Fatal Frame: Maiden Of Black Water trial version impressions

by Piyoz on Aug 28th, 2016

Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water was released in North America on October 22, 2015 on the Wii U’s eShop. It was developed by Koei Tecmo and published by Nintendo. This fifth installment of the Fatal Frame series (called “Project Zero” in Europe and simply “Zero” in its native Japan) promises thrills and chills. Does it deliver? I can’t really say for sure. I just played the free trial version. But you see this was no mere demo that Nintendo gave us North Americans. This Trial Version consists of three entire chapters that lasted me and hour and a half in total. Nintendo of America probably figured that a weird, niche Japanese-style horror game with cute girls and ghost cameras wouldn’t be enough in concept to whet the appetites of October scare seekers. They’re framing…uhm…positing this release and a Free To Start title in which you pay for the remaining chapters all at once. However you want to think of it, releasing a not-incredibly-popular Asian horror game on the Wii U outside of Japan is a risky move. Props to Nintendo for even considering it.

All that aside, what impressions did Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water leave on me? Let’s start from the beginning.

Maiden of Black Water puts the player in control of a slew of unbelievably attractive Japanese young people who, for reasons that the game doesn’t care to explain, end up doing independent research on and around a local landmark, Mt. Hikami. Local legends tell us that the mountain is cursed. Like totally freaking cursed. They won’t shut up about how cursed it is. The presence of malevolent ghosts on Mt. Hikami is so strong that, at times, it can act as a gateway between our material world and the world beyond. There are stories of ritualistic murders and deaths by drowning up there, but heavy landslides have reduced many of the pathways and old temples to rubble. These days, the forested mountain has become a magnet for young women seeking to end their own lives. Naturally, all our main characters flock to Mt. Hikami because this is horror, lest you forget.

Within the main story, you control three characters as they search the mountain with flashlights, no cell phones, and no jackets or sweaters that might be appropriate for Mt. Hikami’s climate. One character is named Miu a young psychic. She’s seen very briefly in the trial version. A second character is a dude named Ren, a pal of Miu and an author looking to write about the secrets of Mt. Hikami’s history. The main playable character that I got to play around with was Yuuri, a young woman who treks to up the mountain in search of a friend who’s gone missing. Actually, that’s not true. Yuuri is approached by a girl named Fuyuhi in town. Fuyuhi and Yuuri are mutual friends with a woman named Hisoka who runs an antiques shop. Hisoka’s gone missing, and Fuyuhi, after finding that Hisoka isn’t at her shop, decides to travel up Hikami in search of her lost friend (Hisoka was up there looking for antiques). THEN that instigates Yuuri to follow Fuyuhi and begin the third chapter.

Yuuri and Hisoka are friends, right? That’s what the second chapter tells us. Then why didn’t Yuuri know that Hisoka went missing? Did she not notice? Did she just not care?* Are you confused yet? Because I sure am.

The area of Mt. Hikami is where the actual gameplay of Fatal Frame takes place. Instead of alerting the authorities and going up there during the day, Miu decides to go alone with absolutely nothing to protect herself with except for a camera. But it’s not just any camera. It’s a Camera Obscura. It’s the key to this game’s combat and exploration. As the player explores the game’s dark forest temples, mountain waterfalls, abandoned inns and other unsettling locales, you can switch into camera mode with X to start taking photos of what you see.

As mentioned, Mt. Hikami is haunted up the wazoo. Spirits both malicious and passive wander the twilit pathways traversed by Miu, Ren, and Yuuri. Many ghosts won’t touch you and can be photographed and cataloged as this game’s collectibles. Look fast, though! They don’t stick around for very long. Other ghosts aren’t so friendly and will come after you on sight. Your camera can be used to damage these specters so long as you’re close enough and have their face(s) in the reticle of the camera. How the game manages this ghost combat system was a pleasant surprise.

The Wii U Gamepad serves as your Camera Obscura. Simply raise the GamePad facing your screen as you would a camera, press X, and get to snappin’! The gyroscope within the Gamepad serves very well as a way of moving and tilting the focus of the camera in game. You can turn the Gamepad in addition to the R Stick to capture the forlorn faces of your ethereal victims. I was worried how playing with the GamePad would feel, but to my satisfaction I felt very comfortable sending the dead to everlasting rest. I just wish the rest of the controls felt so natural.

Walking and running through sylvan mountain paths and dark, mysterious hallway interiors isn’t as much of an honor. Turning around, walking, running, and grabbing items is sluggish, tedious, and frustrating in combat situations. For one, to retrieve items on the ground, you have to hold ZR and watch a slow grabbing animation that can randomly be interrupted by a ghostly hand coming out of nowhere to harass you. I just want to pick up film. Why complicate that? For two, you can hold ZL to run forward. ZL is also used to put the camera behind you. When turning around, if you hold ZL for just a teeny bit too long, you’ll end up dashing off screen and probably get lost. For three, the response time between moving the L Stick in a direction and your character actually stepping in that direction is far, far too long. The walking animation is so slow that I can’t imagine why Koei Tecmo would decide to make players wait a fraction of a second for the player character on screen to move. Thankfully, the environments are designed such that I never got stuck anywhere or seriously lost (thanks to a map on the Gamepad screen when not in photographing mode).

Speaking of those environments, the one area of this game that I cannot badmouth is the atmosphere. Mt. Hikami’s wooded shrines and derelict buildings are gorgeous to behold. They evoke this bizarre sense of the unnatural and the otherworldly that I can’t describe well enough. It’s not too dark that you can’t see what’s around you, but it’s not bright enough that you have a firm feeling of what’s around the corner. The lighting is fantastic as are the textures and the ghosts themselves. The audio design superbly unsettles and disturbs by adding white noise and vague sounds in the background to make the whole world stir with paranormal possibilities. I wanted to explore every room and every nook of Mt. Hikami’s catacombs. The horror atmosphere I do not question. The writing and characters, though, well…

With only the first three chapters under my belt, I will only say that as an introduction, the plot so far doesn’t serve as a hook to continue, nor does it want to explain who these characters are or why we should be following them. Yuuri, Ren, Miu and Fuyuhi as people are barren, empty and without any personality that I could detect. I don’t give a damn if they live or die. It’s difficult to feel invested when the main characters have less life in them than the ghosts. The plot so far is sheer nonsense. I won’t comment as I have little idea how it will play out. There’s also this indicator on the TV screen telling you how wet or dry your character is. I hope the full game uses that to some interesting degree.

All things considered, I was intrigued by this free trial version of Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water. Sure, I have my beefs with the particulars of this story and its characters. At this point, I’ll withhold judgement until some point that I play the full game. For the game play experienced so far, I have some reservations and some praises. The basic movements of the characters is slow and difficult. The camera-based combat, however, was well-implemented. I cannot deny the efficacy of the game’s horror environment in terms of visuals and sound.

This impressions article was based on the free Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water chapters available on the Wii U eShop. As it stands, there is no physical release planned for my region. If there ever is, I will likely delete this article and write a full, proper review. Until then, do you have any experience with the Fatal Frame/Project Zero series? Did you check out Maiden of Black Water yet? Let us know in the comments!

*I did a bit on research online about all these characters. Turns out that Fuyuhi was searching for a woman named Haruka. Up until this point in the game (and this trial) this Haruka woman is never shown or officially introduced. With more exposure to the game’s plot, I’m sure this would all have been made clear to me. It doesn’t help that these characters are all so damn bland.

Categories: Previews