Scared me more than any other game to date, but eventually the whole "Boo, I'm a ghost" thing wears off.
The gameplay is very unique and not something you would expect from a video game. You play as Miku, who is in search of her missing brother and the last that she heard, he was in this mysterious mansion. You quickly come to find that the entire mansion and it's surrounding area are filled with ghosts. It sounds strange, but the only weapon you have is a camera. This camera can trap ghosts in it because of the mystical powers it has and there are varying types of "ammo", some are more powerful than others, and it's a great diversion from the normal gun-toting survival horror game. At the very beginning of this game, I was extremely tense. I didn't want to walk into a room because of the fear of something attacking me or seeing a glimpse of something run past me. It was truly scary.......that is until the beginning was over. The whole shtick of, "Oh look, a ghost is in the corner staring at me" thing just kind of got old. At first, it was creepy, but later it just became monotonous. Regardless, this is still a very scary game and any horror lovers would be helping themselves to pick this game up.
The graphics were pretty good. I know this game is pretty old and I just got around to it, so I have become sort of spoiled with the graphics of more recent games, but all in all it still looks good. The ambience of the mansion is definitely dark and creepy and you will most likely be looking over your shoulder throughout the game. The characters looked pretty good too considering how old this game is. My only complaint is how a few of the ghosts looked. There were some ghosts that were actually very scary and when they floated out of the wall towards you, it was like nothing you've seen before in a video game, but some were just unflattering. The woman that was bleeding from her eyes and the woman with the broken neck were great and scary, but others just looked very plain. The scariness of the ghosts were varying and it's a shame since the environment is creepy enough.
The sound was what I loved about this game. I cannot stress this next point enough: WEAR GOOD HEADPHONES WHILE PLAYING. Wearing headphones increased the creepiness of this game by 100% and I'm glad I decided to do it. Besides the groans and screams of the ghosts, there were the occasional footsteps and whispers that were few and far between, which was great because when it happened, it had impact, and you will undoubtedly be looking around quickly to see if something is in the room with you. In this game, you will find a tape player and cassette tapes which you can listen to. It will have clues of the whereabouts of your brother and the people that came in before him, but the best part is you can hear very faint whispers in the background saying evil things. I would think it would be hard to hear it without headphones because it is very low and depending on the noise around you, it could be distracting and you might miss it. It's the little touches like this that Tecmo deserve recognition for. The sound is great and must be heard with headphones or a very good sound system with no outside noise to appreciate.
This game is definitely worth a purchase. If you can still find it somewhere and you love horror, buy this without hesitation. It is the scariest game I've played to date and even scarier than most horror movies I've seen. I've said it before, but video games will always be scarier than movies because you get to decide what happens. You can decide whether to run, whether to fight, whether to hide, or whether or not you want to walk into that next room that looks extremely unpleasant. I am definitely going to play Fatal Frame II as soon as I can and hopefully it lives up to this game while adding scarier ghosts and environments, but until then, this will be the definition of horror in video games.