Game Details the Fatal Frame Series Lives Again Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water

Beautiful horror? More like beautifully irksome!

The PlayStation 2 has one of the most iconic game libraries of all time, including some of the best survival horror games always made: Silent Hill 2 and  3 , the Siren  serial, Rule of Rose , enough of Resident Evil  games, and of course, the Fatal Frame series. Sadly, outside of Resident Evil , pretty much all of them have fallen by the wayside for one reason or another.

Withal, in commemoration of the twentieth ceremony of the Fatal Frame serial, Koei Tecmo has graced fans everywhere with a Fatal Frame PS2 collection on mod platforms — oh await, sad, that'due south simply a section from my listing of hopes and dreams. Instead, they put out a remaster of the Wii U Fatal Frame  hardly anyone played or liked all that much.

Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water (PS5 [reviewed], PS4, Xbox Series Ten/S, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, Wii U, PC)
Developer: Koei Tecmo
Publisher: Koei Tecmo
Released: October 27, 2021 (October 22, 2015 for the original Wii U release)
MSRP: $39.99

Half-dozen years on from its initial release, Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water hasn't aged gracefully due to the elementary fact it just wasn't all that scary to begin with. Even when it was initially released, games like Alien: Isolation (which came out a twelvemonth before) in terms of pure horror made everything in Maiden of Blackness H2o seem piffling by comparison. Outside of the fantastic setting and spooky ghosts, the ineffectiveness of its horror is thanks to a terrible story, a forgettable cast of characters, and enough of questionable design choices.

Maiden of Black Water is set on the fictional mount known as Mount Hikami and deals with plenty of heavy themes and topics such as suicide and ritual sacrifice, and is heavily inspired past the unsettling real-earth location known as the "Sea of Trees." Combine all this with rich Japanese sociology, and information technology's a terrifying setting that is wasted (again) in Maiden of Black Water.

Without diving into too many spoilers, a large part of this is due to the cast of characters being nearly just as lifeless as the ghosts they're taking pictures of. The story is told across roughly fourteen chapters and from three dissimilar character perspectives who all take the emotional range of somebody who just woke upwardly and is being asked twenty questions at once. Throughout the game, in terms of emotions on brandish, these characters either look confused, slightly startled, or half-comatose.

For all the shit Ethan Winters gets for his one-liners and reactions to things going on around him in the latest Resident Evil games, at least he does react to things. Meanwhile, Yuri from Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water is as I just described: seemingly emotionless in regards to practically everything going on. (Absolutely, I'm simply picking on her because despite but rolling the credits on this game, I couldn't tell you the names of the other playable characters if my life depended on information technology — they're that forgettable.)

As an case of what I'thousand on about: In ane scene right out of the Ju-on movies, Yuri is taking a bath when of a sudden the h2o effectually her is filled with black hair, and Yuri is pulled under. A menacing stake maiden appears in front end of Yuri, just inches away from her face as black water begins pouring out of the maiden's eyes. Yuri then wakes up from what was merely a nightmare. We've all seen similar scenes like this earlier.

Typically, though, the expressions on the character's face are one of pure terror, and admittedly, when Yuri wakes up afterward, she at to the lowest degree appears shaken. But at the moment when the maiden is inches from her confront with black goo everywhere? She no-sells the maiden's effort at horror and gawks right dorsum at her with a look of mild inconvenience at all-time. I burst out laughing afterwards at the thought of the ghost maiden going back upwards her chilling mountain, lament to other ghosts that the living aren't gullible enough for this shit anymore.

I could continue ranting about the story, its bizarre pacing, and how information technology bends over backward to come up upward with excuses for these characters to keep leaving (and and so get back up) the haunted suicide mountain. So instead, let's talk virtually the other main reasons why Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water fails at beingness a scary game — its repetitive and straight-upwards dull gameplay.

At the end of each affiliate, you're graded on how well you did with a rank and a agglomeration of points to spend on photographic camera upgrades or items you tin purchase at the start of the following affiliate. Nevertheless, between that and the fact you lot're automatically given over twenty (20!) healing items at the first (along with tons more you can pick up or purchase), information technology kills any sense of tension or challenge in the game as a whole unless you're chasing after a loftier score or something.

Worse even so, Nightmare difficulty isn't available until you've beaten the roughly fourteen-hour-long campaign on normal or easy (the latter of which disables the ranking stuff and lets yous "savour" the story). Information technology'south also in that length and terrible pacing the solid photography-based gainsay with the Camera Obscura becomes mind-numbingly dull long earlier even the halfway point.

Once again, you deal with ghoulish spirits by getting them in the frame, letting them get dangerously close, and dishing out big damage with fatal frames. Admittedly, information technology'due south a bright shooting arrangement that seemed perfect for the Wii U GamePad. On the DualSense controller with gyro controls, it works well enough. It tin can still be unwieldy at times, but thankfully, you tin can besides apply analog controls if you prefer that.

However, the character movement is still painfully irksome and incredibly clunky in tighter interior areas. Funny enough, that's pretty much the merely semblance of challenge the game has going for information technology. The reality is if these characters could move at a brisk pace, it'd brand dealing with the ghosts even more trivial than information technology already is. To be effective at combat, all you need to master is your timing with dodges (pressing 10 right before an assail) and keeping a reasonable distance from the ghosts betwixt lining up good shots. Honestly, though, with the amount of healing items your characters take on hand, you'll rarely be in any real danger in Maiden of Black Water.

I say rarely because at that place are specific moments sprinkled throughout the entrada where you run into the chief blackness water maiden herself (who's invincible to your photographic camera trickery) and will briefly exist pursued. She looks cool as hell, but these are brief encounters that simply have you running away. They are also somewhat picayune, thanks to your stack of healing items.

It was in these bad bitch maiden appearances, though, where information technology felt like my brain was finally pulled out of autopilot while playing. Bated from that, the setting and atmosphere practise all the heavy lifting hither to maintain your interest, which gets ruined past inexpensive scares anyway. One example they re-use multiple times beyond the whole game often happens while your graphic symbol is (slowly) picking up items; a ghost hand may try and catch you. It does very little harm to your graphic symbol and got old for me after the first time.

As for this updated release on newer platforms, Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water on PlayStation 5 runs in a native 4K resolution, has slightly better water furnishings and shadows, but otherwise looks pretty comparable to the original Wii U version.

They've also removed the Samus and Zelda outfits (including for the Nintendo Switch release), probable due to licensing bug. Instead, they've added newer outfits that are far less visually interesting, and I never bothered using them.

In that location's also a photo mode that lets y'all place different ghosts in the surroundings and toggle various poses for a fun diorama display. I'1000 sure some folks out there will love that stuff, but it only ever kept my attending for a few minutes at most. Too, all the censorship from the original western release is even so in-tact too, then if you're looking for a "sexy outfit" fix, you'll accept to make exercise with the new ones, I guess.

This is all speculation on my function, but Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water  comes off like a game that had some incredible artists with cool ideas for this setting and the Wii U tablet, but they couldn't quite figure out a cohesive story to tell. To make matters worse, I get the impression they also didn't want to scare away newcomers on a new system and toned the scare cistron right down.

Vi years later, in that timeframe, Capcom did the opposite with Resident Evil seven — which has now sold over 10 million copies, making it ane of the most pop games in the franchise. I think if Koei Tecmo still has an involvement in reviving theFatal Frame franchise, they need to become dorsum to the drawing board or give newcomers a adept drove of games that made this survival horror series great in the first place.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}

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Source: https://www.destructoid.com/reviews/review-fatal-frame-maiden-of-black-water-2021-remaster/

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