First Encounter
By Danny Chihdo
Survival horror games have been unfortunately few for Xbox® gamers, though games like the original Fatal Frame™ and theSilent HiKll® games have gone a long way towards filling that niche with flair, style, and good old fashioned shocks. Now Tecmo®, the folks that brought us all a little game calledNinja Gaiden®, offer Fatal Frame™ II: Crimson Butterfly DIRECTOR'S CUT, a truly unique and downright scare-your-socks-off yarn that will make you jumpier than Naomi Watts at a horse show. If you're into mood, scares, and terrifying action with a distinctly Asian horror flavor, this one's for you.
Who you gonna call? Teenage schoolgirls!
Fatal Frame II is soaked, nay, drowning in atmosphere, chills, and The Ring-style terror. If you're expecting to latch a chainsaw to your stump and make with the zombie-slicing, I recommend Evil Dead: A Fistful of Boomstick or theHunter: The Reckoning®. That doesn't mean you won't be fighting for your life (or, more accurately, the lives of the spooky pair of young heroines) every tentative, terrifying step. Those ladies would be Mio and Mayu Amakura, twin sisters trapped in a ghost-ridden place called the Lost Village. The origin of the village (and why the sisters are there) is just one of the mysteries you've got to solve as you roam an entire town packed with the tortured spirits of the dead. Their haunt is a stunning, gorgeously designed in-game world that's so sharp-looking that you half expect to see Ryu Hayabusa dash through looking for Doku (or worse, ghost fish). Fatal Frame II gets great mileage out of the spine-tingling jump-cut effect that's a staple of horror films from the likes of Hideo Nakata and Takashi Miike. Many ghosts aren't just tortured, either—most of them are downright ticked about their current condition, and since Buffy isn't around they're taking it out on the Amakura twins. You can't have a ghost story without story, and Crimson Butterfly weaves a complex plot, with puzzles and frightening flashbacks that respect the intelligence of the player.
Red bar = angry ghost. In case you couldn't tell.
Needless to say, angry and violent specters don't do Mio or her psychic sister (Mayu is much closer to the spirit world than her main-character twin) a whole lot of good, but, as we've alluded to, you won't be fighting back with your traditional survival hero weapons. Instead, like Peter Parker before the spider bite, your most powerful weapon is … a camera. The Camera Obscura, a camera that "takes pictures of impossible things," has been conveniently left out where any old stranded pair of spooky children might find it. And a good thing, since it turns out that the only way to fight off the ghostly denizens of Sadako-ville is to take their pictures. The mechanics are simple—once you find the camera, an empty "filament" appears in the lower right-hand corner (when Mio takes pictures, the camera the filament moves to the top of the screen). The filament can detects spirits, and it glows brightly when you're directly facing one. After you get your first few shots in, you find a radio that can pick up ghostly voices, giving you some audio warning as well. If the filament glows blue, you've got a poor, sad ghost that doesn't want to hurt nobody—those can be eliminated with a well-framed shot or two. If the filament glows red, that means trouble—the angry, ju-on kind of trouble. In a heartbeat, you go from incredible tension waiting for the next spook to pop out from the wall to the next moment when you're in a fight for your life. In combat, you've still got to get a well-framed shot in, but if you're going to do any damage to the evil spirits you've got to wait for the camera's targeting reticule (or "lens" as they say in the non-gaming world of actual photography).
The camera adds a unique roleplaying element to the strong, story-driven adventure thrills. You can find lenses, orbs, and other components to enhance the camera's range and attack power. You can outfit the camera with a special lens, for example, that slows a ghost's approach. And, after the first attack, you'll see how absolutely critical it is that Mio slow down those spirits and keep her distance—she may be dressed like a sailor scout, but she's definitely not a space marine. Therein lies the addictive challenge of this game.
Scares are always scarier in first-person.
Space marine or not, Mio (and you) can still experience the terror of Crimson Butterfly in the much moodier and spookier first-person shooter view, probably the biggest enhancement in this "Director's Cut." Ask any DOOM 3™ player; nothing amps up the "GYAAHH! What the heck is that??!!" factor like playing a terror-fest in first-person. The game is also quite a bit more challenging in this mode, since you can't spot ghosts as easily, but it definitely makes the switch to photography view a little less jarring. You need to make the choice of third- or first-person when you begin the game, and I can't recommend choosing FPS mode enough for the most frightening experience.
Don't go up there. Don't—I said don't go up there!
It's not often that a truly terrifying video game comes along, let alone one that can scare the pants off of gamers weaned on the Flood, but this one's a doozy. The pacing is perfect, the twists are shocking, and the scares are scary in a way that probably shouldn't be described on a family website, but involves needing to do laundry. Even if you don't think this is your kind of game—heck,especially if you don't think it's your kind of game—check this one out for a scary, gripping surprise.
Dim the lights first, and don't forget to bring a flashlight. The ghosts of Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly are holding a serious grudge.
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