Game:

Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water (2014)

Duration: 14:35

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3

So... am I the only one thinking that this is probably the WORST time to go do this kind of thing? Couldn't Fuyuhi have tried getting help and then running off in her impatient snit BEFORE it was pretty much sunset? Yuri could've even run out the door after her and had this conversation before it spiraled out of control, y'know. If even students and the police know enough of the local history to suggest that the paranormal activity on the mountain is not to be dismissed, it'd be nice if we could avoid making horror film cliché rookie mistakes... that's how people get scared! (Or worse!)

... ... ...no? You're all just going to ignore me and get into wacky spectral hijinks, aren't you? Fine! See if I care! ...oh wait, I'm being forced to lead this charge of the dim bulb brigade... great. Wait, CAN I just bail on this whole expedition immediately? I'm sure I can't... but... yeah, no, the game's not going to let me. You're such a good "friend" to someone you barely met once, Yuri! (Stop doing that!)

Anyway, we've totally arrived to wander around looking for trouble precisely where we shouldn't... there's creepy ambiance and enough to go on that we can trace for Fuyuki's whereabouts. Man, I didn't really realize until well after the fact, but the sound effects of tracing put me more consistently on edge than anything else in this game... great job, you guys! (Now please stop it!)

My compunction to do anything BUT what I'm supposed to is back and in need of scaring out of me... but then I come to the interesting realization that I don't have a camera anymore! I'm no better than Haruka or Fuyuki! (This is also another great reason not to go out looking for trouble without Hisoka, because I guess it would make sense that we only have one Camera Obscura, itself still a bit of a mystery under the circumstances... BUT, I suppose for lack of anything we can do to defend ourselves, we're relatively "safe" from unreasonable hostile activity, right? (Right?!)

So yeah, the tracing isn't the only thing deliberately designed to get under my skin even when nothing's actually happening... we've got the item pickup routine, a demonstration of WHY it's like that in the first place (probably doors as well... thank goodness we're outdoors!), an explanation about how water's now our enemy as well (great...), and just a general overview of a bunch of places with names that really make me wish we weren't eventually expected to visit them. (Of course! All zones have names like that on the [Mountain] of Terror!)

Actually, wait, they really don't point out WHY the water is a bad thing... does it mean we'll attract MORE vengeful spirits? Will enemy attacks do more damage? Will we just see more spooky things (kinda like Eternal Darkness and its Sanity mechanic)? Some combination of the above? The uncertainty just makes it all MORE unsettling. (It doesn't help that the very first thing we see after dunking under the waterfall for some magic fire is a screaming falling body in the distance.)

Hey, look! A raised dais submerged in the water, flanked by torches and with an obvious "there's something here!" that we need to pick up! I like your style, game! You know just how to goad people into doing things that they already know is a horrible idea, but that they'll need to do all the same...

Wait... uh... uh-oh... two points of bad news, because THIS is Hisoka's camera... minus Hisoka, which means we've now got to defend ourselves, AND no one will come blazing through at a crucial moment to save and reassure us. This is NOTHING like the rickety house mission from the First Drop!

...and, of course, no sooner do we have the camera back in Yuri's hands than do blips on our Spirit Filament pop up to warn of unsavory presences. (Wait, how did the white filaments pop up to insist we pay attention to items on the ground if we didn't have the camera?!) ...and of course I'm either totally blind or completely incapable of figuring out what I'm looking for. Please, don't stand up, you'll be dealing with this problem on my part for quite awhile yet, I assure you.

Of course, it's not ENTIRELY my fault, because even just moving around a bit will prompt spirits into suddenly vanishing and showing up somewhere else, and the Spirit Filament isn't always nice enough to be especially precise about indicating when I need to stop turning the screen and even shows up a bit too early in the case of totally invisible enemies... (As if it wasn't annoyingly persistent enough, locking on to items that I'm looking slightly less than straight on towards and going absolutely nuts and scaring the living daylights out of me whenever it would warn me that Hisoka was standing right beside or behind me.)

I can only assure you that it'll take me awhile to get used to the combat in terms of timing, what to do when I'm NOT being attacked and there aren't loose spirit fragments, just trying to keep up with the unclear visual feedback that's all brand new to me...