Zero: Tsukihami no Kamen (2008)

Released originally in 2008 for the Nintendo Wii and remastered for eighth and ninth-generation consoles in 2023, this is the fourth game in the Fatal Frame (or Project Zero if you prefer that name) franchise.

Like its predecessors, the gameplay consists of exploring abandoned buildings while you defeat ghosts with your only weapon: A camera with spiritual powers. However, this time there are three protagonists, each with their own chapters, gimmicks, and goals.

At first, when you aren't used to the controls, avoiding ghosts can be hard and you'll probably die a couple of times during the first chapters, but after you get some upgrades and the ability to evade the game gets considerably easier, especially because you can use the points you get while defeating ghosts to buy better ammo and healing items, so resources are so abundant you don't have to worry about using them strategically.

However, the most interesting part of the game is the story. Two of the protagonists don't remember their past after an incident when they were kids, and you get to know exactly what happened, the truth behind the rituals of the abandoned town you are exploring, and even the life of many of the ghosts that you encounter. The mystery is pretty well done and with each chapter, you get new questions and answers, so there is an incentive to advance even if the gameplay isn't that engaging.

But not everything is positive. The running speed is so slow you barely notice a difference, which is annoying when you have to backtrack, explore multiple floors per chapter, and avoid ghosts that can teleport from one side to another in a single second. It's not gamebreaking, but it's still an annoyance that you have to endure during all your playthrough.

Also, trying to do 100% is so cumbersome I wouldn't recommend doing it unless you loved the game. You need to take a photograph of all the specters if you want the full completion, but some of them are only available during a New Game+, and if you miss one because you weren't prepared or it disappeared too quickly you have to reload your save to try again, which isn't ideal when some of them are pretty far from save points and without a guide you wouldn't even know when they will appear.

Still, if you only care about the story and want a nice and easy horror game, Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse is a good choice. You don't even have to play previous entries, as the only connection is the use of a camera as your main weapon.

8th Game Completed in 2024

I was pleasantly surprised by this one. I'd heard for years and years that Fatal Frame was one of the premier survival horror franchises, but after playing a little over half of 1 and all of 2... I really wasn't seeing it. But I kept hearing about this golden lamb - "There's this Fatal Frame game that never left Japan! Grasshopper Manufacture made it! Nintendo helped development and published it!" So I saw a physical copy on sale for $40CDN, and it sat on my shelf for... Bit under a year.

Funny thing about this game, and a myth I want to dispel right away... Grasshopper didn't make this game. They made the character models and contributed to the story, but they didn't get handed the reigns to the series. Nintendo did pitch in though, and the original game was something of a showcase of the Wii's motion controls... Whether this was to the game's benefit or detriment seems to be polarizing, but it was, absolutely, built for the Wii.

So that segues perfectly into this game's biggest problems. Let's get the bad out of the way, before I dive into what I loved.

The controls are... Awkward. They have taken a game built for a single stick and motion controls and shoehorned it onto a PS5 gamepad. Your movement controls are tank controls, but they work SUPER poorly in a 3D space. There's a dedicated turn-around button that works roughly 75% of the time, but if you try to turn around with just the stick, the game will fight you and fling your camera around. Additionally, the flashlight and camera were - I presume - originally mapped to motion controls. These have been moved to the right stick, and this implementation is... Awkward.

A core mechanic of exploration is shining your flashlight over items to reveal a sparkle, allowing you to interact with them. If I could wave a reticule around, this would actually be really fun and interesting. With the stick, it's slow, tedious, and SUPER finicky. You can spend several minutes trying to find the exact pixel the game wants you to shine your light on, pass over it several times, and it just won't spark.

The game also has gyro-assisted aiming. TURN THAT SHIT RIGHT OFF. The PS5's gyro seems to LOVE to fly into the ceiling right when you've lined up a shot. No idea if this is a controller problem or a game problem, but just get rid of it.

The visuals also really suffer from the conversion to hi-def consoles. The new character models look great, and quite a few assets have also received the glow-up... But most of the environmental textures have not. And they look BAD. I understand that budgetary concerns probably apply here, but even just applying a filter to these textures would have done a lot of good. Below is meant to be an aged plaster wall in an old hotel-turned-hospice.

