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PRE-GAME

Mio and Mayu are twins visiting, for the last time, a beautiful wooded area that is fixing to be flooded by a dam.  As the two reminisce Mayu becomes enchanted with a crimson butterfly and runs off to chase it, leaving a bewildered Mio behind.  Mio follows her sister and eventually the two are drawn to a village cursed with eternal night.  Can Mio save her sister and escape before the Crimson Sacrifice?

EYE-SPY

THE HOOK:  I like survival horror.  Too much really.  And this is definitely one of the most frightening games I’ve played in a LONG time.

HOW IT LOOKS AND FEELS:  Fatal Frame II looks outstanding, aside from a few glitches that I’ll get into later. The controls are simple; the left stick controls Mio and Mayu’s movement while pressing X causes them to run. By pressing the B button you bring up the Camera Obscura and take pictures using the right trigger.  The Y button gives you access to the Menu.

HOW IT SOUNDS:  Creepy.  Excellent choral music and traditional Japanese instruments are used to great effect.  The music alone will frighten you.

EXTRAS:  You can unlock new costumes and stronger add-ons for your Camera Obscura.

CINEMATIC EXPERIENCE:  The load times are disguised ingeniously whenever you open a door, leaving the game feeling like an old-fashioned horror movie that you just so happen to be playing.  Excellent use of camera angles and music makes it that much more immersive.

BEST PLAYER:  You’ll mostly play as Mio but occasionally you will gain control of Mayu whenever she is following the crimson butterflies.  Mio and Mayu make an excellent tag team whenever they are together as Mayu takes the brunt of the ghost’s punishment while you stand back and take pictures. 

CHEAT CODE YOU NEED:  A fully powered up Camera Obscura would be nice as some of the ghosts are just plain difficult to exorcise.

CHEAT CODE YOU WANT:  All the costumes right off the bat would be fun.

OH MAN! MOMENT: Anytime you get ganged up on by a group of ghosts is one of those moments, they’ll take you out in no time at all if you come unprepared.

GLITCH ITCH:  Unfortunately even after almost a year of tweaking the game just for the Xbox it still has its share of glitches and anomalies.  For instance, there is great degree of pixilation during the game whenever the main characters are close to the screen; this is especially obvious during the cutscenes.  You would think they would have eliminated this during the reworking process for the Xbox but it remains.  Another glitch is in regards the controls; specifically the use of the X button for running.  Just pressing the X button is supposed to make Mio run but oftentimes she won’t even move and you’ll have to actually get her moving first before making her run.  This can be especially bothersome when you need to make a quick getaway.

FAN SERVICE:  After playing through the game you will be given the option of dressing up Mio and Mayu in kimonos, bathing suits, and the famous Dead or Alive costumes for Kasume and Ayane.  For starters, you can unlock a witches hat, a pumpkinhead, and other things as well!

END GAME:

For starters, I absolutely love survival horror, and Fatal Frame II was everything I could have wished for and more.  I’ve never been frightened this badly by a game before.  The effective use of the setting; a dilapidated village, an all encompassing darkness and just your petty little excuse for a flashlight are all excellent examples.  The dread the game makes you feel as you open doors into new rooms expecting the worst is something to behold.  Subtle lighting and the use of unnerving set pieces such as the dolls and the mummified man kept me on edge throughout the game.

While the glitches can get annoying (especially with the running button glitch), the game more than makes up for it with an intriguing and at times horrifying story of one villages’ descent into hell.  Thankfully the games are not based on “True Stories” as the original claimed but are elaborate and suspenseful retellings and adaptations of what I would think would be a Japanese Shinto priests’ worst nightmare (correct me here if I’m wrong in any way about the religious aspects of the game).   The whole game uses the Shinto religion as the basis for the Forbidden Ritual.  Inflicting as much pain as possible on the twins who are to be sacrificed to the Hellish Abyss in order to protect the village from The Repentance and certain damnation is a key point of the Forbidden Ritual which is terrifying just on paper, much less in a game.  Naturally, the ritual was a failure and All God’s Village is wiped from the map.  Now Mio and Mayu must set things right or forever be trapped.  

One thing that is used to great effect is the use of first-person whenever Mio uses her camera.  Doing this makes the horror personal as you literally “become” Mio and try to exorcise a ghost with a picture.  This is something that was used in Silent Hill 4 to great effect whenever you were in Henry’s room.  If the survival horror genre is going to get better in any way then the makers of these games need to embrace new and different ways of storytelling, something I believe Tecmo has successfully done with the Fatal Frame series.  The first-person view can also be chosen at the beginning of a new game so that you will go through the game experiencing the ghosts’ firsthand instead of just when you lift up the camera. 

The use of a camera as the only weapon is certainly a novel idea that brings a refreshing look at what most games completely avoid.  Instead of shooting or beating your way out of the game you must literally take on the spirits with a seemingly useless weapon, and that makes it even more frightening.  I wish more horror games were this creative and ingenious, but with the next-generation of consoles just around the corner, hopefully a next-generation of horror will be ushered in as well.

Fatal Frame II is a must for any fan of the survival horror genre, hopefully in the next Fatal Frame which is already being hinted at we won’t have to put up with the heroines lame half-jog, but get some full tilt running!

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