Originally released in 2008, this port of KOEI TECMO’s never-before-released game in the West is finally coming to all platforms. Another installment of the saga to consider for horror fans who couldn’t enjoy it before.
FATAL FRAME / PROJECT ZERO: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse is available on PC, Playstation, Xbox and Nintendo Switch.
This is the first release of this game outside of Japan, it originally came out for the Wii 15 years ago. I’m surprised that it hasn’t come out on other platforms or a port hasn’t come out before, because it’s a fairly well-known saga, and I’m quite fond of it. But at the same time I understand that it is not a priority for KOEI TECMO, they are not common or popular games for western audiences.
THE CALL, BUT IN A BIG WAY
This installment of the acclaimed saga takes place on the mysterious island of Rogetsu, where five orphans were found without memories. Two of them, Madoka and Ruka, return years later to investigate what happened to them and try to recover their memories. Throughout the story and in a segmented way, we take on the role of various characters, little by little revealing the mystery of the sinister rituals that took place on this island… and their consequences.
Japanese terror is very particular, pale ghosts already seen in well-known films abound. They are almost stereotyped and part of this saga is too. I think that with almost everything I am quite cured of fright. Japanese horror has some things that I really like, it doesn’t always need to explain everything, the fear is in not knowing, and in small details that worry us a lot. If you saw the original version of “the call”, there are moments like when near the end the protagonist sees through the reflection of the television the reflection of the boyfriend or ex-boyfriend (I don’t remember) who had just died, with a cloth covering the head and pointing to the backpack where the cursed video cassette was. I saw him as a boy, I didn’t understand, but he gave me the skin of a basketball and left me thinking for a long time. There it was not to understand, it was just something totally strange. Fatal Frame it has a bit of that, haunting moments of that sort. This game also has some jump scares, most of the time without prior tension, that manage to startle me. In this sense, Mask Of The Lunar Eclipse (and the rest of the games in the series), they are not the typical horror or survival horror game that most are used to.
The game takes a long time to start, I remember being after the first two hours and feeling that they still hadn’t let go of my hand. Once they let us a little freer, it gets so much better. But well, that type of intro was quite common at the time, and more common in the saga. This game has other problems that are quite common in old games and from that era, regardless of whether we have an objective system and a very clear map to guide us, finding the documents or items we need is still difficult and sometimes unclear. On the other hand, it has some facilities, such as, for example, marking us in which part of the map a key that we obtain is used. But yes, when it comes to looking for that key, we can waste a lot of time wandering around aimlessly, even if we are close to where the objective indicates.
We start by exploring an abandoned hospital, it’s going to be one of the biggest and main locations of the adventure, it’s a beautiful place full of detail, really terrifying, spooky, and very well designed. An abandoned and haunted hospital gives bad vibes, it is an ideal location for a horror game. The gameplay loop of this game is to progress through the hospital and other areas, investigating and advancing the story. On the way fighting the ghosts of the place. It has all the classic elements of a survival horror in that sense, documents, keys, puzzles, along with crude combat and movement.
The movement of our characters is something that has aged very badly, and arguably wasn’t great in its day either. Walking speed is very slow, bending and turning the camera sometimes makes our character move in ways we don’t want or expect, and running doesn’t do much good. Running doesn’t feel so different from walking, it’s just a bit faster and the animation bothers me a bit, even though we’re running away from something, that sense of “urgency” that there should be when running is missing. Sometimes some events are not so well armed and we can access the door before activating it, this makes it closed and until we do something specific in the room we cannot leave. It is a detail that does not usually happen in current games, and to which I did not get used to in this game.
At some predetermined moments, non-aggressive ghosts will appear, in addition to giving us a scare, we will be able to take the opportunity to take a photo of them and add it to a “pokedex” of ghosts in collection mode. There are many ghosts, and the bad thing is that if we miss the opportunity to photograph them, we lose them forever. Doing this will also give us some points that serve as currency (winning battles also gives us these points), and with them we can buy healing items, map aids, camera rolls and so on.