But speaking of visuals, you know what DOES work? The art direction is consistently great. Everything feels appropriately dark, damp, and decayed, in ways that feel pretty realistic given the Meiji era architecture (late 1800s to early 1900s) left abandoned for a decade. Not only that, but the PS5 version of this game (which is a free upgrade from the PS4 disc, by the by; you need to make a Hong Kong PSN account to activate it tho) runs at a super smooth framerate. I have no idea what it actually is, but it feels like a stable 60. I had started with the PS4 version, which seems more like a locked 30... Honestly kind of disappointing for a port of a Wii game in 2023.

What really hooked me in this game though... That would be the story. Premise is simple: 10 years ago, 5 girls were rescued from a cultish ritual. Two of them died unexpectedly, in a state of fear. The remaining three return to the island to see if they can dispel whatever evil is causing this. They are pursued by the detective that rescued them. If you're seen the original Japanese version of The Ring, you will recognize the setup. But things go in their own clever direction.

See, the island these girls were rescued from holds a hospise for the mentally ill; specifically, for those suffering from Moonlight Syndrome, a condition unique to the island of Rogetsu. The island has centuries of history and its own unique customs and folklore... And these things might be interlinked. What I really like about this game compared to 1 and 2 is a focus on a more modern setting. The appeal to ancient Japanese culture is absolutely there, but the setting is mostly institutional buildings from the front half of the 1900s. It's not just ancient Japanese mansions and temples - which I honestly got sick of.

I won't really spoil anything about the plot, but it goes into some seriously interesting themes including abuse, mad science, what is likely a forbidden lesbian romance, and Japanese philosophical musings on the line between life and death. And it's all delivered with this distant whisper... The game never beats you over the head with any of this. It's up to you to read the notes, to photograph all the ghosts and read their histories, to piece together all the little lines of dialogue that make little sense in isolation... And while you're piecing together the history of the island, discovering why it's abandoned, and working to save your player characters, there's all these little sub-plots with specific ghosts and their lives and traumas. There's a few recurring ghosts that are not really important to the central plot, but get their own little arcs all the same... Like Ayako, the violent child from hell who would be the antagonist in most other games, but serves as brilliant set dressing in this game.

The core mechanics of both the photography and exploration are great too, and the upgrade tree is satisfying and not needlessly complicated. It's just enjoyable from front to back, and even though there's some frustrating bits of jank in there, the overall experience is a strongly above-average survival horror. I'm really glad this game finally got localized, because really, even though the game is 16 years old at this point, it still feels fresh and compelling.

Have you ever encountered a boss fight so terrible it completely kills yoir enjoyment of a game? This one has one of those.

So Fatal Frame 4 has a lot of jank. Visual, control, mechanics... Tons of jank. This is fine in a slow-paced horror game where you can time your shots. This is NOT okay in a boss fight that requires laser reflexes, and can take off half your health in a single hit, (all your health on Hard), and can teleport, and has a shitload of health, and moves so fast hits don't register... And all takes place in a super narrow corridor, where he can just appear out of the wall and gank you.

The movement controls in this gane are TERRIBLE. Your move speed is glacial, and they couldn't decide if they wanted tank controls or 3D controls, so they made a terrible hybrid. Camera control is okay, but the PS5 controller's gyro is fucking shit and will occasionally launch your reticule into the ceiling for no reason. It's also a total diceroll whether or not the indicators on your camera are accurate or not. It can tell you you're locked on and the ahot is in focus, but then the shot just... Doesn't land. Why? Who knows!

This one boss fight is so terrible it may actually end my playthrough. Fatal Frame 2 did this same shit too, but at least that one saved the shitty broken boss fight for the final boss. Did no one play test this????

Having played Fatal Frames 1 and 2 (not 3, though I do own that on PSN), I think I can confidently say this is the best one in the series for me thus far. I'm very pleasantly surprised. Definitely going to be finishing and reviewing this one.

Kinda took a while to grab me, but we got:

• Multiple characters switching locations and perspectives.
• A Meiji era (late 1800s-early 1900s) setting instead of the usual ancient settings.
• Really badly mapped Wii controls on modern consoles that somehow still work well enough.
• Heavy yuri overtones.
• Detective stuff.
• Killing ghosts with a magic flashlight.
• Completely sporadic upscaling (or lack thereof) of assets and textures.

It's really got it all! Loving it so far, I can see why the average is so high in Grouvee.

Not better than 3, but still very good. The controls take some getting used to because they had to port the Wiimote gimmicks to a controller and even when you do get used to it, having to hover your flashlight over things to be able to pick them up is annoying at the best of times. Tip if you do play the remaster, you can use your camera to this effect and it'll be much faster.

