Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly
Tecmo's picture taking ghost hunt is seriously scary stuff.
Published: December 20, 2003
The first Fatal Frame proved to be a truly unsettling game. Combining some of the occult aspects of the Silent Hill games with a more refined approach to just plain scaring the crap out of you and in the process became arguably the most frightening game ever made. It's probably not all that frightening, then, to learn that the sequel (which, as it turns out, is actually a prequel) is every bit as adept at loosening bowels and bladders as the first game, and actually manages to get more creepy as it moves along.
Twin sisters Mio and Mayu are exploring a forest from their childhood when they inadvertently stumble into a town thought to have disappeared long ago. Suddenly finding themselves trapped, they begin to explore the town, learning of a ceremony in which twin sisters were sacrificed and the town plunged into a hellish nightmare. It just so happens that the girls get to explore the town in a constant state of reliving the events of that night. Spirits, most of them quite angry, are all too eager to draw the girls into their nightmare, and as the game progresses, it becomes more and more obvious that the coincidence between the sacrificial twins than the modern day pair is anything but.
Most of the game, you'll guide Mio around the Lost Village, alternatively chasing or protecting Miyu as she slowly succumbs to the influence of the villiage. Your only defense, just as in the first game, is the Camera Obscura, an old camera that can see entities and things not usually visible to the naked eye. It's also the only way to combat the ghosts just itching to help you meet their fate.
The camera combat is nearly identical to the first game, with a few notable exceptions. A filament in the lower right hand corner of the screen will glow different colors depending on the type of spirit, alerting you to a presence in the area. Rather than forcing you to use valuable film on rudimentary tasks like snapping photos of seals instead of combat, this updated camera comes packed with weak but unlimited film by default. Film found around the village gives you more powerful ways to attack, but is obviously limited. A handful of lenses can be used to imbue the camera's normal snapshot with a bit more punch, and the whole works can be upgraded a few levels by collecting spirit stones.
Scattered throughout the village and sometimes dropped after battle are spirit stones that can be used with a sort of spiritual radio to play back the emotions, feelings or thoughts of the ghost carrying them. These recordings are often cryptic and hard to hear, but easily offer the most frightening glimpses into the events that the girls are now a part of. It's actually this ability to peer beyond the world of the living that simultaneously makes FF II so downright creepy. Lots of respect was paid to making sure things are not only scary looking and sounding, but that subject matter is in many cases truly unsettling.
Crimson Butterfly's camera system (the presentation camera, that is, not the gameplay mechanic) is probably the only chink in the game's otherwise frighteningly solid armor. Because pre-selected camera angles have been chosen (and to fantastic effect; the camera is almost always obscured by something, creating a perfect amount of don't-know-what's-out-there tension), there are times when the angle can switch abruptly, throwing you off. While the controls are set up so that you basically go where you point the left analog stick (thankfully no sit-and-spin Resident Evil-style controls are present here), and when the camera shifts, you'll continue on in your direction, it's quite easy to get mixed up when venturing into an area where there are more than a few camera switches.
Fatal Frame II's presentation is peerless, offering an astonishingly detailed old Japanese village to explore. Texture detail is exquisite, especially on the newly improved ghosts; while the spirits are still very much ethereal, detail like clothing and facial detail really help flesh out (no pun intended) the ghosts and offer quite a bit more grotesque and chilling detail. Aside from the occasional camera/control glitch, the graphics are fantastic and nearly perfect.
Often times when a spirit is nearby, the screen will suddenly become filled with static, adding a stylized, moody effect to the on-screen events. Stand still long enough and the screen will suddenly fill with a ghostly visage. This simple effect is an almost guaranteed way to get the hair on your arms to stand on end, mainly because it actually precedes a ghost sighting and creates an amazing amount of tension. There were times, just as I'd found in Silent Hill, where I just plain didn't want to go on for fear of what was to come.
As good as the graphics are, it's obviously the game's audio that does the most constant job of keeping you heart at a nice cardio-fright pace. The crackle of static as a spirit nears you or the moans, screams and whispered rasps of the dead play off your ears fantastically, and if your unfortunate enough to have a surround sound system, the Pro Logic II audio can mean you don't get very much sleep for a few days after playing the game.
While the voice acting for the main characters overall is rather subdued, and even the chance meetings you have with actual living people are better than average, it's the effects applied to some of the recordings you'll hear that really make your hair stand on end. The goosebump reaction triggered by the combination of the game's moody ambient loops and the random comments uttered by spirits are worse than almost any horror movie you can think of.
