Despair. Exhaustion. Agony. Not exactly words you would typically want to hear associated with a video game. All the same, the survival horror genre has made it's mark on the history of video games by forcing its players to experience these very emotions. It's an essential part of what makes the games what they are and if you take it away, they become nothing more than extremely clunky action adventure games. By the same token, the survival horror genre is granted a good deal of leniency to mess with gamers, whether it be in the form of incoherent plot, unfair difficulty, shoddy controls and camera, or just plain bad gameplay because, you know, it's designed that way to screw with you. The high water mark of the survival horror genre happened when this concept was still novel and intriguing, the emphasis was put into the art, story and music, and before games, in general, became so damn streamlined. To narrow it down to a single game, this high water mark would be 2001's Silent Hill 2, a game that was equally terrifying, enigmatic, heartbreaking, and somehow beautiful. Although it was painful to play and not what you would call a "fun" video game, it was a towering achievement in the argument for video games as art because it sought to elicit the emotions that the main protagonist would feel in the given scenario, and it achieved this perhaps more so than any other video game… ever.
The Fatal Frame series is famed for being the third wheel of the survival horror golden age. While Resident Evil was more fun and Silent Hill had the best stories, Fatal Frame had the distinction of being the scariest. Its novel idea of having you enter a first-person camera mode to combat ghosts set it apart and gave the series it's greatest strength- the sheer terror of having a ghastly apparition rush towards your face, emitting a horrid shriek. It's fucking scary- as scary in the third entry into the series as it was before. So why is it that Fatal Frame 3 isn't another stellar addition to the survival horror pantheon?
Fatal Frame 3: The Tormented might be one of the most aptly named games ever made. Tormented is exactly how I would describe my experience in this game. Imagine, if you will, a nightmare where you continually roam a creepy haunted manor being constantly scared shitless and having no idea where to go or what to do. That is both the concept AND the story of this game and the game. You taken the role of three kids as they take turns wandering (very slowly) through the same dilapidated Japanese manor unlocking doors and battling ghosts… in their dreams! Because the game sticks to this concept or a reoccurring nightmare so faithfully, it can be hard to fault the game for being so exhaustingly repetitive. The extreme difficulty and ghosts that refuse to die seem to reinforce the idea that the game is, in fact, fucking with you and you are supposed to be miserable. This is survival horror, after all.
Then you come to realize that the game is just plain evil. It literally never gives you any decent hints as to where you are supposed to go, making every stage of the game an entire manor-wide search for something slightly different, running from the same ghosts who you already killed, who take away half of your health the second they touch you. Said manor is where the entire game takes place. It's definitely big, but it's not enormous either. Every step of the game, you keep thinking "I've got to be able to leave soon right?" Wrong. Just to put things into perspective, it's about the size of the Spencer mansion in Resident Evil. Just the actual mansion part. That's the entire game. Oh, and the real kicker is that the game took me 20 hours to beat! If you've ever played a survival horror game, you know that there is something seriously wrong here. These type of games never last for more than ten hours. Honestly, you wouldn't want them to last any longer. Hell, Silent Hill 3 only clocks in at about 5 hours! By the end you are fried and just want to see the thing to its bloody resolution. Fatal Frame 3 could have been easily chopped in half and it would have been a much slicker, easily digestible experience. Instead, it chooses to be this long, arduous, gradual descent into utter despair.
There is a metric ton of backtracking in this game. That's what the game essentially it. You have this manor to wander around, and you have to find a bunch of things, unlock a bunch of doors, kill a bunch of ghosts in the same rooms over and over and over again. Sound miserable? Yeah it is. Pair this antagonistic level design with the fact that the game is just downright pants-shiningly scary and you have a surefire game that you will always dread playing.
I mean, if you look at the game purely in terms of its ability to make you scream like a girl, its at the top of its class. The sound design is very high quality and the voices, singing, and droning sounds you hear around the mansion will put you on edge so that when a ghost pops out, often times you just lose it. Certain scenarios are set up just to make you freak out too. Here's an example: A doll randomly falls off a dresser in an eerily still room. When you bring the viewfinder of your camera up to get a better look, there is a bloody eyed ghost an inch away from your face who promptly releases a ear shattering scream and contorts her face to a demented scowl as she lunges at you. As a side note, I find it extremely odd that the faces of the ghosts are so able to convey a wide range of convincing and horrific expressions, yet the protagonists are the among most emotionless, expressionless wind-up-dolls you will find in any game.
In the end, the story is decent. More importantly, actually, is the wealth of expansions made to the overarching mythology of the series. The games all concern various fictional-yet-believable sacrificial rituals that supposedly took place in traditional Japan. Each one of this is delightfully twisted, poetic and heartbreaking. They are what the games are really about, not the adventures of slow-moving Japanese kids with magic cameras. Fatal Frame 3 is a decidedly weaker outing than Fatal Frame 2 because it seems like the developers half assed a lot of aspects of the game. The area of the game is significantly smaller. Not enough time was spent on distinguishing the progression of the game. It's lopsided to the point where you can access all but a couple rooms only a third of the way into the game. There are a few new half baked mechanics, like a home base, that never pay off. Hell, there's even less variety of ghosts than before. It's obvious that the game was a downgrade from it's predecessor in almost every regard. So, while you could say that in some regards, Fatal Frame 3 is an agonizing experience by design (and I would agree), it does not make up for the fact that it is essentially a borderline broken game. Very few games have been this difficult for me to finish, based mainly on the fact that every time I looked at the box, I got a deep sinking feeling in my gut. This game should be commended however, for being on of the most hardcore survival horror experience anywhere. I thoroughly believe that if you can make it through this, you can make it through anything.
No comments:
Post a Comment