Fatal Frame for PS2 and Xbox is a portrait of the era’s survival horror

destructoid.com:

I met the man who would become my husband at about the time that I started venturing more into horror games. I had just discovered that a switch had flipped in my head, and I was now immune to video game scares. 

He suggested Fatal Frame to me, insisting that it was the scariest game ever made. He even went as far as buying me a copy of it for Xbox. It was my introduction to the series, but the first game I wound up completing was Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse for my review right here on Destructoid. I didn’t complete it back in 2016 in my first experience with it.

There were a few reasons for why I dropped it, but they’re pretty boring. Being scary wasn’t one of them. Though, its controls are horrifying for a different reason.

Fatal Frame has you start off as Mafuyu Hinasaki, who is looking for a missing author in an abandoned mansion. One thing leads to another, and you’re switched over to his sister, Miku Hinasaki, as she searches for her brother. Turns out, a bunch of bad stuff happened at the mansion that has left it cursed and lousy with angry ghosts.

Luckily, the two wind up in possession of a mysterious, old-fashioned camera called the Camera Obscura, which has the ability to ward off ghosts. Much of the time, after a few encounters, it looks like you capture the ghosts entirely, but in the options menu, it says “Ghosts Driven.” 

That’s a pretty strange way to phrase it, but I’m doubtful very much of the budget was spent on the translation. After all, Fatal Frame is an extremely Japanese style of horror, it’s deep into folklore, and the manor is loaded with tatami floors and kimono racks. North Americans weren’t quite yet fully indoctrinated by anime in 2002, so anything set in Japan might as well be