Fatal Frame 3
Fatal Frame 3 for the Sony Playstaion 2 is the third installment in the fatal frame franchise, which introduced new characters and some old favorites.
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Developer: Tecmo Publisher: Tecmo Release Date: February 8, 2005 Platforms: PS2 JustRPG Score: 85% Pros: +Refreshing and Immersive Storyline. +Unique “combat” system. Cons: -No replay value. -Graphics are now dated. |
Overview
Fatal Frame 3 Overview
Fatal Frame 3 is a horror adventure role playing game that utilizes the vintage “Camera Obscura” to photograph and dispel ghosts. The game is third person and takes place in both the Manor of Sleep and the real world. When the player is awake he or she will develop photos of ghosts they have taken the night before and prepare for the next night. While asleep the player enter the Manor of Sleep where they take pictures of the ghosts and solve puzzles. With these unique concepts Fatal Frame 3 is a fun play through for the first time player but has little to no replay value.
Fatal Frame 3 Screenshots
Fatal Frame 3 Featured Video
Full Review
Fatal Frame 3 Review
By, Kevin Jordan
Backdrop
.hack Part 1 Infection (Dot Hack) begins with a bang. Something disastrous happens to your character‘s real world friend, while innocently playing a 20 million-subscriber base, wildly popular online RPG game (MMORPG), The World. To unravel the mystery of your friend’s misfortune, you become an online, ingame rogue hacker, exploring every corner of The World, even some virus-infected ones.
The hero is armed with the special skills of Data Drain and Gate Hack, and some colorful, talented fellow adventurers to fill the two other available party slots. Different adventurers must accompany you depending on the plot‘s development. You have some control over the others in your party, including upgrading them through trades or gifts. You can play only a single class, Twin Blade. Other characters are from different classes, with varied strengths and weaknesses, from a mage type (Wavemaster) to a bully (Heavy Axeman).
Gameplay
Gameplay takes place in three principal areas – towns, fields, and dungeons. Towns house The World’s servers. There, the player can save the game, buy magic scrolls and useful and unique items, store items, buy equipment, and talk and trade with lots of other players in character online. One town has an unusual ranch to check out, a patent homage to an enduring feature of just about every Final Fantasy.
The town’s Chaos Gate provides instant teleportation to a particular wide-open Field, containing monster encounter hotspots, a mystical spring, treasure, and lots of mysterious food. You enter three distinct keywords, some known at the game‘s onset, and others learned through play. Whatever keywords are entered, the difficulty level of the destination is helpfully revealed. This prevents a low-level party from being massacred. Once the keywords are entered, you travel through the Chaos Gate. (You can enter specific keywords learned to continue the plot, do side quests, or do unlimited exploring. Or, you can instruct the Gate to enter random keywords, and take your chances. There‘s also an option to enter any keywords you wish from a word list.) Every Field houses a single Dungeon. The dungeons, where you spend much of the game fighting for your life, are not overly large in size, and always range between three and five average levels.
Many have compared Dot Hack to Phantasy Star Online Episode I and II (PSO) on the Gamecube. Let us gently discredit this. We feel Dot Hack has far better graphics than PSO. The Fields and Dungeons contain many colorful, over stylized backdrops and settings, including weather effects. Dot Hack’s monsters resemble the beautifully-drawn monsters of the later Final Fantasy’s. Dot Hack’s world is gigantic with a seeming infinite number of locations to explore. PSO’s world is relatively small, and plot is threadbare, with meaningless, though fun, side quests, which instill no enthusiasm in the player. Dot Hack’s plot is deep and complex, with each subplot advancing the story just a little bit further. (Remember though, the end of this game in no way comes close to wrapping up the story, to be completed in the three games to be released later this year.) One visual treat, however, was lifted directly from PSO – the cascading rings that accompany the teleportation of characters to and from different areas.
