Fatal Frame - Nitro Rad

[Music] it seems like all of the most iconic horror games are Japanese but despite that most of them seem to favor Western settings Resident Evil and Silent Hill both take place in the United States and the Clocktower games for the most part take place in Europe they may live in Japan but and they sure love their Western settings but every now and then you will find something taking place a little bit closer to home their home not mine after departing the Silent Hill franchise Kei Ichiro Toyama opted out of the American setting in favor of something closer to traditional Japanese horror with siren on PlayStation 2 but he wouldn't be the first one to do so oh no horror games of the late 90s were lacking in Japanese settings but he wasn't the one to change that no it would be Tecmo that stood up to the plate to create the PlayStation 2s first true survival horror game with a traditional Japanese story setting and characters it would also offer ideas that at the time were completely brand-new for the genre enter fatal frame after years of making ninja gaiden in sports games techmo would greenlight one of the PlayStation twos earliest horror games makoto Shibata was the man behind it who previously worked on tech Mo's deception series a series of strategy games on ps1 that were all about setting up traps in a castle to prevent intruders from reaching you these games were praised for their inventive and thoroughly original gameplay which was one of fatal frame strengths as well as the new hardware came in they continued to innovate by incorporating gameplay that was once again unconventional while being simultaneously easy to grasp in a 2013 interview Maki Toshiba said that he had a special interest in the horror genre stating I tend to see things myself every now and then in real life in other words my experience of seeing things that weren't actually there or noticing abnormal things around me were some of the fear factors I thought would appeal to the emotional side of the player with the PlayStation 2 launching with the DualShock 2 it would be possible to communicate subtle stimulation via haptic feed into the players hands hence noticing things you cannot see this seems to be that one horror franchise does not resident evil or Silent Hill that everybody loves to talk about you wouldn't believe the amount of people have asked me about these games over the years and I've been fairly curious about them myself I've only ever played the first one at a friend's house for like half an hour one time years and years ago so I'm still pretty dang blind in these things and with that said I'm fairly excited to finally cracked into these games firstly can we talk about that boxart though it is not very good the Japanese and PAL covers looked way better it was called project zero over there what is with horror games having different titles in other regions biohazard Demento forbidden siren I'm surprised Silent Hill wasn't called something different here okay fatal frame based on a true story yeah okay bub and so is Fargo I hate to break it to you but ghosts kind of aren't real so myth busted this is likely referring to shibata's various paranormal encounters but to claim it's based on a true story kind of implies the plot was based on a real series of events rather than the gameplay being inspired by the developers own experiences I noticed that the Japanese and PAL versions don't have that subtitle so I imagine this was probably a silly thing added by the American localizers an attempt to better sell the game or something the very first line of the game puts us in the shoes of two Japanese teens Miku in ma foo u after their mother passed away they only had each other and since they're seemingly the only ones that have these paranormal experiences they're also the only ones they can talk to about it so it's a pretty big sting when ma Fuyu goes missing one day he set off to Hamato mansion in search of a novelist that also went missing searching the mansion as research for his latest work though of course during his search he also kind of goes missing it's been two weeks since I last heard from my brother but he left a note that led me to this place oh man that voice acting that is this that is not good it's not like uncanny weird performance that some people could argue adds to the game no III think this is just flat-out weak I wonder how long it's been since my brother and I began to see things other people can't see I have to speak slowly and announce e8 every single last syllable come on what is this it's like it's like schoolgirl chills number 15 Burger King foot lettuce we play through the prologue as mafuyu as a sort of quick flashback everything being in black and white it's pretty much the game's tutorial we learned the basics like exploring and combat with ghosts and whatnot it's not very long before we're in the shoes of Miku who enters the mansion herself in search of her brother once you're in control you'll notice plenty of staples of classic horror games fixed camera angles dark corridors lit only by your flashlight and level progression being a room-by-room venture many people will be very happy to know that fatal frame uses full analog control which as I always have to point out is something that sort of clashes with fixed angles this camera system was made with the tank controls of the ps1 era and mind so when you tack full analog on to it you can find yourself jittering and getting turned around between the cuts but fatal frame offers a really interesting solution to this tank controls is an option like in Silent Hill 2 & 3 but there's no strafe buttons and you can't walk backwards so it's not really a good option