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PS2 | Action | Fatal Frame

Publisher: Tecmo
Developer: Tecmo
Release Date: 03/08/2002
Genre: Action
Number of Players: 1
ESRB Rating: Teen
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39 screen shots

GRAPHICS: 3.5
SOUND: 4.0
CONTROL: 3.0
FUN FACTOR 3.5
AVG USER SCORE 4.6
AVG CRITIC SCORE 3.8

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First Look: Fatal Frame

First Look by FENNECFOX | 02/07/2002 | 16:00:03 PM PST

Does the PlayStation 2 really need another survival-horror game? Tecmo seems to believe so. Fortunately, Fatal Frame is more than just another bash-the-zombies clone.

It?s safe to say by now that Resident Evil was a revolutionary, genre-defining game. What hasn?t been so revolutionary are the legions of Resident Evil-inspired games shoveled onto the marketplace the last six years. While some (like Silent Hill) stand out on their own as excellent games, others (like Extermination) try to create tension and end up being simply boring. Fatal Frame is Tecmo?s entry into the survival-horror fray and, luckily for gamers, its developers are sincerely trying to produce something new.

The game is set in the Himura Mansion, a long-abandoned house way out in the Japanese countryside. Miku, the heroine of the story, decides to tiptoe through the house after her brother turns up missing while researching some murders around the area. The Himura house is chock full of ghosts, of course, and Miku?s only defense is an old camera owned by her dead mother. This is no ordinary spooky old camera, though?taking snapshots of occult beings with it saps their life force and eventually kills them, giving you Spirit Points to upgrade the camera?s abilities.

Fatal Frame?s puzzles will generally be of the Resident Evil variety. You?ll need to use your camera to uncover secret passages and items not visible to the naked eye, and journals and cassette tapes you find along the way gradually reveal the story behind the Himura Mansion. There won?t be very much blood and guts in Fatal Frame, but if you?re looking for something scary along supernatural lines, this could be exactly what you?re searching for. It?s due out March 3 in the U.S.