Fatal frame mask of the lunar eclipse opening full#
Some sections of the game keep you thoughtfully contained in relevant areas by locking doors (the ghosts did it) but other sections, and particularly those led by Detective Kirishima, give you full run of the place.
While you get to complete a handful of slide puzzles and other minigames to unlock certain story elements, most of the mystery comes down to mindlessly following ghosts around the island until you reach the next plot point. The same goes for navigating Rougetsu Island itself. I’m not talking about punishing gameplay here –nervously trotting over the same ground after dying in Fatal Frame (because you can’t actually run) doesn’t make the game more challenging or satisfying the way it might in a game like Elden Ring or Hades, it just makes it longer. What is not a cool fun time is making me replay 20 to 30 minutes of banal item collection and minor battles that barely held my attention the first time around (see: every fight is exactly the same) because there are only a handful of save points scattered throughout each sprawling section of the island. Fatal Frame might be wearing the mask of a modern game, but it is very much from 2008 in the way it wastes players' time.Įscaping the spectre of death is part of what makes survival horror games fun, and my reflexes are not the greatest, so of course I expect to fall in combat every once in a while. These encounters don't really get more challenging as you progress through the game either, it just gets longer because the ghosts have more health. You learn all of this within the first ten minutes of the game and there are no additional mechanics or approaches to combat. Manage to snap a shot of a ghost as it’s attacking you and you get a “Fatal Frame” which deals extra damage while allowing you to chain attacks.
The effectiveness of your attacks is influenced by timing and how close you get to the spirits, as well as upgrades and different film types you find scattered throughout the hospital. Both tools present a unique, less-violent approach to combat – or exorcism, I suppose – and are pretty intuitive to use from the get-go. Shortly after entering Haibara Hospital, your protagonists are armed with the Camera Obscura and Spirit Flashlight, occult technology used to fend off the attacks of angry ghosts.
It’s up to you if you think that’s worth it – I bought the Mass Effect remaster, so I’m hardly one to judge – but while the graphics have been thoroughly airbrushed, that’s no cure for Fatal Frame’s dated gameplay and undead pacing. Overall, it’s a thoroughly okay game from 2008 that’s been papered over with some hazy lofi graphics to justify selling it at full price in 2023. Well, except the detective, who is just confused because he never really figured out what was going on in the first place. They all have amnesia, of course, because that’s a low-effort way to generate an air of mystery. But while this unique combat may have carried the game’s lifeless story back in 2008, this rerelease is nothing more than an expensive reskin of a relic.įatal Frame: Mask Of The Lunar Eclipse plunges players into the dreadful past of Rougetsu Island as three (Young women? Girls? I have no idea how old they are supposed to be and for some reason that’s not surprising.) survivors and a stalwart detective revisit the ruins of a hospital that was once home to a haunting ceremony. Fatal Frame: Mask Of The Lunar Eclipse reviewĪ serviceable survival horror game in which three young women and a detective excise ghosts of the past with an occult camera and a flashlight.
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