Combat
Dot Hack’s combat engine can best be described as modified real-time. Much like the action-RPG, Kingdom Hearts, button mashing can be effective to beat monsters. Monster combat icons appear as large yellow twirling landmarks. As you approach, the landmark dissolves, monsters come at you big-time, and, undoubtedly, players will feel a healthy adrenaline rush. Some of Dot Hack’s many monsters do not stand around waiting to be pummeled, rather some you need to catch. Dot Hack lets you turn combat almost into a turn-based affair. The player needs only to hit Triangle in the middle of battle to pause the game instantly. From there the player can give orders to the others in the party, anything from healing someone, reviving another, casting a spell, designating a target monster. Without jeopardizing your party from the hailstorm of monster blows, combat becomes a calmer, more strategic, experience. This will help the many action-challenged. Camera angles play a big role in successful combat. You must be facing a monster to do any damage. As in many games, manipulating opposing environmental elements, like fire vs. water, is a key to successful monster combat.
Dot Hack’s cyberspace setting provides a wealth of Wow-inducing outbursts. The Data Drain option in combat is a great example. When a monster’s approaches zero, the player can Data Drain to reduce a horrendous, gigantic steel robot, for example, into a sniveling, puny monster, easily defeated with a single blow. Data Drain always results in a nifty, rare item or essential Virus Cores so you can Gate Hack areas of The World now closed, but needing investigation. One bad side effect – if you defeat, a Data Drained monster, but a single experience point is earned. One REALLY bad side effect – if you Data Drain too often without giving the skill a rest, you may overload and explode. Game Over. In the case of Boss monsters, Data Drain works the same, but what remains is no sniveling puny monster, but a full-blooded slightly less tough monster. All of this makes for interesting and captivating combat, a large part of the game.
Fresh Features
Dot Hack is replete with new and interesting features that kept us riveted.
To start, the entire background and story of a real world gamer becoming a rascal hacker, penetrating deep into a virus-infected online game, is quite novel. Combine this with Dot Hack’s emulating the look and feel of an online game universe. (Message traffic on the web shows many gamers mistakenly believe Dot Hack is a real online MMORPG, along with monthly fees! No real Internet connection is required.)
Just like in the real word, Dot Hack replicates your excitement level when “New” appears before a popular forum or on your email screen. Some of the game involves receiving emails as the plot develops, as well as new, crucial information surfacing on The World’s Board. (Look out for emails challenging you to a strange game of Tag.) The online game world looks very familiar with a bunch of characters wandering around the game’s towns, with the ubiquitous balloon icons talking typical “trash” to each other, even criticizing “newbies“.
Combat grippingly called for surprisingly strategic decision-making to succeed, not related to the usual attack or defend choices. Do you go for experience and upgrade your character or try for some special equipment or a Virus Core, vital to Gate Hacking? The innovative control of other party members became second nature to us after some practice. The game rewards a player taking chances, like entering a Field or Dungeon rated 5 levels above the player’s current level. On the other hand, the game scoffed at players entering areas much lower rated the their current level, by awarding negligible experience points for victory.
Dot Hack takes progress reports to a new level, by slowly unlocking books that contain much in the way of statistics and information. There’s even a monster compendium with tips for defeating them.
Some might complain about the minimal “Save Game” ability, but we thrived on it. You explore a very hostile cyberspace environment without the facility to save. Only in a server-hosting town is saving possible at the local Recorder. We may be a solitary voice in the Wilderness, but we like this throwback to the good old RPG days. Those of you old enough to remember the Wizardry series, may recall those fingernail-biting multi-combat treks back to the Castle just to save the game. In case you’re really stuck deep in a dungeon, a common item will teleport you to the outdoor field, from where you can simply gate back to town from the command menu.
Many pieces of equipment come with distinctive powerful attack, healing, and status skills, essential to combat dominance. The player must tradeoff whether to equip something that will raise defense or offense or something less vigorous that lets you use a powerful skill. Trading is the most successful way to upgrade equipment.
In a first, Dot Hack comes with a 45 minute anime video. This gives some great background on what’s going on in The World, as well as provide clues for completing the game. In a nice twist, voiceovers for game speech can be set for Japanese or English presentation. Listening to the authentic Japanese voices really keeps you glued to the game.