instead you're gonna want to stick with the analog controls because of what they did with the Run button instead of simply being a toggle for which speed you want to move at while holding the stick it'll make you run forward even when you're not holding the stick so it doubles as not just a run button like it usually would but also a sort of replacement for a tank controlled fashioned up on the d-pad so when you're changing angles you can now hold the Run button to continue straight without holding the stick in any direction to avoid discrepancies with the angle now it's not perfect of course without the steering you might find a transition between certain angles to still be a tad clunky but this is a much better solution than anything else I've played has come up with now the combat here is the real cell while other horror games have you struggling to defend yourself with firearms or steel pipes fatal frame has you taking photographs of the ghosts to seal them away ghosts don't die after all you've got to exorcise them as you explore the mansion you'll occasionally bump into a ghost and I really love how the queues were handled here Silent Hill had that radio to let you know when something's nearby which to this day is one of the most ingenious ways a horror game can create anticipation fatal frame does something quite similar but with much subtler cues that might take you a little bit longer to notice as you're walking around the music might change and you'll feel very slight vibrations in the controller but the music fades in so slowly that you might not even realize there's a ghost in the room until it's fairly close it's not immediately evident it's not a matter of is the radio on or is the radio off no it's a matter of wait did the music change I can't tell Oh way to did oh I feel it yeah here it comes pair that with the game's horrifying atmosphere and it is probably the most tense I felt in realizing there's an enemy in the room in a long time pressing the circle button will switch to a first-person perspective where we can locate the ghost you can't just take pictures all willy-nilly though you'll have to keep the reticle on them as accurately as you can to charge up a shot before snap in the picture depending on the level of charge you'll do a varying amount of damage to the ghost and once it's health bar is fully depleted you'll then exorcise it and it'll pose a threat to you no longer this combat system is ingenious I've always praised the Silent Hill games for striking a good balance with how vulnerable you are you know having weapons to defend yourself with but they're short and range so you fall into that sensation of a police stay away from me please stay away from me as you try to fend them off without them getting too close fatal frame gives a very similar sensation scrambling as you scan the room desperately trying to get the ghosts back in view so you can take that shot before it gets too close it's like a reverse tug of war but you don't even know where the Rope is half the time while in first-person you can also use the right stick to move your characters so you'll be able to vary slowly back away to line up your shot which is brilliant because it creates those moments when your back hits a wall and you can't pack away any further oh man they did an incredible job at the enemy designed to the ghosts are genuinely freaky as hell a lot of them have very disturbing proportions or moving very inhuman ways and when you turn the camera to see something like this right in your face good lord is it terrifying I'm actually pretty happy to be able to say this but I found this game pretty freaking scary I feel like I don't get to say that often these days because I don't know I think it just kind of spoiled myself having Silent Hill will be the first horror franchise ever played through and also after playing so many horror games I don't know I kind of have a harder time getting scared by games these days but fatal frame did it fatal frame is really good at scaring the player it is a shining example of just how much more effective subtler cues and direct encounters can be over loud sounds jump scares and running away personally I think it's scarier to be stuck in a room with something and struggle to keep it away from you than it is to just run away and hide from it like a gun and other horror games your camera has a limited amount of film so you got to try to be careful and make every shot count though you can get like infinite restocks from save points which I really didn't like I think they should have hidden a lot more film toward the mansion instead and then not have this like running low in film created way less tension than it would have if I wasn't able to just get more at any time for free but I suppose without any melee methods of defense if you did run out of film completely you wouldn't be able to progress any further in the game so I guess it's to mitigate that if anything your camera can accept multiple types of film to type 14 type 37 and type 74 these all have varying degrees of power so let's say a type 14 is the pistol 37 is a shotgun and 74 is a rifle I really couldn't help but to make those comparisons because they're all color coded like freakin ammo boxes usually are now of course it's only the type 14 you'll get from save points so while you will never run out of stock completely you will still have to find and ration out your stronger film as best you can you can also buy these upgrades for your camera with spirit points which you'll get for defeating each ghost but you can also find hidden ghosts and snap pictures of them too and that gives you a huge incentive to explore around and view each environment through