{"id":21895,"date":"2021-12-17T00:01:41","date_gmt":"2021-12-17T00:01:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/?p=21895"},"modified":"2021-12-11T13:27:42","modified_gmt":"2021-12-11T13:27:42","slug":"fatal-frame-maiden-of-black-water-ps4-ps5-switch-xbox-one-x-s-pc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/2021\/12\/17\/fatal-frame-maiden-of-black-water-ps4-ps5-switch-xbox-one-x-s-pc\/","title":{"rendered":"Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water (PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, X\/S, PC)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>All right folks, I\u2019m about to reveal one of my guilty pleasures.\u00a0 I like ghost shows.\u00a0 You know those shows on the Discovery Channel where investigators or \u2018ghost hunters\u2019 will explore haunted places to try and find proof of ghosts?\u00a0 Yeah I know those shows are dumb and probably are over exaggerated and maybe even faked at times.\u00a0 But I still like \u2018em anyway!\u00a0 I just think ghosts are cool.\u00a0 But there\u2019s not a whole lot of horror themed video games where you fight ghosts.\u00a0 It\u2019s usually zombies or something else.\u00a0 But even though I usually like happy, colorful, kid friendly games, I do have a passing interest in the Fatal Frame series, where you use a special camera to fight ghosts by taking pictures of them.\u00a0 This series of games goes all the way back to the PS2, and the latest one, Maiden of Black Water, came out on the Wii U.\u00a0 But now it\u2019s getting a second lease at life as it\u2019s being re-released on nearly every current console, but reviewed on PS4 here.<\/p>\n

In Maiden of Black Water, bunches of people in Japan have gone missing after visiting Mt. Hikami, a famous suicide spot.\u00a0 You play as a group of investigators that work (presumably) at an antique shop but they also use their psychic powers and an old antique camera called the Camera Obscura to locate missing persons and fight ghosts.\u00a0 In each mission, or \u2018drop\u2019 as they call it, you\u2019ll play as one of the investigators as you explore a part of the mountain armed with the camera and sometimes even psychic powers.\u00a0 Depending on how well you do, you\u2019ll earn points that you can use in the next mission to purchase items like healing medicine and film, to help you out next time.\u00a0 You can also select the difficulty of the mission at the beginning, which will give you more stuff on the easier settings, but you may not be able to record your score online.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ll explore various locations around the mountain, including a doll shrine, a mansion destroyed by a landslide, and the surrounding forests and caves.\u00a0 When you come across a ghost, you can pull out your camera and take pictures of it, which will damage it.\u00a0 If you can shoot multiple ghosts in one shot, or take a picture of one right before it attacks, you\u2019ll do extra damage.\u00a0 You can equip different kinds of film and lenses for various effects.\u00a0 Explore the locations to find hidden healing items and film, as well as notes to enhance the story.\u00a0 New to the series is a special meter that tells you how \u2018wet\u2019 you are.\u00a0 If you become too tainted with the Black Water, you\u2019ll be most susceptible to ghosts and may even take damage continuously.\u00a0 But you can use healing items like magic embers to \u2018dry\u2019 you off unless it\u2019s raining!\u00a0 Sometimes you must use your camera in other ways besides fighting ghosts.\u00a0 You might need to take a picture of something to uncover it, or find a certain area to take a picture of, which will reveal the way elsewhere.\u00a0 Some characters can even use their psychic powers to trace shadows to show them the way to go, which is nice.<\/p>\n

While the game is unique and interesting, it also has a lot of problems, too.\u00a0 I have trouble playing games that use every single button on the controller.\u00a0 I often forget which button to push, which can be frustrating in this game since you have to quickly pull your camera out to take pictures.\u00a0 You can use motion controls to tilt the camera around, which is nice.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t help that the characters plod along like they just woke up.\u00a0 Luckily you do have a \u2018run\u2019 button.\u00a0 The characters don\u2019t get freaked out when they see a ghost, or react at all, so because of this and the plodding control movements, it feels like the investigators took some valium before going on the missions.\u00a0 The stages also last way too long and you end up fighting the same ghosts over and over again.\u00a0 Plus you visit the same areas in nearly every mission, so it gets repetitive.\u00a0 I also didn\u2019t like when you had a take a picture of something specific, as it\u2019s hard to find that one place and take the shot at exactly the right distance and angle.\u00a0 And since the game is so steeped in Japanese folklore, it didn\u2019t seem as scary to a Westerner like myself who isn\u2019t quite as familiar with that subject matter.\u00a0 I\u2019m really glad Tecmo re-released this game so I could finally play it, but because of the overbloated repetitiveness, I don\u2019t know if I\u2019ll stay interested until the end.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Kid Factor:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water is rated M for Mature with ESRB ratings of Blood, Suggestive Themes, and Violence.\u00a0 It\u2019s a horror game, so of course there is blood and violence.\u00a0 Not necessarily in the gameplay, but in the cutscenes.\u00a0 A lot of the female characters wear revealing outfits, too.\u00a0 This is the same company who makes the Dead or Alive fighting games after all.\u00a0 So because of all of this, I\u2019d say this game is best for adults only, or at least very mature older teens.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

All right folks, I\u2019m about to reveal one of my guilty pleasures.\u00a0 I like ghost shows.\u00a0 You know those shows on the Discovery Channel where investigators or \u2018ghost hunters\u2019 will explore haunted places to try and find proof of ghosts?\u00a0 Yeah I know those shows are dumb and probably are over exaggerated and maybe even […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":21815,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-game-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21895"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21895\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21897,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21895\/revisions\/21897"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}