Though some may scoff at what follows as meaningless, we liked the game’s unlocking of some nifty new “toys” to like, some only available when the game is cleared. You can unlock many different background music play lists. Tired of creepy tunes, just switch to something more upbeat, or futuristic. Just like real world gamers, who constantly change their desktop wallpaper, new and different wallpapers are unlocked along the way. Some are concept art of characters, while others are full blown anime renditions of the characters. This makes for great fun, and seems to pump additional energy into the game. As you progress over a dozen special cut scenes or movies will become viewable after defeating the game.
Though Dot Hack’s extras and new wrinkles enhance the RPG game experience, much of the gameplay will ring true to those who enjoy RPG‘s. Expect plenty of exploration in a huge 3D world, frequent monster combat, tons of treasure to earn and discover, upgrading your character’s weapons and armor, and needing to level before tackling pivotal story dungeons. The status screens for the characters and all equipment are well laid out and easy to grasp.
Time for Completion
Game length in hours always concerns many purchasers. A short RPG normally takes a lot of flack, and many online are asking about Dot Hack‘s time for completion. (Some have questioned whether Bandai should have released a single 80 hour game for $50, rather than four 20-hour games for $200 for a single story. This matter is beyond the scope of this review, but our high opinion of this game as a standalone is obvious.) Our experience, playing the plot without doing side quests or extra exploration, is in the 12 to 15-hour range. Players side-questing and extensively exploring, aside from the main plot, can expect to spend 25 hours to complete the game. You can even continue to advance your character, after game completion, to get a jump start on Part 2 due in May. In the next game, your character can be imported from Part 1.
Furthermore, imagine trying to explore every nook and cranny of the fields and dungeons accessible by a large number of 3-word combinations. Doing that would put the game in the 50-hour range, if not more. However, at a certain point, new items dry up, and a single experience point is earned for any defeated monster, no matter how tough.
Shortcomings
While, as is evident above, there is much to recommend in Dot Hack, certain concerns to varying degrees deserve mention.
From the “Why oh why did they leave this out?“ File. Pregame game board traffic and information about the Japanese version released months ago had many salivating for replaying the game in “parody” mode. This mode apparently converted all Dot Hack’s game world characters into satirical comedians. Sorry to say, this highly-anticipated feature is missing from the version released here.
The game requires massive amounts of button pressing. Every item or treasure uncovered from combat victories or exploration (opening chests, searching expired adventure remains, collecting food for Grunty’s, as examples) must be confirmed with a button press. When there could be 50-100 such occurrences in a single dungeon or field, over the course of the game, finger cramps seem inevitable. Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance also required lots of bashing for buried treasure and chests, but the items literally flew into your inventory, a much better way to handle this.
The manual is woefully terse and lacking in some crucial information and guidance. While the ingame tutorials fill in many of the gaps, one extremely important gameplay feature is missing from both the manual and tutorials – instructions on control your characters directly during combat.
Final Word
We got a kick out of Dot Hack. The feeling of “just one more dungeon” dominated our lives for the 3 days to completion. The engaging environment held our attention without much effort. The strategic nature of combat, plus the convoluted plot kept us going for hours on end. The constant unlocking of both frivolous and important gameplay features created a “what’s next” anticipation. Now, if I could only read Japanese better, Dot Hack Part 2 is already out in Japan!
