Yon the triumvirate of classic Japanese horror game franchises, Project Zero (known as Fatal Frame in its home market) has been the most overlooked by Western gamers, which is a real shame. While Resident Evil is all about zombie gore, and Silent Hill focuses on psychological tension, Tecmo’s horror series offers straight-up supernatural horror, masterfully employing folkloric tropes and ghostly enemies that would be familiar to anyone who loved Onryō’s films. and Jidaigeki as Onibaba, GuOn, and Ring. When this game originally came to Wii 15 years ago, it wasn’t even released outside of its home country, a surprising omission considering it was co-directed by Goichi Suda, creator of the cult hits Killer7 and No More Heroes. Now, Koei Tecmo has produced a revamped version, allowing a new generation to discover an excellent addition to this genuinely creepy series.
The action takes place on the remote Rogetsu Island, where five kidnapped schoolgirls were once discovered, mentally scarred and unable to remember the strange ritual they had been forced to participate in. Years later, two of the survivors have returned to discover the truth of what happened to them, only to find an island filled with vengeful spirits and haunted buildings. You play various roles throughout the game as you explore an abandoned mental hospital, a lighthouse, and other haunting locations, searching for clues to the past. Your only weapon is the camera obscura, a device that allows you to see ghosts and capture their tormented souls in photographs.
Newcomers definitely shouldn’t be expecting a kind of modern reconstruction similar to Capcom’s Resident Evil remakes. Though graphically updated, Lunar Eclipse remains an old-school survival horror experience, with icy pace, awkward camera angles, and deliberately confusing controls. Save points, health drops, and extra camera reels are rare goods to be guarded closely. Each encounter with a vicious specter can easily end in catastrophe as you strive to pull off a 180-degree turn while aiming your camera, adjusting the correct lens, and timing your snapshot to deal the most damage. It is incredibly tense and demanding, requires patience and planning, and a batch to step back into the dark and gothic environments.
But wow, the atmosphere. The initial location of the hospital is a masterpiece of horror game architecture, a labyrinthine trap of narrow corridors, wood-paneled dining rooms, and musty libraries. Strange noises follow you everywhere: distant banging, crying children, radio static, banging, footsteps and scrapes – famous audio leader Masafumi Takada dropped the entire album of Survival Horror sound effects in this game. Naturally, there are plenty of puzzles involving masks, paintings, phones, intercoms, safes, padlocks, and access codes, and veterans of the 1990s Japanese horror gaming scene will love revisiting this spooky setting.
But I think anyone who wasn’t playing back then is going to have problems. Characters move painfully slow, and the run button just makes them crawl a bit faster as if they’re about to have some kind of very embarrassing accident. In any mode other than easy mode, the ghost battles are relentless, and searching each room for shiny items to pick up becomes a chore after a few hours, detracting from the ruined beauty of the interiors.
If you’re looking for a nostalgic J-horror experience and are prepared to put some effort and work with the control scheme, Mask of the Lunar Eclipse is an enjoyable and highly atmospheric adventure, with plenty of brilliant moments of fear and fear. The spirits are wonderfully crafted, and seeing a black-eyed ghost child lurking behind you, or in the corner of a room, never fails to send a shiver down your spine. For those of us who believe that the Project Zero series should be as revered as Resident Evil and Silent Hill, it’s been a delight to once again enter its chamber of horrors, with only a camera for cover and the remains of a ancient ghost tale ready to be exhumed.
* Project Zero: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse is now available on Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo Switch and PC