Fatal Frame II is incredibly frightening -- so much so that it's hard to recommend it to everyone. The game is rather short, but the goodies you can unlock on the title screen mean there's a bit of replay value for those willing to run through the game on a harder difficulty level. Both of these factors add up to a sure-fire rental for those willing to test the waters, and an almost instant buy for someone looking to get genuinely scared out of their wits.
Twin sisters Mio and Mayu are exploring a forest from their childhood when they inadvertently stumble into a town thought to have disappeared long ago. Suddenly finding themselves trapped, they begin to explore the town, learning of a ceremony in which twin sisters were sacrificed and the town plunged into a hellish nightmare. It just so happens that the girls get to explore the town in a constant state of reliving the events of that night. Spirits, most of them quite angry, are all too eager to draw the girls into their nightmare, and as the game progresses, it becomes more and more obvious that the coincidence between the sacrificial twins than the modern day pair is anything but.
Most of the game, you'll guide Mio around the Lost Village, alternatively chasing or protecting Miyu as she slowly succumbs to the influence of the villiage. Your only defense, just as in the first game, is the Camera Obscura, an old camera that can see entities and things not usually visible to the naked eye. It's also the only way to combat the ghosts just itching to help you meet their fate.
The camera combat is nearly identical to the first game, with a few notable exceptions. A filament in the lower right hand corner of the screen will glow different colors depending on the type of spirit, alerting you to a presence in the area. Rather than forcing you to use valuable film on rudimentary tasks like snapping photos of seals instead of combat, this updated camera comes packed with weak but unlimited film by default. Film found around the village gives you more powerful ways to attack, but is obviously limited. A handful of lenses can be used to imbue the camera's normal snapshot with a bit more punch, and the whole works can be upgraded a few levels by collecting spirit stones.
Scattered throughout the village and sometimes dropped after battle are spirit stones that can be used with a sort of spiritual radio to play back the emotions, feelings or thoughts of the ghost carrying them. These recordings are often cryptic and hard to hear, but easily offer the most frightening glimpses into the events that the girls are now a part of. It's actually this ability to peer beyond the world of the living that simultaneously makes FF II so downright creepy. Lots of respect was paid to making sure things are not only scary looking and sounding, but that subject matter is in many cases truly unsettling.
Crimson Butterfly's camera system (the presentation camera, that is, not the gameplay mechanic) is probably the only chink in the game's otherwise frighteningly solid armor. Because pre-selected camera angles have been chosen (and to fantastic effect; the camera is almost always obscured by something, creating a perfect amount of don't-know-what's-out-there tension), there are times when the angle can switch abruptly, throwing you off. While the controls are set up so that you basically go where you point the left analog stick (thankfully no sit-and-spin Resident Evil-style controls are present here), and when the camera shifts, you'll continue on in your direction, it's quite easy to get mixed up when venturing into an area where there are more than a few camera switches.
Fatal Frame II's presentation is peerless, offering an astonishingly detailed old Japanese village to explore. Texture detail is exquisite, especially on the newly improved ghosts; while the spirits are still very much ethereal, detail like clothing and facial detail really help flesh out (no pun intended) the ghosts and offer quite a bit more grotesque and chilling detail. Aside from the occasional camera/control glitch, the graphics are fantastic and nearly perfect.
Often times when a spirit is nearby, the screen will suddenly become filled with static, adding a stylized, moody effect to the on-screen events. Stand still long enough and the screen will suddenly fill with a ghostly visage. This simple effect is an almost guaranteed way to get the hair on your arms to stand on end, mainly because it actually precedes a ghost sighting and creates an amazing amount of tension. There were times, just as I'd found in Silent Hill, where I just plain didn't want to go on for fear of what was to come.
As good as the graphics are, it's obviously the game's audio that does the most constant job of keeping you heart at a nice cardio-fright pace. The crackle of static as a spirit nears you or the moans, screams and whispered rasps of the dead play off your ears fantastically, and if your unfortunate enough to have a surround sound system, the Pro Logic II audio can mean you don't get very much sleep for a few days after playing the game.
While the voice acting for the main characters overall is rather subdued, and even the chance meetings you have with actual living people are better than average, it's the effects applied to some of the recordings you'll hear that really make your hair stand on end. The goosebump reaction triggered by the combination of the game's moody ambient loops and the random comments uttered by spirits are worse than almost any horror movie you can think of.
Fatal Frame II is incredibly frightening -- so much so that it's hard to recommend it to everyone. The game is rather short, but the goodies you can unlock on the title screen mean there's a bit of replay value for those willing to run through the game on a harder difficulty level. Both of these factors add up to a sure-fire rental for those willing to test the waters, and an almost instant buy for someone looking to get genuinely scared out of their wits.
