Horror games thrive on making you feel powerless, and it’s hard to feel anything but that when your only weapon against ghosts is a dusty, old camera. Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse ($49.99) marries a cool, phantom photography mechanic with distinctly Japanese dread. Discerning players may notice that some elements of this surprise remaster haven’t aged well, but you should definitely consider picking up this game (available for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and last-gen consoles) if you're looking for a one-of-a-kind horror experience.

Fatal Frame, Resurrected

Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse is an HD remaster of the fourth series entry, a game that was originally released on the Nintendo Wii in 2008. In fact, this is the first time that the game received an American release.

Mask of the Lunar Eclipse doesn't receive the full Metroid Prime Remastered treatment, but the new version represents a significant visual bump over its predecessor. The character models are more complex, and they come with bonus costumes (although the Nintendo-themed costumes have been removed). Piercing lights have extra detail. Ghosts fade in and out with more ethereal menace. Grainy filters offer a spookier ambiance to decaying locales. You may spot the occasional low-res wall texture, but the game has been reasonably upgraded to contemporary standards. That said, I experienced mild slowdown and loading pauses while opening doors, but that may be due to playing Mask of the Lunar Eclipse on the Nintendo Switch instead of on a powerful PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X/S.

It also helps that Mask of the Lunar Eclipse has a strong and enduring art direction. The Resident Evil franchise taps the globe for its inspirations, but Fatal Frame is a proudly Japanese horror series. With its emphasis on restless spirits and ritualistic curses, the series fits right alongside stuff like The Grudge and The Ring. You feel lost in a fog haunted by entities who are barely there, but still dangerous. The gameplay revolves around snapping photos of supernatural beings, so it helps that Mask of the Lunar Eclipse has strong imagery to produce genuine frights, unlike Ghostwire Tokyo.

The Fatal Frame games have shared plot elements involving the creator of the magical Camera Obscura at the center of the game. However, the gameplay is the real connecting thread. Newcomers can enjoy Mask of the Lunar Eclipse’s story as a standalone experience. It’s a pretty fascinating story, told across multiple intimate perspectives and timelines. What is Moonlight Syndrome? Why can no one remember anything? How did all these people die?

Mask of the Lunar Eclipse features subtitled Japanese voice-acting for its cutscenes, but much of the story is told through various notes, tapes, and film strips you collect along the way. Sometimes those documents have vital hints for making progress, but many others flesh out the lore. Unlike Fatal Frame 5, Mask of the Lunar Eclipse is rated Teen, so the spookiness is more cerebral than outlandishly gory. 

Lights! Camera! Die!

Overseas, Fatal Frame is called Project Zero, but Fatal Frame is such a cooler name for describing the game’s central mechanic: defeating ghosts by taking their pictures. Whenever you encounter a ghostly enemy, the Camera Obscura basically becomes a gun. Pressing a Switch trigger button swaps the game view to a first-person perspective where you aim to get the ghost in your sight. Pressing the other trigger takes the shot. 

Many in-game factors combine to make all this way harder than it sounds. Ghosts move in erratic patterns and teleport without warning; meanwhile, your camera takes time to recharge after each shot, so getting the right angle while staying alive is a constant source of tension. Closer pictures deal more damage, but put you in harm’s way. With expert timing, a “fatal frame” shot does massive combo damage, but you'll be wide open for a costly counterattack if you miss. 

Defeating ghosts gives you points to spend on health items and more powerful film stock. You can also customize the camera with new lenses with different attack types, as well as gems that buff stats like strength and reload time. Another playable character swaps a camera for a flashlight that's great for damaging multiple vengeful specters at once. All that’s missing is a vacuum and a proton pack. 

Fatal Frame’s camera combat is a high point. It’s creative and fear-inducing as you fumble and fight to regain footing in claustrophobic corridors. The camera also has uses outside of battles. You can take pictures of spectral items for puzzle hints or catalog wayward roaming ghosts as you would with critters in New Pokemon Snap. In this remaster, there’s even a full-on sandbox photo mode for arranging custom snapshots. 

Dark Room

When you put down the camera, Fatal Frame’s more dated elements become apparent. Survival horror games rarely have the most fluid movement—again, to make the player feel weak. Mask of the Lunar Eclipse has intentionally disempowering mechanics, such as stretching out the time it takes to pick up an item so a ghost hand may grab you. Overall, the game feels stiff and clunky. Even with a dedicated quick-turn button, it's a chore to line yourself up with a target. A modern control scheme with more sensible button-mapping options is included along with the classic controls, but that doesn’t do much to address the overall feel. 

The game has a fantastic atmosphere as a whole, but individual rooms seldom stand out. You’ll comb over the same haunted hotel and hospital environments many times during the 10-hour journey. Besides a few notable locales, many locations blend together—an issue I also had with the otherwise excellent Dead Space remake. It's a problem because much of the game involves exploring and remembering which rooms you should go back to after finding key items or learning new information. 

Despite the gameplay repetition, it's satisfying to uncover more of the map, unlock new floors, and see how previous areas were secretly connected. You feel like you’re conquering a space that previously felt extremely oppressive, all while diving further into darkness. In that way, Mask of the Lunar Eclipse reminds me of the Resident Evil 2 remake, even if it doesn’t reach that same lofty creativity and quality standard. 

Flawed Photo Fun

Exciting camera exorcisms and revamped HD J-horror aesthetics make Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse a fresh experience, even if it’s still clearly an old game. Although it’s not a perfectly preserved corpse, this is a cool entry in an underappreciated part of the horror video game canon. It can finally rest at peace knowing it had a second chance to take care of unfinished business. 

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