New Classic Gaming: the Fatal Frame series.

I'm happy with my haunted house-fit.

A modern classic series I’d always been interested in, but for whatever reason never taken the plunge and played through, is Fatal Frame. I finally decided to this past week. I ended up playing Fatal Frame and Fatal Frame 2: Crimson Butterfly via PlayStation Network, and 零： 眞紅の蝶 (ZERO: Deep Crimson Butterfly), the Japan-only Wii remake of the second game. I own Fatal Frame 3: The Tormented, but I have yet to set up my PS2 and take it for a spin.

Horror games, like horror movies, walk a fine line between scary and ridiculous. Ultimately the situations are stupid and unrealistic, so the game has to elevate itself to such a level that it either transcends the inherent mediocrity, or owns up to the silliness of the whole thing to make it an enjoyable experience. Fatal Frame does the former.

This girl does not do escorts.

It takes a Silent Hill approach in that its strength is in its atmosphere. You might argue the narrative is SH’s real strength, and I don’t disagree (certainly in regard to SH2), but no other game has used atmosphere as well as SH has, except perhaps FF. The first game is a haunted house and the second takes place in a haunted village.

The house is everything you’d expect with a dimly lit, decrepit looking why-the-hell-would-anyone-ever-decorate-a-room-this-way aesthetic with many inexplicably locked doors (though, as a rare exception to the rule, every single door does eventually open in FF1, unlike the forever closedness of much of SH), each of which require a ridiculous, themed key. So judging by the precedent set by Resident Evil, standard fare.

The town in the second game is as quiet as it is creepy, and its small size lends a claustrophobic air to everything. In fact, I think it feels more claustrophobic in Fatal Frame 2 than in the haunted house of the first game. The town is traditional Japanese, which means you have houses very close together with little space in between to travel, which makes it feel as if you’re just in a wide hallway when you walk outside. And it’s here that you find yourself armed with only a camera, cornered by ghosts.

Small hallway, weird controls, creepy-ass twins... check.

Battles are frequently tense due to the small space you have to use while your camera for nearly the entire game is much too weak for the circumstances. Like Final Fantasy XIII, normal and even weak ghost fights take two or three times as long to finish than they should, and due to your character being a mid-teens girl, you don’t have much resistance or speed against these attacks. You frequently get hit and sometimes even these normal ghosts can take half of your health with one hit. Sure, it adds to the overall sense of desperation and forces you to evolve your strategy to account for chronic low health, but goddamn is it infuriating sometimes.

And that brings me to my next point: appalling controls. Sometimes. The first game is bad. Nigh unplayable at times, actually. In battle, I mean. Moving and item collection/usage is standard across the games, even if the purpose of the spirit stones is absolutely impossible to discern in the first game. But besides collecting all those damn things and not understanding exactly why, the biggest problem is with the first person perspective camera controls. As soon as you bring out the camera and begin aiming, the left stick controls the view, and the right stick moves your character. That’s right: for some idiot reason, the designers thought it made sense to reverse the analog sticks when you go into battle mode, where reflexes and memorized controls exist to keep you from doing these kind of mental gymnastics and allow you to succeed. During the many boss battles, the controls become a serious handicap as your natural sense of moving with the left stick and looking with the right stick, as in every other game ever, is forcibly curtailed into this totally unintuitive scheme. And as such, the game becomes very difficult, and you exhaust your health, and film, supplies and become very frustrated.

Recent selfie.

FF2 on PS2 addresses and fixes that problem and keeps a uniform scheme no matter what view you’re employing, but the Wii remake adds all new control issues. Thankfully, it's not so much a matter of intuition as it is just a completely different experience. As it uses the Wiimote, it expects you to be a good soldier and constantly hold the controller at ready position, which keeps your flashlight level and your character steady. But if you let your hand move slightly or drop for a rest against your leg, depending on what you're doing, it can spell total disaster. In ghost encounters, you control your movement and your left-to-right looking with the nunchuck, but you control your camera and your up-and-down movement with the Wiimote, so you're kinda back to the original weird problem from FF1 where your controls, which had been controlled all on one hand, are now split across both hands, and it's not incredibly intuitive as to which hand does what. My real problem, however, is the inability to delegate the controls manually. I hate that I am forced to use broken controls. 

