“Please father,”
pleaded my three sons in unison, “if you buy us Dead or Alive
3 for our X-Box then we shall never again misbehave.” “Nah,”
spake I from my fatherly throne, “it will be a dark day in Utopia
before another Tecmo game crosses our threshold.”

Well okay, maybe we don’t
talk like that in my house, but truth be told, even though Tecmo’s
Fatal Frame is the best console exclusive adventure game ever
released, when it comes to marketing Tecmo does not have a clue. In
fact, they have spit upon and totally spurned the three main rules
of adventure gaming: know your audience, know your audience, know
your audience. For in the myopic vision of Tecmo, if you’re not a
teenager then you don’t exist. Yet, would I expect anything less from
a company whose claim to fame is an option in Dead Or Alive 3
that allows the player to control the amount of bounce for the female
character’s boobs? But more on this later, first lets chat about Fatal
Frame.

Fatal Frame is easily
the scariest, most fear-inducing adventure game released for any console
system. Hopefully, it will set a standard for future developers in
the survival horror genre as it has now been proven that guns are
far from necessary to create a gripping, intelligent survival horror
game. For in Fatal Frame, the weapon of choice is not advanced
weaponry, but instead a “harmless” antique camera that can
capture the souls of departed spirits.

Based on a true story,
Fatal Frame takes place entirely in a haunted mansion. Clichéd
– yes, but these are clichés done to perfection. The developers
know the exact moment to turn the screw, cue the music or allow a
brief tantalizing view of a twisting, hanging corpse. They are surely
devotees of ‘B’ horror films. The story is based on a couple of incidents
that actually occurred in a small village in the mountainous regions
of Japan. The main character is Miku, an amateur photographer who
is able to sense spirits. Her brother, a journalist, has disappeared
inside the Himura Mansion while conducting research on three grisly
murders in which the bodies were found inside the mansion, but the
heads, arms and legs of the victims had been severed.

From photographs of the
deceased, Miku uses her psychic perception to ascertain the horrific
means of their demise and soon realizes that only she has the ability
to save her brother and put an end to the murders that have haunted
the surrounding countryside. Armed only with her antique camera and
a flashlight, Miku now ventures forth to explore a thirty-room haunted
mansion.

In an attempt to increase
the tension, Fatal Frame features black-and-white sequences
and ghostly flashbacks. The mansion has been designed to make the
player feel claustrophobic and as ghosts can and will attack from
anywhere your quick reflexes with the camera will be imperative. If
there was a downside to the game – at least for me – it was the minor
difficulty I experienced learning to not only use the camera quickly,
but in also unlocking it’s special features. But this was more a problem
of bad reflexes on my part and not poor game design.

Just as important are your
puzzle-solving skills for unlike most console adventure games Fatal
Frame‘s puzzles progress beyond the find a key, open a door variety.
Storyline is established piecemeal through fragments of newspaper
clippings and notebook pages and as the plot progresses so also do
the cleverness of the puzzles and the variety of inventory items.
Even more unique though are puzzles that can only be solved by taking
pictures of doors or objects that appear normal to the naked eye,
but reveal concealed clues when photographed.

We now interrupt this review
for an unscheduled rant:

WHY CONSOLE ADVENTURE GAMES
DON’T SELL

You may have noticed that
there are not any screenshots from Fatal Frame in the body
of this review. There is a good reason for this – Tecmo would not
provide Just Adventure with any screenshots. Not that we didn’t ask
more than once mind you. One would have thought we had requested (gasp!)
an evaluation copy. Finally we received a terse response, “You
can get screenshots off our website.” Well, we tried but were
unable thanks to Macromedia Flash. So we wrote again and again no
response. We can only imagine that Tecmo has not yet figured out how
to respond when approached by an adult. For in the world of console
games, the teenager is king and pity the adult fool who is dumb enough
to profess a liking for a console game (Tecmo obviously has some marketing
savvy as they hosted a press junket in a haunted hotel for the release
of Fatal Frame). So by now many of you must be saying, “Oh
poor Just Adventure, they couldn’t get some screenshots from Tecmo
and now they’re whining. Boo hoo.” Ah, but now the story gets
even more depressing for fans of the adventure genre.

Over the years Just Adventure
has naturally developed a positive reputation with developers and
publishers so it was not unexpected that a prestigious publisher should
approach and ask if we thought if Fatal Frame could successfully
be converted to a best-selling pc game. We gave the game our highest
recommendation and also proceeded to provide said publisher with a
list of contacts at Tecmo – marketing, public relations and the company
president. Said publisher had plans to contact Tecmo and inquire as
to whether on not Fatal Frame was planned for the computer
and, if not, were the rights available. We had promises be kept abreast
of the negotiations. Except there were none. That’s right – Tecmo
did not or would not even respond to inquiries from a fellow publisher.
Why not? Why would you pass on an opportunity to have your product
converted to reach a wider audience? Or is it that Tecmo still believes
that console games are only for children? The bottom line is that
while there are some teenagers who play adventure games, the larger
demographic for this genre is adults and females both of whom have
yet to make the consoles their gaming system of choice over the computer.

We now return you to your
regularly scheduled review…

So I have claimed that
Fatal Frame is without peer on the console, but even it still
suffers from the dreaded consolitis. As is usual for this type of
game, saves can only be made in certain areas, though to be fair the
designated save areas are not spread far enough apart to be frustrating.
The real problem though rears its ugly head during the last third
of the game as the dreaded “more-is-better” console mentality
strikes. While the game had maintained suspense by the masterful maneuvering
of spirits and shadows, the developers seem to have decided that if
facing one ghost was a challenge, then facing three or four at once
would be even more suspenseful. Not. If anything it degrades what
had been a tense and jarring experience into a photo-snapping action
fest.

If you already own a Playstation
2, then Fatal Frame is a must have for the adventure gamer.
If you have been debating whether to purchase a PS2, then this game
along with Shadow
Of Destiny and Silent
Hill 2 are reason enough if you are an adventure gamer. Or
you can wait until Tecmo announces the release of the computer version
which should be around the same time they respond to emails – sometime
in 2010 or so.

Final Grade for Fatal
Frame: A-.

If you liked this game
then:

Play – Shadow
of Destiny
Watch – Blow-Up
Read – The instruction guide that came with your camera