Operation Backlog Completion 2026

Fatal Frame: The Black Haired Shrine Maiden Haunts Japan This September

 Video games  No Responses »  Tagged with: , ,
Jul 182014
 
Fatal Frame: The Black Haired Shrine Maiden

Fatal Frame: The Black Haired Shrine Maiden

Yesterday, the newest Fatal Frame game was announced for the Wii U. Zero: Nuregarasu no Miko, or Fatal Frame: The Black Haired Shrine Maiden, will be released in Japan on September 27, and I really hope it gets localized.

At this point, you might be saying, “Wait a minute. Wasn’t it just a week ago you mentioned you still haven’t played Fatal Frame?”

It’s true. The only Fatal Frame game I’ve played so far is the spin-off title Spirit Camera: The Cursed Memoir, which isn’t a stellar look at the series. Spirit Camera suffered from many flaws, the biggest of which was its reliance on the 3DS’s camera. I had to play certain sections directly beneath a lamp to make it function at all, which isn’t an ideal setup for a horror game.

But enough about that misstep (I’m certain it looked great on paper). I own the first Fatal Frame game, and I will get around to playing it. In the meantime, the success of the series is important to me because of my interest in the survival horror genre. Mainstream survival horror games are rare these days, and Fatal Frame is one of the big ones still active.

It’s also the first series I think of when it comes to using the Wii U GamePad in new and interesting ways.

Fatal Frame (which is called Project Zero in Europe and 零 Zero in Japan) centers around a device called the Camera Obscura, a camera players use to explore and to fight evil spirits. It’s almost weird that I haven’t played the games yet, because Fatal Frame uses some of my favorite horror elements–ghosts and dark rituals.

So, what are the Fatal Frame games?

  • Fatal Frame, the first game, was released first for the PS2 and was later ported to the Xbox. It’s the only main series game to be rated T.
  • Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly was also released for the PS2 and ported to the Xbox, and it received a PSN release last year. A Wii-exclusive remake, Deep Crimson Butterfly, came out in 2012, but only in Japan, Europe, and Australia.
  • Fatal Frame III: The Tormented was released for the PS2 and later on PSN, like its predecessor.
And this is where our localization worries begin.
  • The fourth game, known as Mask of the Lunar Eclipse, was released for the Wii in 2008, but only in Japan.
  • And now, The Black Haired Shrine Maiden is coming out for the Wii U.

The three spin-offs include a Japan-only mobile game called Real: Another Edition, Spirit Camera, and a manga called Fatal Frame: Shadow Priestess. The manga has been translated, and while Japan is getting a movie adaptation on September 26 (and an original novel in August), it was recently announced that a Hollywood movie is also in the works. Maybe this means we have a better chance of the new game being localized, as well.

The announcement of the fifth game was accompanied by a trailer. Let’s take a look.

Looks nice and spooky to me! The trailer kept up an atmosphere of dread, so I have high hopes for the game. The game’s official site includes a few more gameplay clips.

The Black Haired Shrine Maiden has a strong focus on water, more open areas, and themes about the line between life and death. The protagonist can locate people who were taken into the spirit world and bring them back.

And yes! The Wii U GamePad will be used as the camera!

Now, normally I get a bit nervous when the word “open” is used to describe games, but in this case, I don’t think the “open areas” mean it’s going to be open world or anything like that. It’s just not set in a mansion or enclosed area, this time, but at the Hikayama mountain, or the “mountain of death,” and will be larger than any previous Fatal Frame game. Just like narrow passages and small rooms aren’t enough to make a game survival horror, open outdoor areas aren’t enough to make a game not survival horror, either.

Will we see this in the West? The fate of the fourth game suggests we won’t, but on the other hand, when director Makoto Shibata was asked on Twitter if The Black Haired Shrine Maiden would be released overseas, he said an overseas released hasn’t been announced yet.< Yet? Sounds like it already has a better shot than Ace Attorney Investigations 2.

I may not have played Fatal Frame yet, but I’m excited for The Black Haired Shrine Maiden. Most of my information about it is thanks to Operation Zero, a group dedicated to encouraging the localization of the Fatal Frame series. Drop on by if you’re as interested as I am in getting this game localized.

I Can’t Stop Thinking About Poison Study

 Books, Reviews  2 Responses »
Jul 142014
 

I wanted to make a clever poison pun, but I couldn’t think of anything.

I don’t review books very often, in part because I’m never quite sure what to say. In fact, even though I categorize all of these things as reviews, I tend to refer to them as “discussions.” Sometimes I’m honest enough to admit I’m just going to ramble. With that in mind, it’s time for a new review/discussion/ramble, because I finished a book the other day, and I can’t stop thinking about it.

The book in question is Poison Study, by Maria V. Snyder.

It’s a fantasy novel, and the premise is simple. The protagonist, Yelena, is set to be executed, but she’s given the chance to become the Commander’s food taster instead. She accepts, and finds herself confronted with new problems–people trying to murder her, magical powers (which may not sound like a problem, but magic is illegal under the Commander’s reign), and the fact that she’s been poisoned to keep her from running away.