As premium content we have the costumes, a classic of the series. Each character has several costumes that we can change to customize them. There are some free, but most come separately or with the Deluxe edition. Most of them are pretty fan service, and they sexualize the cast girls a bit. Even if they’re not very explicit, they have an air of fetishization that’s hard to ignore. Added to the above, there are few moments where this can be seen, but the game has “jiggle physics”. Which is surprising because in my opinion, it is not worth it for many reasons.
I SMILED FOR THE PHOTO
What I like the most about this saga is the combat system. Shortly after starting, they’re going to give us the Camera Obscura, a camera with exorcism capabilities. A classic of the saga, capable of seeing and capturing entities from the afterlife and fighting them. This is going to be our main weapon throughout the game. When an aggressive specter tries to attack us, we can focus on them in the first person with the camera, and taking pictures of them will hurt them.
Fighting is not as easy as triggering the camera to take photos, for the exorcism to be effective, we must take the photo at the right time, and aiming well at the target. Each ghost has some attack sequences, the most common will always be to jump on top of us to grab us and hurt us. When aiming at a ghost while it approaches or tries to attack us, a circular bar will fill up, which will determine how effective our “shot” will be, to add more damage, the best time to take a picture of them is just before they attack us, when we have them as close as possible in our viewfinder.
I really like this combat system, it’s high risk-high reward, it becomes more effective the more we are in danger, besides seeing the ghosts up close when they attack us is definitely one of the scariest moments of the experience. Our camera tells that several scrolls that we can equip and exchange are limited and have different levels of damage and charging times, as we progress, the strongest ones will become necessary. Luckily, we have a “basic” scroll that is infinite, but does little damage.
The Camera Obscura can also be upgraded, using some crystals we found exploring around the hospital and such. We can make it do more damage, charge faster, add more charge bar for more damage, etc. Each upgrade is felt and makes it more powerful and effective in dealing with increasingly dangerous Specters. We can also equip you with various lenses with effects that can be activated when aiming, these can also be enhanced with other types of lenses.
The controls in general, not just in combat, are quite old school, but good enough that once we get used to it, this isn’t a problem. Barring the aforementioned hiccup of trying to move and the camera at the same time, the rest feels silky smooth. The game has full controller support on PC.
The Camera Obscura is not only used to exorcise evil spirits, in specific places, we can use it to take photos and thus reveal clues. This usually tells us the next objective to follow, although it can have several steps. As we take photos, we can see them in a list and decide which ones to save, but be careful, when taking new ones the previous ones are deleted, unless we manually decide to save them, there is a limit to how many to keep. Speaking of taking photos, this release has a very complete photomode, which allows us to pause the game and manipulate the environment to take special photos. It’s not something that particularly drives me crazy, but it is greatly appreciated.
Not only these ghosts can harm us, this game has a twist even to grab items. If we see a shiny item, to take it we must initiate the action and hold the button. By doing this, our character will slowly bring his hand closer. This is not something that generates tension to the fart, randomly while we bring our hand closer, another ghostly hand may appear to intercept us. It is a good practice to approach the hand little by little and take it out from time to time, testing to see if they are going to want to grab us or not. It is not something that happens often, but it is very difficult to react to avoid it. It generates another layer of constant tension when playing.
The game does not have the best graphic quality, most of the models look polygonal, the hair of the characters is very of the time, and the worst of all is that there are several textures of the environments that are terrifying, they are They look really very pixelated. I feel like they could have made a few tweaks to make the game look a little better. But I have to mention that it runs perfectly, I didn’t have any performance or operation problems that are usually common in ports of this style.
THE BEST
- One of the best ports I’ve played in recent times.
- Unique combat system, very fun and fair.
- A captivating plot, which develops little by little until it reaches the climax.
WORST
- The graphics aged very badly and were not adjusted or improved. Some textures are absurdly pixelated.
- It suffers from design and gameplay problems of its time, which are being felt more and more today.
- Despite having a very good objective system and map, it is easy to lose time as it is not always clear what to do to advance.