kind of ghosts, including hostile ones. Your job is to make pictures of preferably all of them, so that you are able to survive and also get more experience points, making you able to upgrade powerups.

Many scary parts await you inside and outside. There will be plenty of "Touch" moments, where your main character slowly starts reaching out for a shining item. During this moment, it is possible that a ghost hand might visit and scare you. At other times, nothing will happen. But during rare moments, some really unexpected things can happen.


But there are many other ways the gamer will be thrilled about, including the atmosphere, which is about 90% covered into darkness, and the soundtrack, letting our ears listen to some effective haunting tunes which are quite unnerving.

On top of that, there is a psychotic storyline playing about the occult, strange ceremonies and essentially, vessels or chosen ones. Although, because it is Japanese, it might not instantly be disturbing at the first thought.

From what I have been told, this remake includes new graphics, a new point of view(3rd person), new areas, new endings and extra scares, including a new Haunted House mode, which is worth mentioning, because it's such a random ride of different scares each time, and a great reason to try to scare others.

The weakest factor of Fatal Frame II is probably the way "combat" sometimes plays out. The Camera Obscura has the tendency to shake around the player's view at certain times, but later on, I figured out that this was some of the ghosts's doing, disturbing your point of view basically with some of their attacks.


Anyhow, even though the combat can be entertaining to do, sometimes these disturbances hindered the overall enjoyment of progressing further. Don't be bothered by this if you are thinking of trying Fatal Frame II, because it certainly is a horror title worth playing, even if it's your first one storywise.

Honestly, the game truly started getting creepy around chapter six, when you are about to explore a doll maker's collection throughout a building. My anticipation moments were getting more intense, because my assumptions about what could happen next were clouded in vain.

Tecmo has done a splendid job upon remaking and bringing this over to Europe, and now I am interested in the rest of the titles. Could we see a Fatal Frame V landing upon the embarking Wii U? It's certainly possible, what with the release of this, Spirit Camera: The Cursed Memoir on the 3DS and the Japanese Wii exclusive Fatal Frame IV already.

Rating: 8.3

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