Fatal Frame 5 Maiden of the Black Water

Yes yes yes yes yes yes! They just released the Trailer for Fatal Frame 5: The Maiden of the Black Water! Enjoy!

Fatal Frame 4 Mid Game Reflections

(My Eyes, My Eyes!!! Spoiler Alert!)

Once again we dive into the world of Ghosts and terror for a mid game review.  Ok, actually, I am a bit further than midway.  I am on  Chapter 8: Sakuya.  Overall the game is living up the reputation that the other games have built up for it. I had a brief moment of rage when I couldn't get a picture of a Hozuki Doll in the Elevator Shaft between floors B1 and B2. However in the grand scheme of things that is relatively small.

The  atmosphere is well balanced. The only major "flaw" is that it looks much better on smaller screens such as the Wii U Gamepad screen then on the projector. Otherwise it has been nearly perfect. (I am making allowances for the issues raised by playing on a US Wii with an English patch.) There have been several places where I nearly jumped out of my seat. I do find the game mechanic that governs when items "shine" to be a little weird and slow.

Character are really being flushed out. I was not a huge fan of the developers splitting the story between 3 main characters. Early on in the game I felt that I was learning a ton of stuff of what was going on as a player, the characters were just cookie cutters. However with the passage of a few chapters, the characters have been developed nicely,  and it has me wondering how and when they are going to meet. I personally would have had the main characters have some sort of run in  by now, seeing as there is only so much coincidence and having just missed people you can honestly expect people to believe.

There have been several nice surprises in game so far, such as this little gem!

When I ran into this, I had a room full of people watching (I was showing off the game) and nearly everyone jumped. Well done design team!

Complaints. Well, lets see. I do not have any major complaints, though I do have a few annoyances
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#1 Running. This is especially true for the two female characters that tend to do a hobble shuffling thing instead of actually running or any semblance of moving quickly. I mean seriously I have seen tennis shoes go flying when people get scared enough in haunted houses and we are dealing with real ghosts. Believe me those nice little high-heeled sandals would be long gone.

#2 Certain doll Locations. I have encountered a few dolls that, once I had encountered them, were unable to be gotten too again. Such as the doll on the well outside the hospital. Seriously, I have to wait to finish the game and start the new game plus to be able to collect this dolls. GRRR!!!

#3. The lack of threat from the main antagonist. In Fatal Frame 2, If I remember correctly, had Sae chase us through several room quite frequently. Even in the First Fatal Frame, Kirie's appearance brought a ton of dread. In this game I believe the main antagonist has maybe shown up maybe two times, and then only as a minor annoyance. She chased you at a snails pace and then immediately disappeared once you went into another room.

#4 Lack of knowledge of the main antagonist. In the previous games we knew by chapter 3 what the main antagonists name was and reason for their vengeance (or as my sister says, their malfunction). I am now in chapter 8 and the strategy guide ( Ok, I peak when I get really lost) still refers to her as "OH SHIT ITS HER!!!!!!"  I can get the whole lets keep it mysterious thing, but come on, a few facts here and there can make her appearance mean something. Right now when I see her.... Wait, lets rephrase that to the second time I have seen her, she just was a minor interruption to my doll hunting instead of the oh Shit factor the previous antagonists were.

#5 Having to go to a save point save the photos I want to keep. On the original Xbox. All I had to do was protect the pictures I wanted to save and that's it. No running to the save points to download pictures to make sure I didn't accidentally lose them by taking too many pictures during an encounter a particularly pesky ghost.  I understand the mechanic comes from the PS2 days but I really think they could have done better, considering it gets saved to the internal storage device anyway versus an external memory card.

All in all, This is a great game. Despite my few complaints,  I cant wait to finish it.
Thanks for reading!