the lens of your camera man that sort of reminds me of how you could take pictures of those ghosts uh Metal Gear Solid the camera upgrades range through a bunch of pretty basic stuff like increasing a speed at which it charges increasing the size of the reticle and increasing a damage done by a charged up shot but outside of just the numbers going up there's also a handful of special abilities as well stuff like freezing a ghost in place or preventing them from turning invisible we're not gonna goes back away from you if it gets too close these are all done with the l1 button but you gotta be careful with them because just like taking photos you have to actually land a hit for them to work and when they're constantly turning invisible you have to be quite careful to land an accurate shot using any one of these abilities will consume one spirit stone which again is something you can find around the mansion so you get those by exploring but they're very spare so it's best to only use these abilities when you absolutely have to don't do what I did and just use them all the time because by the end of the game I had none and I couldn't use these abilities anymore and I really wish I didn't do that other items you can find include the typical healing items but there's also these stone mirrors these are practically 1ups if you die with one of these in your possession you'll automatically use it to refill your health you can only carry one at a time though which I thought was a little bit pointless I mean like every time I saw one I couldn't pick up I would just go back and get it every time I used one but I guess only being able to use it once per encounter does sort of make sense on top of consumables you'll also pick up a number of story items you'll need to solve a variety of puzzles now what would a horror game be without puzzles though I have to be honest fatal frames puzzles are kind of weak any puzzle involving needing to use an item it never lets you connect the dots yourself you'll never open the inventory and select what you think you need instead interacting with something will just automatically do it for you so long as it's in your inventory there was a bunch of these that I solved by total accident because I didn't even realize I had the thing I needed it would have been so much nicer to let me sit there for a second and think oh wait I have a lighter oh I can probably use that here no instead I walked up to a thing I didn't even know was a puzzle thing I clicked on it it was like yet you got the lighter you go and I was like Oh what I okay alright other puzzles are just flat-out annoying there's way too freakin many of these sliding tile puzzles were yeah it got to get the corresponding stones into the right slots like you remember these things right it's pretty much that it just looks a little bit different I did not like these at all and there's a ton of them and some puzzles seem like they're gonna be cool at first but then you realize a solution is actually insultingly simple this Buddha puzzle is probably the best example I have of this there's a blood stain in the middle and each statue has a bit of blood on it so I thought oh I'll arrange them in a way so it looks like they were all there when the blood splattered you know got a line up the blood stains but after several failed attempts I was dumbfounded to realize it was as simple as the one with the blood at the top right goes at the top right the one with the blood at the bottom left goes at the bottom left the one with the blood of the top goes at the top you see what I mean it's so dumb this one here you have to defeat several ghosts that correspond with the side of the shrine thing and you have to input the corresponding letter that shows up in their photograph but you can just guess each one over and over until you get it so what's even the point of this to begin with the only puzzle I thought was kind of cool was this one here we have to interpret numbers from a scrap of paper and in put them on this thing which I initially assumed it was a clock so you know twelve one six wait that doesn't make sense you got to find this scrap of paper here that translates these numbers for you and then cross-referencing with this thing you can then input the code and that's kind of cool and but the thing here is while it was cool the first time the game reuses the same puzzle again and again and again so each time I was like oh all right time to scroll through my recent notes and find the highlighted red numbers and put them in this thing again puzzles aren't the only thing this game repeats either it's straight-up reused as the levels to the game is spread across three different chapters but each chapter still takes place in the same mansion they just relock all of the doors make you re explore all of the same rooms again albeit in a different order and with a couple of new rooms each time but it still really struck me as budgeted I'm guessing they couldn't afford to make multiple levels so they reuse the same one three times and it's not like resident evil or haunting ground where it is on one prop but you discover more and more of it no again you really have to make your way through the exact same set of rooms multiple times and I do applaud their efforts of making things as fresh and different as I possibly could upon multiple treks throughout the same area but it is still undeniably quite repetitive and I guess to make matters worse I didn't really find the environments all that interesting and I know it's not the setting itself I have explored other games with thoroughly Japanese settings that I have been very interested in I think it's the lack of set decoration a lot of room sport