Game:

Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water (2014)

Duration: 15:07

95 views

1

Okay, so that was refreshing! ...a little swim with some decidedly uninviting hospitality staff helping Miu unwind and even offering to style her hair... er... wait, style her with some hair? Hair her up... some... uh... NOPE, okay, let's just move along, shall we?

As you might expect, Miu's not going to be much good to us now since she's a little tied up at the moment, so we're going to spend some time with some other characters instead. We have an experienced "shadow reader" named Hisoka Kurosawa and her inexperienced protégée, Yuri Kozukata.

"Shadow reading" is apparently all about psychic readings and imprints that can be drawn by physical contact and visual inspection of objects, which is quite correctly drawn parallel to an actual occultist practice known as psychometry (and psychoscopy) that I had previously not known to be so thoroughly and diligently chronicled through ages. I mean, whether or not you believe such scientifically unsubstantiatable fields can actually accomplish what they claim is immaterial to the fact that such techniques actually DO exist that were and still are practiced by many people is, in and of itself, rather fascinating, so thanks for that, Fatal Frame!

The bulk of our interactions with the spirit world will be through the Camera Obscura. No, no, not the optical device with its origins dating back from antiquity to even as distant as prehistoric times, this is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT. It's a literal camera, rather than a pinhole (or lens-based) miniaturized dark room for the projection of an observable scene for any of a number of purposes. THIS Camera Obscura is "simply" a camera of supernatural capacity to visualize, analyze, and interact with the spirit world as it lies hidden from ordinary view all around us... which, in places with a higher concentration of ghostly activity than normal, is an absolute must!

...to round out our little exposition trip, especially as I have no idea as to the particular lineage of this series and its... er... five (I think?) installments to date (including this one), plus some spinoffs, I believe I recall... so, I'm just going to be frank and point out that all these characters so far have names that mean absolutely nothing to me without some repetition and reminder. As such, I did a little minor research (i.e. I plugged names alongside "fatal frame" into Google and saw how many different results came up, but went no further for fear of spoilers) on the matter...

As it happens, BOTH poor Miu's (from the Prologue) Hinasaki and the enigmatic extraplanarly experienced Hisoka's Kurosawa families have more than a little history throughout the series, though I don't seem to get any indication that they themselves have been involved in any of them personally. Every other character we'll see in this Trial Version is entirely separate and has no apparent history, direct or otherwise, with the series. (Though I didn't dig any deeper than just name appearance frequency, so if there's any more to it, I'm guessing those would be spoilers for either this game or some of the earlier ones.)

---

Anyway, we're here to investigate some spooky places and take pictures, gang! Let's get ready to point and shoot! ...right after Yuri's done with an exceedingly troubling daydream, anyway. Yikes. (Don't worry, there's no therapy for this and nobody will ever talk about their feelings or hallucinations while spirits are running amok! It's a law of fiction!)

To get ourselves up for some spiritual spelunking in derelict domiciles of the dead, let's do some control tutorials on how the Camera Obscura works! Also Hisoka probably just wants to pose for some pictures. Now, a lot of what's being explained doesn't really show up on the active viewer's screen, just on the GamePad itself until the moment a picture is taken. This ALSO took me some time to get used to, because I would often "naturally" choose to use the bigger screen further away rather than the smaller screen in my hands with an almost exact duplication of the same imagery while the Camera's out... so don't worry too much about the particulars of what can and can't be seen as clearly onscreen. (More on that later, though.)

...I also might be flexing some willful ignorance and avoidance of progress so I can see if Hisoka has more to say or there's other stuff to be looked at along the way... don't worry, a steady case of nerves and fear of the unknown will gradually beat that naturally inquisitive nature right out of me as I just want to go back to reality and stop tormenting myself with a bombardment of such stimuli. (*sob*)

Other than that... is it just me, or is Hisoka the WORST teacher? She's skulking about quietly (and often startlingly!) behind us, barely bothering to tell us anything about stuff beyond a minimal prod in the right direction... but is otherwise totally unconcerned with Yuri's well-being. This is NOT very Zen teaching method at all! I want to transfer to another class!)