Ghosts and...more ghosts?
January 31st 2010 04:36
To kick off my return, I would like to bring to light (or would it be move it further into the light?) a game that has always been my favorite.
Fatal Frame
Before I get to talking about the game itself, I want to discuss survivor horror games in general. When talking about survivor horror games, you could talk about the survivor aspect with horror elements (aka, Resident Evil, Silent Hill, FEAR, Clock Tower, etc) or the horror aspect with survivor elements (Ju-on: Haunted house simulator, Haunting Grounds, Eternal Darkness, etc). Rarely do you get a game that combines the two so well and so wonderfully that you're gripped by it almost immediately. I say that Fatal Frame is one of these rare "true survivor horror" games.
Fatal Frame delivers what few survivor horror games fail to deliver: believability and mortality. By that I mean that specifically in the survivor w/ horror element games you're playing a character with the ability to stand up to hordes of zombies, ghosts, psychic phenomenon, etc, and do battle with them with guns, explosions and knives. The main character of Fatal Frame presents a contrast to the other protagonists, where she's just a girl who is searching for her brother inside a mansion and is eventually trapped inside. So the only way forwards for her is to keep searching for her brother, doing battle with ghosts with the help of her brother's spirit-sensing camera. What it does is it sets up a possibility that cannot be refuted as false, but can also not be refuted as true, therefor, the believability and the mortality of the character are sound. This will probably be argued upon by many, but I will just leave it at that.
What makes this game a true survivor game is that you get a feeling for the character when you're in combat. This is thanks to the brilliant camera switching effects: You go from third person exploration to first person shooting. It feels as if you step into your character's shoes and now you are doing battle with the ghost. Whatever your character faces, you have to face. Or even if you are being chased by a ghost that will kill you by a single touch, you find yourself telling your character to "run!".
Now what makes this game a true horror game is not when there is stuff happening, but when there ISN'T stuff happening. By that I mean that when the lack of things happening plays on your fear that something is about to happen. However, the brilliance of it all comes to the heartbeat effect of the controller giving you a connection to your character. The closer the source of the fear is, the faster both yours and your character's heartbeat races. Even if you do not see it, you can tell when it's close...
It's nothing short of brilliance from the game designers and it is safe to say that they know true survival horror. I highly suggest people finding themselves a copy of this game and then finding Fatal Frame's sequels (which I shall talk about...another time...).
Fatal Frame
Before I get to talking about the game itself, I want to discuss survivor horror games in general. When talking about survivor horror games, you could talk about the survivor aspect with horror elements (aka, Resident Evil, Silent Hill, FEAR, Clock Tower, etc) or the horror aspect with survivor elements (Ju-on: Haunted house simulator, Haunting Grounds, Eternal Darkness, etc). Rarely do you get a game that combines the two so well and so wonderfully that you're gripped by it almost immediately. I say that Fatal Frame is one of these rare "true survivor horror" games.
Fatal Frame delivers what few survivor horror games fail to deliver: believability and mortality. By that I mean that specifically in the survivor w/ horror element games you're playing a character with the ability to stand up to hordes of zombies, ghosts, psychic phenomenon, etc, and do battle with them with guns, explosions and knives. The main character of Fatal Frame presents a contrast to the other protagonists, where she's just a girl who is searching for her brother inside a mansion and is eventually trapped inside. So the only way forwards for her is to keep searching for her brother, doing battle with ghosts with the help of her brother's spirit-sensing camera. What it does is it sets up a possibility that cannot be refuted as false, but can also not be refuted as true, therefor, the believability and the mortality of the character are sound. This will probably be argued upon by many, but I will just leave it at that.
What makes this game a true survivor game is that you get a feeling for the character when you're in combat. This is thanks to the brilliant camera switching effects: You go from third person exploration to first person shooting. It feels as if you step into your character's shoes and now you are doing battle with the ghost. Whatever your character faces, you have to face. Or even if you are being chased by a ghost that will kill you by a single touch, you find yourself telling your character to "run!".
Now what makes this game a true horror game is not when there is stuff happening, but when there ISN'T stuff happening. By that I mean that when the lack of things happening plays on your fear that something is about to happen. However, the brilliance of it all comes to the heartbeat effect of the controller giving you a connection to your character. The closer the source of the fear is, the faster both yours and your character's heartbeat races. Even if you do not see it, you can tell when it's close...
It's nothing short of brilliance from the game designers and it is safe to say that they know true survival horror. I highly suggest people finding themselves a copy of this game and then finding Fatal Frame's sequels (which I shall talk about...another time...).
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