As I said, however, the PS2 control scheme was fixed for FF2, but now it’s other things that make the game difficult to play, like an unnecessary pause between coming out of picture mode and being able to move, and no chance of strafing when some of these ridiculously fast ghosts come at you. But that’s game design, not controls, anymore. Really, the rest of the problems I have with this series as a whole come down to nit-picky frustrations when I’ve made a mistake or not properly conserved film and am down to the least powerful film, which is about as effective as a Q-Tip against a meteor.

Q-tip and a meteor?

But it’s excellent. It’s creepy, and beautiful, and interesting. And it is absolutely the franchise I want to come out next for Wii U. If ever the Wii U’s controller was perfect for any game, where your weapon is an exorcismal point and click camera, this one is it.

Comfort Gaming

  It’s that time again.

  Every couple of months, I feel the need to relax in something warm and familiar, like most of us, I’m sure. Also like many of us out there somewhere, I have a hella clogged backlog of new games that I desperately need to play so as to render them good purchases rather than wasted money. Games like Max Payne 3, Assassin’s Creed III, Deadly Premonition: Director’s Cut, Fire Emblem: New Awakening, Monster Hunter 3, and many others are just sitting in my small Japanese apartment, waiting to be played. More than that, there are even some new games I don’t yet have that I am super excited to play eventually like The Last of Us and very shortly NHL 14. But fuck that.

  As many new games there are, there are many games I have played and enjoyed thoroughly in the past that I would rather enjoy again than venture into a new saga where I have to play carefully and pay strict attention and read every word… Sometimes, that just sounds tiring. You may think, “what a lazy bastard this guy is,” and, no doubt, that’s partially true, but shit, we all need a lie down sometimes. That’s what these games have become for me, and the most difficulty they pose me these days is just deciding which one to start up and play through, again.

Final Fantasy

 

Poor Aeris, those flowers always get terribly mistreated.

  I love Final Fantasy, from I to XII (sorry, XIII just didn’t do it for me, but I’m looking forward to giving Lightning Returns a fair shake), and this is the comfortiest of the comfort games I own. I’ve played these the most, and that’s saying something, considering the length of Final Fantasies as a general tenet. The easy main quests with a good mix of collecting and entertaining mini-games (I admit that Tetra Master from VIII and Chocobo Breeding from VII are my favorites, though I’m partial to X’s Blitzball, too) make these just… fun, to play.

  My choice among the thrall, however, is Final Fantasy VII. It starts fast and the first three or four hours just blow by, but then the game just… slows down. The world opens up, the story starts to self-explicate, and the journey begins. The trendy choice is Final Fantasy VI, but I have to say that I just don’t have as much fun with that one. Or with VIII, IX, IV, etc… Cloud is charmingly amnesiac in a way that Locke, Squall, Tidus, and Zidane just aren’t. I like all of these games, but none as much as VII. It’s the ultimate comfort Fantasy for me.

Katamari Damacy

 

Truly, the most under-appreciated hero.

  I still remember the review I read of this game when it first came out that originally inspired me to give it a try in the first place. Paraphrased, “who knew it could be so much fun to pick up stuff by rolling a ball around?” That line had me hooked. I had to see what this game was about. Add in the amazing soundtrack, intuitive control scheme, and incredibly clever growing dynamic (starting with thumbtacks and moving to candy > candy bars > candy bar boxes > people who carry candy bar boxes > trucks that bring candy bar boxes > etc.) and this game is a true classic, unique video gaming experience.

  This game is so easy and fun to play that at a whim, you can pick up a controller, turn on the system and either start up a new game for a nice size-sequential roll through the universe or just go for an eternal roll around the world while some infectiously catchy music plays on. For my money, this game is relaxation. Thank god this game has finally come to PSN so that I don’t risk destroying my physical disks from overuse. Now, I’m just waiting for We <3 Katamari to make the same jump.

Xenogears

 

This is one of the more lucid ideas this game has to offer.

  Another RPG, yeah. Another Squaresoft RPG, yeah. I’m a huge fan of RPGs in general (I’m also a fan of long, confusing movies and short, confusing books) and this game is long, confusing, involved, and epic. The first time I played this game (after having bought it and Metal Gear Solid on the same day in October 1998 – best game release date ever ;-) ), I was 12 turning 13 years old. And, being a teenager, I was an idiot. I actually muted the TV and listened to The Offspring’s Americana for the entirety of the first full playthrough of that game. Little did I know that I was missing some of the best music in video games to that point, and upon my second playthrough to try to make more sense of the story, discovered that the music almost entirely by itself added a new dimension to the scope and tone of the game.