The story is nice, but the pacing is horrendously slow and maybe I'm stupid but the converging storylines made it confusing to follow the minutia. There are also way too many ghost battles, and they're all insanely easy. You get a lock-on function that removes all the challenge and tension from the battles. The tank controls are gone and you get a jank third person camera that doesn't work. The filament is incredibly OP because it tells you exactly where a ghost is coming from; you don't have to determine by sound or moving around until it lights up the brightest. It's an overall very easy game, perhaps even the easiest I've played so far.

We did get some QoL such as auto-lock on when you press the camera to make vanishing ghosts (revenants in this game) not so arbitrarily difficult, no more random ghost fights assaulting you because you want to take your time in the survival horror game, auto-save when you pass by a save spot and trading points for items which can be... a good thing, and a bad thing. It trivializes the game for sure. If you go out of your way to obtain most of the vanishing ghosts (which isn't hard to begin with) you'll be able to buy out so much Type-61 film it'll be asinine to use anything else (Ruka and Misaki both deal underwhelming damage compared to Choshiro, who oneshots everything in his path with the mighty radiance of the flashlight). It's a good game that you should play, but I maintain that 3 is better. It's not a good entry point, though. If you ever go back... you'll wonder how people managed and face a pretty steep curve.

Also, you move dreadfully slow, to the point where the chase sequences made me laugh because you're on molasses.

This is the first game in the Fatal Frame series that might be considered in some ways a soft reboot. The biggest obvious difference is the shift to third-person over-the-shoulder perspective, which is unsurprising given this is the first game in the series developed after Resident Evil 4's release revolutionized its own series and the genre on the whole to move this direction. Also departing somewhat from Fatal Frame 3, this game is fully standalone with no real ties to the previous games other than the recurrence of series staples like the Camera Obscura. However, a lot of the game otherwise sticks to Fatal Frame's tried and true formula, even if it is less successful at it than previous entries. Of the games I've played so far, I count Mask of the Lunar Eclipse to be the weakest (I have yet to play the 5th game at the time of this writing), though I still enjoyed it and think it does at least some things better than previous titles. I will also note that I played the recent version of the game released in 2023, which I believe is a remaster, not a remake. Interestingly, prior to this release, the game only came out in Japan and this is the first official English localization, which was quite lucky for me given it came out just before I finished my playthrough of Fatal Frame 3. Before I heard about this remaster, I was already expecting to have to play a fan-made translation which, while I deeply respect the effort, I had heard bad things about.

Perhaps the biggest scale up with this entry is that the graphics are quite noticeably better and there's a lot to appreciate here. I'm not sure how much of this is due to the remaster touch-up, but while it doesn't look like a modern game, the graphics are pretty outstanding for a game originally released in 2008. While I do love the classic fixed-camera angle style of PS1/2 Survival Horror, being able to more closely examine all the pieces making up the scenery and see the characters with a lot more detail was a real treat that brings the game alive in a lot of ways. Personally, I feel like this perspective weirdly makes the game a bit less scary, but it overall looks quite good. My only real issue is, in line with all the other games in this series, the game insists on its film grain filter across the entire game, intensifying at times, but always present to some degree. I waffled on using a mod to turn off the film grain but admittedly, some of the textures do look a bit flatter without it so I opted for the more intended experience. I've tried to include a lot of screenshots because I like to do so in my reviews, but also to provide a good idea of the overall strong graphics for the game. However, most of the images I think would've been better without the film grain, so alas.

For the most part, gameplay is just plain stronger in this game compared to the initial trilogy. I found the ability to lock-on to ghosts a massive quality-of-life improvement that made combat feel like way less of a pain. On the downside, it does make much of the challenge a lot more trivial and I'd consider this the easiest game so far mechanically. Another difference is one of the playable characters wields a "spirit stone flashlight," which is rather overpowered and works quite differently from the camera. There are also upgrades as in all of the games, but this one had a lot more options for upgrades and admittedly, some felt kind of pointless; focusing on the main ones like max power and charge made the game even easier. The controls are mostly okay but the flashlight could be quite finnicky and throw your movement off. I played the PC version using a PS5 controller and didn't have too much trouble. The puzzles are decent. There are a couple rather challenging ones, but I could've done with a few more as this series has always had some good puzzles and there aren't many in this game. I also appreciated that navigation is pretty straight forward and this was the game in the series I felt the least lost in and like I had a decent idea of where to go and what to do almost all game, something I can't say for the previous games.

