here push square It is site policy not to believe in the supernatural. Vampires, werewolves, Frankenstein? Poppycock, Hogwash, Flannel, we say. I never believed in ghosts, so I had no idea what I would do if I faced one. You can plan to hit someone who doesn’t want to stop and talk to you in WW3 or Covid 2 or Tesco. , you’ll probably end up running, hoping you can get away.
Ghosts are the biggest enemies in Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse. This is his fourth game remaster in the long-running survival horror franchise, originally released exclusively on the Wii and exclusively in Japan. This will be Western Fatal Frame fans’ first chance to play the game on a real console and in glossy HD, a gathering of people who have chosen to face ghosts and fight them rather than flee. I’m the slowest runner out there, so that’s a good job too.
For the uninitiated, the game is set on an island in southern Japan where several girls went missing 10 years ago. Eventually, they were found alive and kind of healthy by a loyal detective, and in the years that followed, two of those girls died under mysterious circumstances. A girl returns to the island to do some amateur research, but doesn’t really think anything of it.
One of the girls seemed confident of finishing everything by tea time, and headed off to investigate wearing a miniskirt and high heels, presumably so she could stop by for a celebratory cocktail on her way home. Now, we are not quite up to date with current fashion trends, and it has been years since we wore heels, but unless high heel technology has advanced significantly, this is highly impractical. It seems like a shoe… a choice. But it might help explain why she’s so slow.
The walking pace of the characters we play is ridiculous. They all roam like they are taking a romantic stroll through the park. The game says you can hold L2 to run, but I was only able to jog lightly. It’s his first time in 20 years that he’s been to a non-Pokemon game gym, but if there were ghosts after us, we’d better trust him to move faster than this. At one point I had to run from one side of the building to the other and needed another shave to get there.
The game’s excruciating pace isn’t just limited to running. To find items in the world while exploring, you need to shine your torch in a general direction. After that, a glowing marker will appear and you can pick it up. This takes forever, detection hits and misses, items appear and areas he may check a second or third time. This means that you won’t know if you’ve fully explored an area until you’ve checked everywhere.
The game’s controls are what we diplomatically call classic survival horror, much like some people call Def Leppard classic rock. What was trash then is still trash today. We’re mocking it, but honestly, as fans of old survival-horror games, the awkwardness of the controls is very appealing and nostalgic. If you’re a fan too, you’ll probably get more out of this game than younger players or those new to the genre.
Getting around in Lunar Eclipse Mask is hard, and the camera is completely useless. It will automatically follow you when you run, but you can’t control it with the right stick.
Early in the game, the aforementioned ghosts start murdering. If you don’t want to become a ghost yourself, you have to fight. If you take a picture of a ghost, you will soon find a magic camera that can kill ghosts. This is convenient but welcome. When an evil ghost arrives and rises in your face, tapping the triangle will take you to first-person view, and you’ll need to keep your eyes peeled until your camera charges up before snapping when you’re ready. If you’re feeling unsafe, wait until the Ghost attacks you before taking a photo to get bonus damage from him.
These ghost battles are tense and really fun at first. The ghosts hovered eerily, the controls were sketchy, and never felt safe. The final stage of the game is particularly tough, with sections where you fight the same boss 3-4 times in a row, and it wasn’t great in the beginning.
This game works best when you’re slowly roaming around spooky locations. It’s not what we’d call scary, but it’s definitely creepy, and the fact that it’s subtitled and voiced entirely in Japanese is a cheesy look you’ll find in modern titles, at least until the guitar solo kicks in at the ending. The sound design generally works well, ringing and raspy in all the right places.
On the plus side, I think Mask of the Lunar Eclipse looks pretty good for a remaster of a 15-year-old game. They have done some clever work with lighting and camera filters to hide their many sins. Close ups to the characters’ faces and hair reveal that we’re looking at a game from several generations ago, but when it comes to moment-to-moment gameplay, I can say that Koei Tecmo has done a great job updating the experience. Delight his fans, a franchise that has been wanting to localize the title for over a decade.
Conclusion
Mask of the Lunar Eclipse is a classic survival horror game, for better or worse. It’s charming old school, and for those of us like us who grew up on a healthy diet of Resident Evil and Silent Hill on the original PlayStation, there’s some nostalgia in the controls difficulty and camera issues. There’s no getting away from the fact that it’s a game that feels older than it is.