  If you’ve never played it, play it. The first time will be strange and some parts will be difficult, so, in that sense, this is in no way a comfort game, but if you make it through the first time and enjoy it anywhere near as much as I did, you’ll find yourself breezing through the difficult parts and even relishing the endless amounts of battles it takes to build up your deathblow abilities.

  Doesn’t sound much like a comfort game, though, does it?

Silent Hill 2

 

There's nothing I don't like about this game.

  Potentially the best game I’ve ever played, it’s so far down on this list simply because of the attention it requires to play (and these aren’t in any particular order outside of the order in which I thought to include them). It’s not an RPG, so there is no opportunity to sort of phase in and phase out of the game while playing it, not to mention the time and attention it takes to scour the town for the necessary health items and ammo just to make it to the end (especially at higher difficulties).

  The story is complex and riveting. The atmosphere is unmatched; the slow, difficult combat adds to the player’s edginess; and the original voice acting is so generally bad that it perfectly represents the mental state James is in (in my opinion). I just can’t say enough about how much I enjoyed the game, even its perceived foibles. When I’m in the mood to play a game more actively that I know I’m going to enjoy, I almost always pick this one. Unless I’ve just played it.

Mega Man Legends

 

Mega Man Legends in a nutshell.

  It’s amazing that Capcom killed this series. This game is a 3D Metroidvania with a charming, friendly atmosphere with fun platforming, fun battles (albeit with some terribly dated control schemes), fun characters, extensive upgrading, and an excellent side story to the whole Mega Man mythos. The one story problem I have with it is that the evil Dr. Wily is absolutely nowhere to be seen (he is, in fact, owner of a boat harbor on Kattelox Island – at least, I’m pretty sure that’s him), but, ultimately, it’s not a big deal. This is another game that requires more attention to play than the traditional RPG genre, but it’s utterly disarming in its presentation and is easy to get into.

  The crux of this game, however, is the exploration. It takes a little while to get to the point of the game where you can start exploring pretty much at will, but once you do, it’s heaven to run around to all of the different mines attempting to find all of the treasure and to destroy the walls to connect all of the mines, together. (Now that I think about it, though, those were probably load-bearing walls. Mega Man and the citizens of Kattelox Island probably should have been horribly killed and crushed many times over…) The characters are cute, the town is fun with lots, but not too much, to do, and the relaxation factor is off the charts. You just feel at ease playing this game. You feel happier playing this game. Legends 2 is good, also, but Kattelox Island is a much better designed, tighter experience.

Dark Souls

 

Ah, finally: peace and quiet.

  You might think this is a departure, but, really, this is simply another exploration game with an incredibly steep mastery curve. This is truly the game that requires the most vigilance to play. Every move must be watched, every enemy feared, every soul used wisely. However, if you manage all of this, the satisfaction gained from progressing is like no other game. Every victory is major: opening a new door, killing a boss, ringing the bells. Everything is important.

  How in the hell is this relaxing? So, because you have to pay so much attention and think so damn hard, you can kind of get used to it. You find yourself getting in a groove and a sort of autopilot turns on in your head, and you can coast along, slaying enemies, saving up souls for upgrade, and learning the terrain’s subtleties for more profitable slaying. And the game becomes fun. It becomes easy. And you start to relax.

  Until you die.

  It’s an acquired taste, certainly, but those minutes where you’re coasting are wonderfully cathartic. If you manage to slay a boss within the groove, the satisfaction and happiness only exponentially increases.

  These are the games that first come to mind whenever I feel the need for some comfort gaming. And going through my list, I find that my personal comfort gaming has to do with exploration. Every one of these games has you exploring the world (a world, anyway), making progress, and, generally, collecting things. It’s September, and school has just started, so a need for some old comfort is welcome. But fuck that.

  I'm going to play Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon.

Silent Hill 2 & Ico: best game release date of all time?

Ico, developed by Team Ico and published by Sony,

and Silent Hill 2, developed and published by Konami,

were both released for the PlayStation 2 on September 24, 2001. Strange that both of these haunting, melancholic games were released less than two weeks after the September 11th attacks.

Best game release date of all time?