Final Grade: B
| Alfred Hitchcock once said, “There is no terror in a bang, only in the anticipation of it.” Nowhere is this proven true more than in Fatal Frame III: The Tormented, Tecmo’s latest entry into its camera-based survival horror series. When other games of its genre were aiming to impress with upgraded firepower and massive explosions, Fatal Frame preferred to play it subtle, relying on a flickering shadow or a discreet sound to create a truly frightening atmosphere. The effect was masterful; after all, who would be afraid of monsters if that person had a giant bazooka with which to blow them away? In the Fatal Frame series, your only weapon against all of the forces of evil released from hell is nothing but a single antique Camera Obscura. |
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Well, not quite just one camera anymore. Fatal Frame III attempts to reinvent the series by introducing multiple playable characters – three, to be exact. The protagonist, Rei Kurosawa, a professional photographer, is deeply saddened and guilt-ridden after her fiancé is killed in an automobile accident for which she is responsible. One day, on assignment to an abandoned old mansion, she sees the ghost of her lover and desperately pursues him. Afterwards, she begins having strange dreams – dreams of the mansion before it became ruined, with it haunted by disturbed spirits. Every one of the people drawn into this Manor of Sleep has one thing in common – they have lost someone very dear to them and would stop at nothing to be with them again. But legends say that when you follow the dead into the manor, you can never come back… |
| This is the main premise of the story, and all of the playable characters’ tales revolve around it in some way. In fact, fans of the series may recognize the names of the other two main characters. Miku Hinasaki, who followed her missing brother into a similar mansion, was the protagonist from the first Fatal Frame. Kei Amakura is the uncle of Mio and Mayu Amakura, who were featured in Fatal Frame II. |
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Despite what the back of the game case says, you cannot choose who you will play as for each mission or chapter of the story; it is all pre-set. As such, you are forced to divide your points, which you earn from photographing ghosts, among three different cameras in order to power them up, which can get sort of annoying, as there are not all that many points to be found in a normal game. Having three characters is worth it, though, since their stories intertwine in enough interesting ways to make this a very satisfying conclusion to the trilogy as it will appear on PS2. Hopefully, Fatal Frame on PS3 will be this good! |
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| The other major difference between Fatal Frame III and its predecessors is the introduction of a relatively peaceful waking world outside of the mansion. Between chapters of the story, Rei will awaken back in her house, which gives her opportunities to develop certain pictures and research things discovered in the manor. At first, Rei’s house is a welcome respite from the constant sense of dread present in the manor. But as the game progresses, even this sanctum sanctorum will start to become creepy, making for an effective way to build the tension even as you grow accustomed to the manor’s ghosts. |
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Taking me about 25 hours to complete, this Fatal Frame is definitely the longest of the series. However, much of this has to do with an increased amount of backtracking, often due to confusion as to where to go next. This can become frustrating at times, with the clues often being so vague or misleading that you have no choice but to explore the entire manor all over again. |
| Visually, Fatal Frame III is up to par with what you would expect from one of the scariest games ever made. Spirits are, if anything, even creepier than before, and the little details, such as a candle flickering from the breeze created when you run by it, are what make this a truly memorable experience. The music and sound effects are also especially effective and reward those brave enough to play with headphones or the volume turned way up. In addition, those who make it to the end of the game are treated to a very beautiful theme song, just as they were in Fatal Frame II, which is something I don’t very often find in survival horror games. |
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Combat, as before, is necessarily first person, as you must look through your camera long enough to charge a shot of the ghost. This, quite naturally, makes for a much more edge-of-your-seat experience, as you must watch the spirit approach you. Of course, you are allowed to run away and dodge in the normal third person view. The actual battles appear to be a bit more difficult than Fatal Frame II, as there are many instances in which you will be attacked by multiple ghosts, making it pretty challenging to line up a good shot while avoiding attacks that could come from anywhere. However, most ghosts can easily be shot during their “fatal frame” – the time in which they are most vulnerable – if you have the patience, so it is not quite so challenging as the original of the series. |
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| I found the tale of the Manor of Sleep to be less compelling than the twin-themed ritual around which Fatal Frame II revolves, but it is still quite good and manages to mix several different stories together, making many new connections to the preceding games. Several of the chapters involve discovering the pasts of specific ghosts you will find in the mansion, and they all have unique stories, which really serves to flesh out the game. |
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After it is over, there are tons of special things to unlock with all of your hard-earned points, not to mention the ability to continue upgrading each character’s camera. In addition to this, there are two more difficulty levels to master and the hardest “mission mode” of the entire trilogy. This, combined with the already above-average length of the game, ensures that completionists will certainly get more than their money’s worth. |
| Fatal Frame may not be as popular as Resident Evil, but it should not be missed by anyone who considers themselves a survival horror fan. A unique approach to the genre, the series proves that an endless supply of undead to fight isn’t always scarier than an empty hallway in a deserted mansion. And Fatal Frame III just may be the scariest game in the scariest series of all time. |
| Final Grade: 85% |
Screenshots
Fatal Frame 3 Screenshots
Videos
Fatal Frame 3 Videos
Fatal Frame 3 Trailer