Viewfinder mode can only be toggled on or off with LT, rather than held, which means that even in the heat of spirit battle players must remember to manually lower their camera before they can run, use restorative items or equip upgrades on their weapon. It goes without saying that this shift requires some brain rewiring on the player’s part. So, essentially, we’re talking Resident Evil-era tank controls, just from a third-person perspective.įurther confounding matters is the restrictive first-person viewfinder mode, where LS can only strafe left or right, or move the character forward or backward, and RT, already associated with moving forward in third-person, takes spirit pictures. Instead, players have to click the LS Button to rotate 180 degrees quickly, put some space in-between themselves and the attackers, and then quick-rotate again to face them. Holding down Right Trigger (RT) moves the character in the direction that he or she is pointed, and there’s no way to back up. Like the walking speed, this has always been the case throughout the Fatal Frame franchise, but the fact that neither of these schemes can be customised in any significant way at the interface level makes them feel all the more outdated in 2023. This brings me to the two main drawbacks of Fatal Frame, which I was painfully reminded of in the demo: The first-person control scheme is very different from the third-person one, and neither is particularly good when compared to most modern controls. It’s in this mode that players can “focus” the lens of the camera or flashlight and inflict varying amounts of damage on attacking ghosts, with shots taken closer to the spirit and in the middle of its attack being the most damaging of all. Toggling the Left Trigger (LT) will bring up the first-person viewfinder of the Camera Obscura, or alternatively, when controlling the male protagonist Detective Kirishima, a similar perspective of the Spirit Flashlight that he wields in his left hand. Look, there’s no way I can write this without it sounding weird, OK?Įnter the Camera Obscura and the Spirit Flashlight, the two main weapons that will serve as players’ only offence and defence against the spirit world. Returning to the world of Fatal Frame after so many years brought back all the same feelings: I was actually living and working as an English teacher in the Japanese countryside when I discovered the original Fatal Frame on PlayStation 2 in 2001, and for some reason, there’s just something about virtually running around haunted versions of the houses, shrines and temples that were just outside my window, with nothing to defend myself with but an antique camera, that fills me with a warm (but also creepy) nostalgia. In any case, as someone who never owned a Wii U and got rid of my Wii long before Maiden of Black Water appeared on it, I’m happy that fans like myself will finally have the opportunity to play the newer Fatal Frame games we’ve missed out on for so long on our modern platforms of choice, and with Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse being the chronologically earlier title than Maiden, it seems I’m jumping in at just the right time.įull disclosure: Koei Tecmo kindly provided me with a Steam demo key containing the first three chapters of the game for this preview, but as they advised, I played it exclusively with a controller (Xbox Series) and found the experience indistinguishable from playing on an Xbox Series X, which is probably where I’ll be buying and playing the game when it launches next month.
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