Operation Backlog Completion 2026

Celebrating All Things Spooky: Fatal Frame

 Celebrating All Things Spooky, Reviews, Video games  15 Responses »  Tagged with: ,
Oct 042019
 

As usual, October will be filled with horror game reviews, starting with one that’s long overdue.

Remember five years ago when I started the original Fatal Frame? I got stuck and gave up on it not long after that, but this year when I got my PlayStation 2 out, I decided to give it another try.

Fatal Frame is a classic survival horror game following a girl named Miku who heads into a haunted mansion in search of her brother (who himself went inside searching for another character). The mansion is filled with ghosts, most of which are hostile, but Miku can fight back by using the Camera Obscura to photograph them.

It’s a pretty interesting twist on combat. You need to keep the ghost in your sights to power up your shot, and taking the shot at the last minute deals extra damage.

As expected in a survival horror game, you have limited “ammo” in the form of film you find in the mansion. Fighting ghosts also gives you points you can use to power up your camera or unlock special attacks, which made it feel oddly like it encouraged combat more than other survival horror games, but at the same time every encounter felt deadly.

I got better at the combat the longer I played, but that never removed the dread. There’s something scary about a ghost advancing toward you while crying out about its death, then fading from sight as you desperately try to find it again before it attacks.

(Some can teleport. And they can go through walls!)

Adding to the sense of dread is that you don’t have a mansion full of wandering enemies that you can clear out. Many fights are scripted encounters, and then there are also random ghosts that can appear anywhere, even in rooms with save points. You can run from the random ones, and one random ghost that began appearing near the end was dangerous enough that I fled every time it arrived.

Of course, the fact that you’re encouraged to take the shot in the moment right before the ghost’s attack also increases the tension.

The gameplay also has all the survival horror mechanics I look for – puzzles, exploration, an environment that gradually opens up – and uses its supernatural premise to add to these. Locked door? You might need a key, you might need to solve a puzzle, but then again, you might need to take a photograph to get a clue and then go fight a ghost whose power is sealing the door.

Finally, Fatal Frame is just disturbing. The atmosphere is unsettling, the story is dark, and the more you learn about the events that occurred in the mansion, the more twisted everything feels. I’m actually surprised they got away with a T rating.

I often give survival horror games a pass on story compared to other genres, but like with the Silent Hill series, Fatal Frame is one where I really enjoyed learning more about the story (mainly backstory) as it unfolded.

Five years ago, I gave up on the original Fatal Frame, but now that I gave it a second chance, I ended up really loving it. It was the perfect way to kick off this Halloween season.

Two Games I Worked On Are Now Available

 My Games, Video games  No Responses »  Tagged with: , , ,
Sep 132019
 

We’ll have more TGS news to discuss soon, but first, two games I worked on are now available on Steam!

The first, you might be expecting after it got a Steam page last month, Parachronism: Order of Chaos.

Parachronism: Order of Chaos is an action RPG with life sim elements. I worked on the story as an editor and also worked on text for side quests.

A second game I worked on came out on Steam this week as well.

Two Till Midnight is a survival horror game with rogue-like/procedural generation elements, where a demonic entity hunts you through a mansion. I wrote the in-game notes that reveal the story and backstory, as well as some of the puzzle clues.

(I know there’s some irony here since I’m not a big fan of life sims or procedural generation.)

Anyway, Parachronism: Order of Chaos and Two Till Midnight are both available on Steam now, so if you’re interested in either of them, take a look!

Exploring the Haunted Mansion of Silver Chains

 Reviews, Video games  2 Responses »  Tagged with:
Aug 072019
 

Last week, I was sent a review copy of Silver Chains, a horror game that came out yesterday on Steam.

Silver Chains follows a man named Peter who finds himself trapped in a strange mansion after crashing his car outside.

He quickly realizes the mansion is haunted, and begins searching for a way to escape.

The game is surprisingly linear early on, but once you get a few areas opened up and have access to all three floors, it allows for a bit more exploration. I liked the design of the mansion, because even though it has multiple floors, staircases are located conveniently enough that I never felt like I had to do a lot of running around to get where I wanted to go.

Now, there’s technically a monster you have no choice but to hide from. I say “technically” because it feels unnecessary. The monster’s appearances are scripted, and you’re almost always right next to a wardrobe to hide in.

Click for Silver Chains spoilers
If there’s one thing the monster helps with, it’s preparing the player for a more legitimate chase that happens at the end (although that section has its own problems, as you end up literally running in circles around the attic to avoid danger), but since the two are mechanically different, I don’t think it quite works.

Silver Chains also has jump scares, but it keeps them just sporadic enough to be effective, with the help of its great horror atmosphere.

Since you start out with most of the mansion being locked, yes, there are puzzles to solve to proceed. They’re fairly simple, although a few suffer from poor instructions. It also introduces an interesting feature partway through where you can use a special monocle to see supernatural hints, doors that don’t otherwise appear, etc.

The one thing I disliked about the gameplay was that you can’t manually save. Instead, you have to rely on auto-saves, and while you might think a game with only auto-saves would save after every key point, it doesn’t. There were multiple occasions where I took a break and came back to find I needed to do some puzzles over again.

As you explore, you’ll also find diary entries that help you piece together what happened in the past.

Silver Chains doesn’t have a groundbreaking story, but although it was predictable, at least it avoided the typical setup of the protagonist confronting a dark secret about his own past guilt, which has become so common in horror games I was pleasantly surprised that this one didn’t go there. The story did leave some questions, though, and a few more details would have gone a long way toward clearing things up.

Near the end of the game, it once again switches to a more linear progression, with even a few occasions where Peter simply falls unconscious and wakes up where the plot needs him to be. Some of this can be explained due to the supernatural forces at work, but I preferred the more exploration-driven style of the middle.

The whole thing only takes about four hours, which is both good and bad. On one hand, that’s a really short game. On the other hand, I feel the game’s formula would have outstayed its welcome if it lasted much longer.

In short, Silver Chains struggles at times, but it’s a decent horror game if you’re looking for something short and spooky.

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