Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water

Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water is a disturbing tale well told. While the GamePad brings the series' camera-as-a-weapon concept to life in a way that feels very natural, the combat lacks real mechanical variety, which, combined with overly repetitive encounters, undermines the impact of its most terrifying enemies. Fortunately, there's an abundance of darkness to be found, with some of the most unsettling and stylish scares I've experienced in a while.

Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water is a well-intentioned addition to the Wii U's mostly family-friendly library and does an excellent job of transporting you to another place and time. That's about it, though. Its story and characters are not compelling, and the GamePad-as-camera controls are frequently unreliable. These prevent the game from attaining any real sense of excitement or drama. With too much out of sync--from wildly variable handling to the way you use items to the unconvincing character relationships--Fatal Frame: Maiden of the Black Water isn't anything more than a mediocre experience.

A bland and formulaic affair that's more likely to bore than it is to horrify. Compared to its cult-hit predecessors, it's a damp squib.

After a few hours with Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water, I know I'll be returning upon its release ... It's a clever twist on the classic formula, with an inspired use of the Wii U hardware, and a spooky, pitch-perfect Halloween game in its own right.

Enjoyable combat and bold enemy design can't save Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water. With a dull, repetitive story that abandons any sense of horror, it's a shadow of what it could have been.

The introductory hours captivate with an authentically chilling vibe, but that entertainment eventually gives way to grating repetition

This is all speculation on my part, but Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water comes off like a game that had some incredible artists with cool ideas for this setting and the Wii U tablet, but they couldn’t quite figure out a cohesive story to tell. To make matters worse, I get the impression they also didn’t want to scare away newcomers on a new system and toned the scare factor right down.

You could do a lot better than Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water this Halloween season; the PS5 has built up its horror library up just enough for there to be something else worthy of your time. Those cutscenes, though. Very creepy.

There's a lot to like about Maiden of Black Water; while we didn't find it overly scary, it is very good indeed at being eerie. You'll see ghosts out of the corner of your eye and when you check, they'll be gone. It's oddly cosy and non-stressful for a horror game, because your camera is such an efficient weapon and the combat it propogates is too action-packed to really let any dread sink in. That's not necessarily a bad thing, though we found the earlier PlayStation 2 instalments of the series were more interested in actively frightening the player. If you get absorbed in the storyline - which is easy to do as the episodic structure makes "just one more area" a compelling prospect - you'll find a good 15 or so hours of game here, and much more if you decide you need to get higher ranks as you improve your Camera Obscura with upgrades and other boons. Performance problems aside, this game's a real winner and worth snapping up if you're a horror fan who missed it on Wii U.

Project Zero: Maiden of Black Water is the weakest of the Fatal Frame games and this remastered version fails to address its biggest issues, namely clunky traversal mechanics and a seriously wooden cast of characters. However, look past these shortcomings and, especially for fans of the series, there's still a lot to enjoy in the solid ghost-snapping action on offer here. It may not be the best game in the franchise, but this remaster will still give your spine a good tingle if you let it.