Way back in early 96, a game called Resident Evil was unleashed upon the first PlayStation, basically giving birth to the now popular genre of survival horror. Back then I couldnt get enough of games such as the Resident Evil series and Silent Hill; I just loved the new twist on the adventure genre. However, shortly thereafter, the overkill began. The Resident Evil series began its decline, and numerous copycats were thrown upon the gaming public. My love for the genre died back then a painful and tragic death. Despite my enjoyment with Silent Hill 2 and Onimusha last year, my confidence in the genre has taken yet another blow thanks to Tecmos PS2 offering, Fatal Frame.

One aspect that the new generation of systems has really improved upon in this genre is the graphics. Every game from Silent Hill 2 to Onimusha, ooze ridiculous amounts of realism, drawing you into the terror. Fatal Frame accomplishes this quite well, but not quite up to the standards set by said games. One of the most notable graphical features are the character models, which are well detailed and animated. However, the basic ghost enemies all look extremely similar (aside from the basic ghostly appearance of course). Extremely impressive is the flashlight effect against the darkness of the environments, which really adds to the atmosphere in the game. On the downside, its extremely dark and the developers took advantage of this to add in very little texture variety. It all combines to make each room look basically the same as the last. Yet it must be noted that the games most impressive aspect is its use of camera angles. No two are alike, and they really draw you in.

It must be said, first and foremost I personally hated Fatal Frame! I despised almost every minute. You see, Fatal Frame suffers from usual survival horror problems such as tedious puzzle solving and lame combat. The puzzles consist of two types, your basic get-this-thing-to-use-on-that-thing variation, or the (moderately) more enjoyable picture-taking puzzles. The latter involves taking a picture of a magically sealed door, wherein a picture is then revealed to you of another section of the mansion. Take a picture of said section and voila, the sealed door is opened. While fun at first, these eventually become tedious and annoying, considering the amount of backtracking that is required. However, the puzzles arent what ruin the game; that is left to the combat system. You take pictures of an attacking ghost, doing damage each subsequent shot, creating the most unintuitive, boring and downright frustrating system ever devised! Considering each ghost requires around 15-20 shots to be eliminated, the picture-taking/fighting becomes seriously repetitive extremely quickly. Combine this with enemies cheaply reappearing directly behind you, a serious shortage of powerful film, unintuitive controls and super-strong ghosts, and its clear how flawed the combat really is. It is worth mentioning that the story is actually pretty interesting and the game itself is pretty damn scary, however its flaws are just too glaring. If only it wasnt for that damn combat system

Sound is an extremely important aspect of survival horror and creates a lot of each games atmosphere. Fatal Frames sound is adequate in that it does accomplish sufficient spookiness, but certain flaws diminish that atmosphere at the same time. The music is very well done and adds an eerie, spooky feel, but there is little variety between tracks, resulting in repetitiveness. The sound effects (what little there are) get the job done, though I personally hated the door-opening sound with a passion. What drags the score down is the outright awful voice acting (especially the main character Miku) that had me cringing more often than not.

The problem with adventure games has always been their length, and Fatal Frame is no different. The main quest will only last you around 6-8 hours, but there are four difficulty levels to play in. Upon completion of each difficulty level, different mini-games open up, though none I found to be very enjoyable. Basically, the more you like the game, the more value youll get out of it. There is quite a bit of stuff here to play, but I cant see anyone wanting to play it (especially the mini-game based entirely on the combat! NOOO!). I must point out that Fatal Frame requires almost a quarter of your memory card for a basic game save. Considering thats the size of about 10 other games saves combined, its extremely unreasonable.

Now while I absolutely hated playing this game, youre probably wondering why the score doesnt reflect that. Thats because every aspect of Fatal Frame isnt awful; in fact, I would say the majority is actually pretty good. The problem is the flaws involve the gameplay, far and away the most important category, and the flaws are HUGE! However, if you can somehow get past these game-killing flaws, youll find a game with a good amount of chills and thrills. But if anyone can get past these flaws, chances are theyll like just about anything. My opinion dont even think about renting it, its not worth your time.