| Fatal Frame/Project Zero/ —ë~zero~ (depending on whether you're in the US, Europe, or Japan) is a survival horror game for the PS2 and XBox that came out in 2002. It's set in Himuro mansion, a massive old abandoned Japanese house that perches in the forest over a nameless village. Nobody has lived in Himuro mansion for over a hundred and fifty years, but the villagers are still reluctant to talk about the family that once lived there, or the mysterious (and grisly?) Shinto rituals that the family was said to practice. Fact of the matter is, nobody knows for sure what happened there or what happened to the Himuro clan... You play as Hinasaki Miku, a girl in her late teens cursed with the sixth sense. Let's let the official website speak for itself... Miku's brother, a journalist, visits the Himuro mansion to conduct reseatch about three grisly murders. Legend revealed that when the bodies were found, the heads, arms, and legs of the victims had been severed. It became clear that the victims were severely tortured and brutally beaten. It was shortly after that Miku had a premonition. She saw her brother in the mansion being tortured, hung, and left to die. To ensure his safety, Miku decides to assist him with his research project. Miku and her brother attempt to gather research from the locals but the locals are hesitant. They'd much rather move on with their lives, not revisit the past. Despite their lack of help, Miku manages to find some photos of the people who died. The photos revealed the appearance of rope burns on the wrists of those in the photos. To Miku's horror, as her brother hands her the photos of the dead, she has a premonition of ropemarks on his wrists as well. While returning from their visit, Miku and her brother get lost in the forest. Tired from a long day, Miku falls asleep in the car and starts dreaming. In her dream, she sees the doomed people from the photos surrounded by darkness, all with ropes wrapped tightly around their wrists, ankles, and necks. Standing next to them is a woman dressed in white, whose wild hair obscures her face. As Miku watches, this mysterious woman pulls tightly on the ropes of the dead people, producing the sickening sound of ropes tightening. Miku hears a loud noise and awakens from her dream with a start. She finds herself in the car, which is parked next to the mansion. She looks around frantically, only to see her brother disappear into the house. Feeling completely alone, she grabs the antique camera of her dead mother, which is conveniently sitting on the back seat of the car. Armed only with ths camera and a flashlight, Miku jumps out of the car to pursue her brother. In her frenzied state, she thinks she sees the woman in white standing at a far distance. Putting aside her fears, Miku enters the mansion to find her brother. The house appears completely abandoned, with only her flashlight and the shadowy moon to guide her way. As she passes in front of a large mirror, she feels a presence. Turning quickly, she looks into the mirror, only to see the reflection of the mysterious woman in white... That's right; Miku only has a camera and a flashlight, and she's trapped in Himuro mansion for four nights with thousands of malevolent ghosts. Miku can't escape until she has unlocked the mystery of the mansion, for the instant she stepped inside she gained the curse herself... Luckily for her, her mother's antique camera has the strange ability to exorcise ghosts, absorbing their spirit energy with each photograph. Miku's only defense against the ghosts is her sixth sense and her ability to take clear, swift photos of the ghosts as they appear. However, she only has a limited supply of film, and many of the ghosts have been gathering power for over a hundred years... The game switches between traditional 3/4 overhead aerial view and a first-person view when Miku raises the camera to her eye. Some ghosts are bound to a single place and will not attack, and some are vengeful and can phase through walls to attack you. Banishing a ghost once may not be enough; some are so powerful that they will pursue you throughout the night, appearing when you least expect. Some ghosts have something to tell you, and each story helps unlock the mystery of Himuro mansion a little more (although most stories are about their own deaths, really). Why should I play this game? I hate survival horror! Now, admittedly, I'm one of the people who actually likes survival horror games, but I wouldn't say they're usually heavy on plot. Zombies, guns, chainsaws, you know how it goes. It can get boring, especially if you don't like being startled by zombies and monsters. What hooked me on this game (I played it along with a friend who doesn't like scary dark horror stuff, and she liked it too) was the differences from normal survival horror games. It's more of a mystery or a puzzle than a staightforward survival game. It's set in an extremely Japanese setting - an old-fashioned Japanese house with a bamboo forest and tatami floors and a koto room and a kimono room and a storehouse and so on - and the foreignness of the setting fit so well with the ghost story. Time flows backwards in the house as the night goes on, and ruined rooms slowly start assuming their former glory - and their old inhabitants come back to them in one form or another. Miku isn't big or powerful or particularly prepossessing, and her weapon is hardly intimidating. When I started playing the game, I'd get so startled at the ghosts that I'd start shooting wildly, wasting film, because it was so unnerving to have a weapon that didn't do physical damage. The game is more subtly creepy than shocking and gory - although it has its fair share of jump-out-of-your-seat scares. It's more the constant feeling of anxiety as you explore the darkened mansion that gets to you in the end - that's why many reviewers have called it the "scariest game ever made." The story is also really interesting, I think; in some ways it's predictable (ghosts pleading for help and leading you to their bodies), but on the other hand, it's surprising and touching too (the true nature of the Strangling Ritual and the story of the Rope Miko, for example). I kept playing because I wanted to find out what happened next - and even the ending surprised me. The characters are also really well fleshed out; you get to know them very well as you keep playing. So play it, dammit! It's well worth it! You can buy it from the Tecmo Store. * back* |