Fatal Frame 2: Crimson Butterfly – Director’s Cut (Xbox)

Oh, J-horror, what have you wrought? This time it’s Fatal Frame 2, which is, presumably, the sequel to Fatal Frame, and in it, you play as one of a pair of prepubescent Japanese twin girls who are dressed rather inappropriately for their age. And you fight ghosts with a camera that’s imbued with the power to send spirits back from whence they came. And that’s the comprehensible part of the plot – it has something to do with a sacrifice of another pair of twin girls to prevent something bad happening a long time ago. I think. It could very well just be their version of Ghostbusters.

Anyway, the game is creepy as hell, although it sometimes goes overboard on the sudden sound effect—“Oh shit it’s a ghost!” kind of scare. Unfortunately, the combat sucks. It really sucks. The ghosts attack you by grabbing ahold of you and scaring your wits out, but your camera, which you would think is a ranged weapon, won’t do much damage unless you’re right on Casper and he’s about to touch you inappropriately like he’s a pedophiliac uncle. It doesn’t help that to use the camera, you switch into a first-person view and have to aim precisely at the damn things’ heads. So if you’re fighting two ghosts at once, you’re pretty much screwed if they’re not both in front of you. Further compounding matters is the annoying survival horror cliché of fixed camera angles. Step out of one shot at the wrong moment, the game switches views, and you get disoriented enough to let the ghouls get the upper hand.

It’s a shame, because aside from combat, this game is very interesting. It sometimes goes overboard on the Ring-esque scratchy film effects, but the atmosphere of the game is terrific. I just had to give up after the nth frustrating battle – although, having played for about four hours, I was already at least at the halfway point of the game, so it’s not exactly a lengthy play.

2 out of 5