Wednesday 3 August 2011

Scaring Myself Silly


Yesterday I woke up with the urge to play a scary game, and began playing Fatal Frame/Project Zero. I have to say, it's pretty terrifying, and I'm not even that far through it yet.
The story goes that an old mansion in Japan is haunted due to a dark ritual that was performed to stop a curse befalling it. It was known as "The Strangling Ritual," and every half a century a girl was chosen from birth by the master of the house and then kept isolated til the time came for the ritual to be performed. Ropes were tied around her neck, arms and legs, the other ends tied to 5 teams of oxen, which would then all walk in different directions, ripping her apart as a result. The ropes were then soaked in the girls blood, and left over a portal where the supposed curse came from.
However, one year the girl was helped by a young man trying to save her, and fell in love. This meant she was "unpure" and couldn't be used in the ritual, so the master got angry and killed everyone in the household in horrible ways, before killing himself. Years later, another family moved in, but mysteriously vanished.

At the beginning of the game, a teenage boy called Mafuyu goes in search of a journalist who is writing about ghosts, and is led to the mansion. He is taken by the ghosts, and his worried sister, having not heard from him for 2 weeks, goes to find him. She too is led to the mansion, where she discovers that it is haunted. She finds the Camera Obscura - A special camera that traps ghosts when you take a photo of them - and begins the hunt for her brother, finding out about the rituals on the way.

The story is made all the more terrifying in that it is actually based on an urban legend in Japan. Nobody knows if the story of the haunted mansion is true (It most likely isn't) but there have been first hand accounts of ghost sightings from people living nearby, and there are many old stories about the rituals.

The game loves jump scares (which, in my opinion, are the worst kind of scares!) and you are forced to come face to face with some very freaky looking ghosts, since you have to take a picture of them to catch them. All in all, it's been really fun to play, and I'm particularly interested in the "true" back story. I would definitely recommend it if you're a fan of horror games!

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