Sound cool? I certainly thought so, and the plot held my interest for the entire book. It wasn’t filled with twists and turns, as some of my favorites are, but it kept up a strong pace and raised enough questions that I always wanted to see what happened next.

But the characters are what really set it apart for me. Yelena is a fun, likable protagonist, there’s a strong supporting cast, and as for the security chief, Valek? Well, let’s just say I set the book down partway through to ask myself if I should feel weird for being in love with the scary assassin guy, and then I decided to stop asking myself stupid questions and just keep reading!

The more I read, the more I liked the characters. My concern for them and what would happen to them kept me up at night, which hasn’t happened since I played Dual Destinies (technically Azran Legacy, but there it was the plot that kept me awake, not agonizing worry for the protagonists). When a story has me worrying about the characters, it’s done something right.

On the other side of the character spectrum, the villains were perfectly despicable. I’ve mentioned in the past that I need to feel something for a story’s villains, and Poison Study’s villains made sure I felt something for them–pure hatred.

All in all, it was a fantastic book. When I finished it, I felt… a little sad. Yes, I’d wanted to know what happened next, but… it was over. I didn’t want it to be over.

I can’t wait to read the sequel, and I’m telling you all right now, if you enjoy fantasy, you really should buy Poison Study. And if you’ve already read it, share your own thoughts in the comments below.

In Space, No One Can Hear You Pre-order Alien: Isolation

 Video games  No Responses »  Tagged with: ,
Jul 112014
 

I know, everyone is adapting the tagline from the original movie to create headlines about this game. It just works so well. Now, when I started to write this post, I thought I’d already blogged about Alien: Isolation in the past. I couldn’t find anything, though, so I must have gotten confused because of the freelance article I wrote about it.

Or maybe my second Alien: Isolation freelance article.

Okay, so I wrote about the game three times.

If you haven’t guessed, I’m really excited about this game. I already pre-ordered it, and I might even suspend my other game priorities to play it as soon as it comes out. (Which will be in October, along with an absurd number of other high-profile games. What in the world is so special about October?) I’ve followed all the news released about it, and I’m hopeful it will truly be the sort of survival horror game I enjoy. While many fans of the genre have pinned their hopes on The Evil Within (which comes out in…October!), my survival horror hopes lie with Alien: Isolation.

Unlike most video game adaptations of the Alien franchise, which favor lots of action and shooting, Isolation plans to capture the mood of the original 1979 film. I watched Alien for the first time last October and quite enjoyed it. If the game can produce that sort of atmosphere, it will already be headed in the right direction.

Alien: Isolation is set 15 years after the first movie. You play as Amanda Ripley, Ellen Ripley’s daughter, who is trying to find out what happened to her mother. She goes to the space station Sevastopol… but there’s an Alien on board.

One Alien. It will stalk you. It will adapt to your actions. And it will be terrifying.

You’re not going to mow down Xenomorph after Xenomorph with your guns. One Alien, and you will run and hide.

A lot of the focus has been on the Alien for obvious reasons, but this has led to the popular misconception that Isolation is going to be another game where the protagonist is completely helpless and has to run and hide from everything. That’s not true. There is combat in this game. There are some weapons, and you’ll be able to use them to fight human and android enemies. A while back, I heard you could use weapons to slow the Alien somewhat, but I’m no longer sure this is the case. Either way, it’s not going to be a shooting-fest, but it won’t be 100% running and screaming, either.

And that’s great!

See, there are certain things I want in survival horror. These elements are best seen in the classic Silent Hill and Resident Evil series (yes, I’ll get around to playing Fatal Frame and the other classics soon), which got me into the genre.

Modern survival horror has largely split in two directions. The first direction is what happened to Resident Evil: combat-heavy action games that are “survival horror” because you’re, uh, trying to survive, and…look, something scary! This is one of the outcomes of taking the genre name literally while trying to go mainstream. These games are not survival horror, no matter how many people claim Resident Evil 4 is the pinnacle of the genre. RE4 is not survival horror. Some people claim The Evil Within is a true successor to RE4, which is one of the reasons I’m not interested in it. (It also looks like a gore-fest… which is a cheap way to achieve horror.)

The second direction is the helpless-protagonist-runs-and-hides gameplay popularized by Amnesia: The Dark Descent, which is a fantastic game. Amnesia and games like it are terrifying and awesome. They are survival horror. It’s just not the same survival horror as the classics.

A few games have tried for the fight-or-flight balance of the classic survival horror games. I haven’t played Silent Hill: Downpour yet, but it’s on my list. I’ve heard great things about it. Amy, which isn’t as bad as its reviews suggest, failed to achieve a good balance between the two, but at least it tried. Zombi U is another one on my waiting list, and I have high hopes for it.

And then there’s Alien: Isolation.

Am I setting myself up for disappointment by eyeing this game as the next greatest survival horror game? Maybe. But so far it sounds like just what I need.

Alien: Isolation comes out on October 7, the same day as 6 other game releases. If, like me, you pre-order Isolation, you’ll get a free upgrade to the Nostromo Edition, which includes a DLC episode set during the original movie. Let me know what you think of Alien: Isolation… and tell me if I missed any classic-style survival horror games!

 Older Entries  Newer Entries