3/24/2023 0 Comments Eclipse lunarVisually the game boasts excellent production values despite being an HD remaster of a 2008 Wii game, and only betrays its age when real-time cutscenes and transitional shots force the camera to get up close to the retouched textures of some objects. Players that remain patient and persevere with the control scheme until they’ve got it down are eventually in for a good time, because Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse continues the franchise tradition of telling a good ol’ fashioned, Japanese ghost story without needing to rely on copious amounts of violence or gore. It isn’t anywhere as bad as it sounds, though. “As one would expect, the audio in Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse is hauntingly atmospheric…” ![]() It’s also very easy in viewfinder mode to get stuck on objects that are below or just outside of the player’s field of view, which can truly make battles with one or more spirits in the demo’s many tight corridors and rooms rather frustrating. Viewfinder mode can only be toggled on or off with LT, rather than held, which means that even in the heat of spirit battle players must remember to manually lower their camera before they can run, use restorative items or equip upgrades on their weapon. It goes without saying that this shift requires some brain rewiring on the player’s part. ![]() It’s in this mode that players can “focus” the lens of the camera or flashlight and inflict varying amounts of damage on attacking ghosts, with shots taken closer to the spirit and in the middle of its attack being the most damaging of all.įurther confounding matters is the restrictive first-person viewfinder mode, where LS can only strafe left or right, or move the character forward or backward, and RT, already associated with moving forward in third-person, takes spirit pictures. ![]() Toggling the Left Trigger (LT) will bring up the first-person viewfinder of the Camera Obscura, or alternatively, when controlling the male protagonist Detective Kirishima, a similar perspective of the Spirit Flashlight that he wields in his left hand. And, as ghosts are known to do, the vengeful spirits can also hover through walls and other objects to get closer to players, giving them less time to defend themselves.Įnter the Camera Obscura and the Spirit Flashlight, the two main weapons that will serve as players’ only offence and defence against the spirit world. In addition, the game’s poltergeists frequently mix things up by disappearing and reappearing behind or near the player, often just out of sight. Obviously, controlling a slower player character makes it harder to escape the cursed spirits that can harm and eventually kill you by touching you. This is clearly Koei Tecmo’s version of a well-worn survival horror convention, designed to add challenge to a gameplay pace that is relatively slow compared to most action titles. ![]() If you’ve ever played a Fatal Frame game before, then you’ll immediately get it when I say that enjoying such games requires players to embrace conventional Japanese “whimsy” and leave their Western expectations of modern game controls at the door. Look, there’s no way I can write this without it sounding weird, OK? Returning to the world of Fatal Frame after so many years brought back all the same feelings: I was actually living and working as an English teacher in the Japanese countryside when I discovered the original Fatal Frame on PlayStation 2 in 2001, and for some reason, there’s just something about virtually running around haunted versions of the houses, shrines and temples that were just outside my window, with nothing to defend myself with but an antique camera, that fills me with a warm (but also creepy) nostalgia. Full disclosure: Koei Tecmo kindly provided me with a Steam demo key containing the first three chapters of the game for this preview, but as they advised, I played it exclusively with a controller (Xbox Series) and found the experience indistinguishable from playing on an Xbox Series X, which is probably where I’ll be buying and playing the game when it launches next month.
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