Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse

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There’s a lot to be said for fans. Sure, it’s fashionable these days to discard their views – such as when they say bad movies like the Star Wars sequels are bad, and don’t @ me – but they also do a lot to keep their favorite franchises going even when nobody else will. With the Fatal Frame series, for instance, the Wii title Mask of the Lunar Eclipse that’s languished in Japanese obscurity since 2008 before a group of fan translators worked up a technical solution to unofficially localize the game.

That sort of intense interest might have been what inspired Koei Tecmo to finally give dedicated fans what they want with their official translation of Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse now readily available for any English speaker / readers who’d like to check it out. Better late than never!

via YouTube

Years after a serial killer makes off with some girls from a sanatorium, the survivors of the incident return to the scene of the crime to confront their demons. Those demons turn out to be a little more real than metaphorical, of course, and our protagonists find themselves under siege by the supernatural. Over time, we learn about a mysterious ritual that took place on Rougetsu in and around the sanatorium and how that ties into the horrifying events of the modern day.

If you’ve ever played a Fatal Frame game before, this one’s not going to change things up on you too much. You’re still engaging in Resident Evil-style exploration, looking for keys and whatnot to proceed through your spooky sanatorium surroundings. Puzzles? Yeah, we’ve got ’em. Backtracking? You bet your sweet bippy you’re going to be backtracking. A variety of costume options? Well, sure, though that’s probably not what springs to mind when you think of survival horror, we’ve got that too.

Every so often you’re going to get into a scrap with a ghost, at which point it’s time to bust out the ol’ Camera Obscura and get to shooting. Well, you’re shooting photos, at least. Guns are dangerous and can hurt people. Your camera, on the other hand, can only hurt ghosts, and it’ll be especially good at that if you take some really fire pixxx. By timing your attacks just right, you’ll do more damage, and you’ll deal particularly effective photographic death if you snap right as a ghost is attacking. Beyond that, you can customize your camera and load up various flavors of battle-film, so there’s a fair number of options available. It’s an unusual and interesting combat system, though veterans of the series will have very much seen it before.

Graphically, Mask of the Lunar Eclipse is a pretty solid experience. Keeping in mind that this was originally a Wii release back in 2008, the jump in presentation quality is surprising. It’d be difficult to call this a modern game, but it would be pretty easy to convince me that it originally came out on the PS4 or such. There weren’t any technical or performance issues (at least on PC), so that makes for an easy recommendation if you’re trying to decide on a platform.

Fatal Frame fans have been spoiled of late, thanks to the ports and localizations of Maiden of Black Water and now Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse. It’s pretty nice to no longer have to go to extreme lengths to get a fan-localized version of this game running on the Wii, and while I’d never want to dump on the efforts of hard-working fan translators, I appreciate that we’re finally able to play an official version. Newcomers to the series don’t have much to lose starting here, while long-time fans are going to be chomping at the bit to re-enter this world once again.