![]() ![]() Examples include Pennywise from It, the Woman in Black from, uh, The Woman in Black, and - unfortunately - the plethora of ghosts found in Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse. There’s a fine balance to be struck when depicting ghosts in media - if you show too much, you run the risk of diminishing the potential impact to the audience. Ghosts and apparitions are a lot scarier when they’re lurking in the background, unseen for the most part, only announcing their presence in subtle ways: a creaking floorboard a piano key ringing out in an adjacent room a soft, rattling groan seeping out of a crack in a doorway. With a total runtime of just over ninety-five minutes, Sadako is only visible for roughly fifty seconds. While Sadako is ultimately the driving force behind the film’s narrative, it’s only until the last few scenes that we finally see the spirit with our own eyes (bar a few “blink-and-you’ll-miss-it” appearances). In the original 1998 Ring movie from director Hideo Nakata, the entire film's premise revolves around a vengeful spirit called Sadako, whose internal rage gave birth to a video tape curse via a phenomenon known as ‘thoughtography’. Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse is far from perfect, but it has a lot of heart and spirit if you're willing to pick up that camera and give it an earnest try.Subscribe to Nintendo Life on YouTube Watch on YouTube Even the initial frustration you may feel in the opening hours eases up once you understand what you're doing, which makes some of the ghost encounters simultaneously terrifying and oddly rewarding. Also, as you progress, new mechanics are introduced that keep the gameplay fun and exciting. The ghosts are presented as if they'd had extensive lives and strong personalities before their untimely demise, adding a great deal of character. But for an older survival horror game where storytelling often took a backseat to the scares, Mask of the Lunar Eclipse has a captivating plot with many dark twists, turns, and tragedies. It may not be as "scary" after the hundredth time a cutscene telegraphs a ghost appearance. That being said, if you let yourself get used to the dated controls and ghost encounter headaches, there's an endearing game beneath the surface. If you find yourself facing two or more ghosts, it becomes less about fearing rogue specters and more about fighting to even get a ghost in the camera's sights. While there's a quick-turn option, you can only use it when you aren't actively holding the camera, so you'll constantly have to leave the viewfinder mode, reorient your character, and go back to the viewfinder. In those instances, your character moves like a tank rather than a person. ![]() Controlling the protagonists can feel useless, especially when you're wielding your ghost-slaying camera in a cramped hallway and vicious wraiths are breathing down your neck. Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse falls directly in the middle of that spectrum with controls that feel two decades out of style while being so utterly unique that it's difficult to write it off completely. When it comes to older games being updated, some survive and even flourish, while others end up feeling outdated in a landscape that's long outgrown them. where the ghosts are, then fumble with the camera with the hopes of coming out on top. Encounters with ghosts can also be cumbersome as you'll have to constantly manage where your character is vs. As for the controls, moving your character around can be a task as they move incredibly slow, even while running. Much of the game's setting takes inspiration from the architecture of Japanese houses and hotels, and the main cast itself is largely Japanese with female characters making up the bulk of the playable protagonists. There's little blood and no gore, but the game can be immensely scary during some moments. Then, the ghosts arrive to prevent your characters from learning the truth, which boils down to either scaring characters or trying to bring them into the afterlife. Players will rotate through a few characters who have all found their way to Rougetsu, an island where a great tragedy occurred eight years prior to the beginning of the game. This is a remaster of 2008's Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse, which was previously a Wii exclusive. Parents need to know that Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse is a downloadable single-player survival horror game available for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and Windows-based PCs.
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