PlayStation 2: Silent Hill 3 and Fatal Frame 2 (December 2003)

I've been looking at recent reviews for both silent hill 3 and fatal frame 2 series. I guess everyone has a different taste for horror games and movies. Some liked the Silent Hill series better than the Fatal Frames series. Well I can't blame them, it's like comparing the two versions for the movie "The Ring" some liked the Hollywood version but others prefer the Japanese version. For me the 1st Silent Hill was scary, but the latest (Silent Hill 3) wasn't that scary, it was pretty distrubing and pretty gory. I got headaches playing the game because of the graphics. The idea of introducing horror there is by using gore, lots and lots of gore(lots of blood, bloody corpses and bloody walls). Of course you'd get nervous when your about to meet a monster and your running low on ammo, but beyond that, that much gore is just giving me a headache. I liked the storyline from the SilentHill series, it's just the gory stuff that I don't like. With the Fatal Frame series on the otherhand, gives a very creative approach in the horror genre. It's not the usual shoot and kill the monsters with guns or other weapons. It's using a camera against ghosts. I find this more frightening since when your taking a picture of a ghost you are looking at its picture plus the eerie sound of its attack. Aside from having a zoom in view of ghosts' faces that you are trying to kill, there are also the eerie sounds that could make your skin crawl. The game environment of fatal frame 2 is much better in comparison to that of Silent Hill 3, (well i didn't get any headache just playing the game for 1 hour, but had to stop since it made my skin crawl from taking face pictures of ghosts and trying to make them smile hehehe:P). Another feature that I like in Fatal Frame is the heartbeat function, this function activates when there is a ghost nearby that you could hear a heart beating. Together with the vibration feature of the analog controller it gave off a surprising effect. The only thing I find on the downside regarding Fatal Frame 2 was the character movement. Mio, was moving like a snail even while running. Well I guess that was how the game developers wanted it. Though I wish I could be able to set the run speed to a much higher degree.

Well that's it, I liked both games series and their stories. Both have their ups and their downs. If you like your horror game with much more gore I would suggest Silent Hill 3, but if you like a game with less gore you could try Fatal Frame 2 (Rei : Crimson Butteryfly).