the same colors the same creaky wood the same sorts of objects the same overall look it doesn't have that attention to detail that makes every room stand out as something unique something that games like haunting ground have excelled at as you explore the mansion you uncover a lot of scraps and notes and stuff that slowly unveiled the story you'll discover what happened to the novelist and his crew uncovering a curse that they all fell victim to he's been saying something about the rope curse as they explored the mansion they started to notice rope marks around their skin as if they were like strangled on their arms and legs and then eventually each person is mysteriously found dead it was actually pretty cool learning about the sort of thing in passing and then getting to experience it ourselves that wouldn't be nearly as terrifying if we didn't already explore the accounts of the curses previous victims giving the curse itself a development arc before giving that curse to the player makes it that much more effective oh these notes can be really freaking wordy though the game just loves to dump tons and tons of text on you and I found myself getting a little bit exhausted by it and by extension disinterested in the story at times I actually thought I didn't really like this story that much at first but thinking back on it I think the story is totally fine it's just how the game goes about unraveling it to you that I wasn't crazy about so yeah spoilers I guess I'll give a quick rundown to the plot and skip here if you would like to avoid that alright so throughout the game you'll continuously encounter this little ghost girl this is the younger self of a shrine maiden named Kitty a as you continue through the game you'll uncover a number of rituals that were conducted to decide the next shrine maiden firstly we have the lining ritual one must be blinded with the blinding mask which is this Oni mask with tuned heels on the inside you can pretty much imagine what comes next next comes the demon tag ritual the blinded maiden must play tag with a bunch of children the last one caught is then chosen to become the next shrine maiden this of course was kDa whose duty was to be part of the strangling ritual being tied down and sacrificed to keep the hell gate closed this locks away evil spirits so they can't haunt the world of the living however kiddy I ended up falling in love with somebody before being part of the strangling ritual so she wasn't able to pass into the afterlife properly as she still had desires in and connections with the world of the living so the Hell Gate wasn't properly closed and evil spirits began to haunt the mansion including that of kDa herself so of course this is what incited the rope curse the failing of this strangling ritual so Miku's got to figure out a way to bring peace to kiddie a so she can pass on properly finish the ritual and get rid of the evil spirits the solution is sort of messed up though like you finally find MA for you but it turns out he kinda looks like the guy that key da was in love with so he just decides to spend eternity with her outright sacrificing himself to seal up the Hell Gate dude that's like none of your business like you don't have to do this just because you kind of maybe sort of look like the guy good lord but yeah that's pretty much the gist the plot I know I did brush over some details like the cameras importance and its connection to the main character and of course her mother but I gotta be Ruta Lee honest I don't really remember all of that I feel like a lot of those details went in one ear and out the other because I think this game tries to develop too many subplots at once which makes them a little bit harder to keep track of especially with how so much of that is just through text and text and text though I did really really like how it develops each individual ritual in his own confined space before having you linked them all together and then you realize how they contribute to the fate of the main villain goes kitty a but man I just found it really easy to get lost in how freakin wordy this game is I really love it when horror games show you a bunch of events and make you peace at all together yourself but when there's this much text hammering in every little non-consequential detail I find it long-winded and much less interesting than it could have been if the story were streamlined again it's not a bad story it's really not in the end I thought it was actually pretty good it's just the storytelling I think could use some fine-tuning man I am all over the place of this game like I do think it's strengths are really strong but anything else I'm kind of whatever about I found the storytelling quite cluttered I didn't really find the mansion all that interesting to explore and the puzzles I found them either annoying too simple or just flat-out boring but the atmosphere and the enemy design are really freaking good in the gameplay superb the combat especially I'd say the positives most certainly outweigh the negatives but even still there's a lot of room for improvement here which is exciting because this is just the first game and what's a pretty chunky series so next time we're gonna check out Fatal Frame 2 and see how that one fares I'll see you guys then [Music] [Music]

Channel: Nitro Rad

Views: 423,880

Keywords: nitro rad, review, fatal frame, tecmo, makoto shibata, horror, survival horror, japanese, japanese setting, deception, tecmo's deception, photography, ghosts, scary, taking pictures of ghosts, playstation, ps2, vibration, habtic feedback, subtlety, project zero

Id: SxkEx1Z7Zj8

Length: 21min 9sec (1269 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 09 2019