The characters in this game are...a bit meh. Personally, I always feel like Fatal Frame is more sold on its story and lore than its characters themselves. That trend continues here with a somewhat larger cast of characters who, aside from a couple quirks, I honestly couldn't tell you pretty much anything about personality-wise. That goes for most all Fatal Frame characters who tend to have interesting backgrounds or roles in the story—though not much real personality—but it stood out even more here. The backstory centers on five girls who were all kidnapped at a younger age: Ruka, Misaki, Madoka, Tomoe, and...I don't remember the other one. Part of why I don't recall that last one is that her and Tomoe have died offscreen just prior to the game's events. Ruka, Misaki, and Madoka have returned to the island to uncover some of the mystery behind what happened to them there (of which they have no real memories), prompted in part by the death of the other two girls. However, Ruka and Misaki are the only playable characters of the five and Madoka is of less importance beyond the first few chapters. There is a third major playable character, a detective named Chōshirō who initially found the girls on the island years ago and has returned, though he seems kind of equally bland as a person.

I'd say the story of the game is a bit weaker than in previous titles. It is in some ways less gruesome as rather than brutal ritualistic murder, the main cause of death in the lore is "Moonlight Sickness," a condition that was being studied and "treated" at the Haibara infirmary when it was still operational. Aside from some (ethically) questionable treatment methods, there's not nearly as much in the way of torture and gore involved in this entry's backstory. The most degenerative aspect of Moonlight Sickness is that patients can "blossom," which mostly just looks like their face is all blurry (see above). I liked the mystery element with the girls trying to uncover what happened to them and why, and the progression toward learning that is somewhat interesting. But overall, I just didn't find this game as compelling as previous titles with its lore and mystery. The only exception is I'd say this one I found to be one of the easier ones to follow, especially as there's less of a timeline than some of the lore of previous games.

I think my biggest complaint of all is one that probably sounds extremely minor: the run speed in this game is awful. The characters take super tiny strides, to the point it looks like they're struggling to run in a very tight yukata (which to be fair is one of the costumes available). All of the previous games had pretty slow run speeds but it never bothered me before. I think this is because the scale of the rooms and your traversal of them is simply a lot different when they built the game for the over-the-shoulder perspective. But, without exaggeration, I almost nodded off during each of my first five sessions playing this game for a chapter at a time (about an hour) because I'd see a long hallway and just hold run a long time. This is made so much worse any time you're not sure where to go and you try one room on one side of the map only to find a dead end and have to go all the way back so slowly. I'm kind of surprised it made it past playtesting. My other major complaint is admittedly a silly one. That's that despite the localization, there's no English dub option. While the Japanese is much more immersive and the subtitles are fine, some of the English dubbing in the previous games was fucking hilarious, especially for the ghosts. My favorite instance was the ghosts with the deep redneck accent repeating "where's muh 'ed (my head)?" But okay, the game was probably overall better for it, even if I miss my chuckles.

The game boasts a good number of unlockables, mostly in the form of costumes. Some of these are paid DLC, but a good number are unlocked by finding hidden Hozuki dolls that are pretty well-hidden to an annoying degree (though you can buy a file that makes them easier to find). I do take issue with how fan servicey a couple of these costumes are for characters who are only 17, but most of the rest of them are fine and the variety is nice. You can get accessories like cat ears and glasses early on too, which I mean, why wouldn't you?!

Ultimately, if you're not afraid/unable to pick up a much older title, I'd try one of the first couple Fatal Frames for your first entry in the series, even if this is the latest release at the time of this writing. It definitely hits on a lot of the same notes, but simply does so to a weaker degree in my opinion. It has a somewhat more modern game feel to it though and is also more approachable in that sense if you do have a problem getting into the earlier games. The graphical step up and the quality-of-life improvements shouldn't be understated, but they only carried the game so far in my opinion. I give the game 4 stars, but it's probably more of a rounded up 3.5. I enjoyed my time with it and am really glad it got localized, but I wouldn't highly recommend it unless you're just itching for more Fatal Frame (which is quite valid!).

My other Fatal Frame Reviews:

Fatal Frame 3: The Tormented - ★★★★★

Fatal Frame 5: Maiden of Blackwater - ★★★