![]() ![]() Especially since nothing else really manages to qualify under my rather basic requirements for game control. Not even when I'm running it's fast and that should of course contribute to the overall feeling of helplessness and vulnerability that constantly prevails, but there's no getting away from the fact that it's frustrating. It should be noted that I move with the speed of a snail. Then the age makes itself felt and now most of the game becomes about backtracking, checking locked doors in unnecessarily long animation sequences and constantly wandering in the same corridors in search of something that has changed since I was last here, and it goes slowly, very slowly. ![]() All sorts of crap can pop up there when you least expect it.īut once the novelty has worn off, after the opening chapters, it's not quite as fun anymore. When I take my very first shaky steps into the unknown. When the claustrophobic horror lies like a wet blanket over the dilapidated building, suffocating all that is beautiful. ![]() Yet this is exactly where Project Zero: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse is at its best. I want to trade gray, darkness and the stench of mold for greenery, sun and the smell of honeysuckle. Every little step slowly but surely pushes me closer and closer to the edge of madness and ideally I just want to put my legs on my back and run away. Yellowed diary pages and news articles, which gradually lead me to a horrible truth. The furniture is old and worn and everywhere there are fragments that remind me of times gone by. The dust is thick in the air and the paint on the walls is starting to peel. The hospital, which is now a hotel, is very run down and I can almost feel the gloom. I arrive, as Roku, on the isolated island to try to recover my memory of what happened there so many years ago, when I was just a child. ![]() It's not only the people left behind on Rogetsu Island that are haunted, but also the game mechanics and in the end it's not only because of jump scares I'm lying on the floor in the fetal position. But now that I find myself once again in haunted environments where unholy spirits are constantly trying to prevent me from finding out what really happened, I sadly realize that time has not been kind to Project Zero: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse. One long experience of existential dread that wouldn't let go, even after the game was over. They were pulse-pounding and nerve-wracking experiences, with the feeling that something was always creeping up on me. The fourth game, Mask of the Lunar Eclipse for the Nintendo Wii was never released outside of Japan, but now, in keeping with the current trend of remasters and remakes, it has been ported to all platforms. In fact, the director of part two claimed that his game was so horrific that players were afraid to finish it. There have been a total of five games in the series, but in yours truly's opinion, it's the first and second games in particular that best evoke that genuine sense of dread. This Camera Obscura is my only defense against the ghosts that haunt the building and everywhere there are old newspapers and letters telling horrific stories of those who died there. Using only a camera as a "weapon", I wander around the house that God not only forgot but also deliberately neglected. The set-up is simple and extremely effective. As we know, dear children have many names. And it is exactly that Japanese horror movie feel that Koei Tecmo has managed to capture in Project Zero, as it was called in Europe, or Fatal Frame in the US, or simply Zero, as the game series was called in its native country of Japan. Films from Japan have caused many an American studio executive to panic and call in some half-baked director for a completely pointless remake. Since time immemorial, they've been churning out obscure titles with so much atmospheric psychological horror and dread that I've often thought about opening the balcony window and simply jumping out. The fact that the Japanese are really good at horror is not a revelation. ![]()
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