Review of Project Zero: Maiden of Black Water – In the Mountains of Madness

The Project Zero series (also known as Fatal Frame) started and rose around the same time as Resident Evil or Silent Hill, but unfortunately it never managed to achieve the same success and attention as the two more famous “sisters”. “. row. This is most likely because other games use classic firearms, while Project Zero relies on the somewhat more obscure “ghost photography” method for its combat system. However, this photo is as eventful as if it were a shooting, but it is difficult to explain this to a mass audience. However, this year we saw the return of the series, even though it’s just a remaster of the fifth installment originally released in 2015 for the Wii U.

• Platform: PS5 (peer review), PS4, X1, XSX | S, Switch, PC
• Publication date: Oct 28 2021
• Producer: Koei Tecmo Games (Japan)
• Genre: survival horror
• Czech location: Not
• Multiplayer: Not
• Data to download: 13 GB
• Game time: 15+ hours
• Price: 999 CZK (couples)

Twilight on the cursed mountain

The densely forested Mount Mikami has always been a site of ritual suicides and spiritual ceremonies associated with local water resources and territories to which people attribute supernatural qualities. As a result of this story, you will find several temples and shrines on the slopes and top of the mountain, as well as an abandoned hostel at its foot, devastated by a terrible disaster. The only modern cable car is also abandoned, and some say that on foggy nights, the house of an obsessed writer and explorer accidentally appears on the mountain, trying to unravel the mysterious power of the “cursed” mountain.

Since the discovery of local mystery and the real roles of individual participants in the story form the basis of the exciting plot of the game, I will deliberately not dwell on other aspects of local supernatural phenomena. The mountain is deadly, especially after dark or during fog or rain. Killer spirits and demons roam there, and a terrifying essence of evil breaks out to the surface, trying to completely penetrate our world. Anyway, I don’t understand how some reviewers or even players can say that the game isn’t (enough) scary. I myself am quite “detoxified” by Japanese (fiction, movie or book) horror films, but still the atmosphere of twilight on Mt. Mikami managed to drive me to the skin, as did some brutal scenes of murders, suicides or the execution of seven-year-old children. Not to mention the fact that ghosts and ghosts managed to attack me so unexpectedly that the remote control almost fell out of my hands.

The atmosphere of twilight on Mt. Mikami managed to get goosebumps.

Throughout the fourteen chapters of the game, you will gradually alternate between several playable characters whose fates are intertwined with each other, and thanks to this you will share among some of them, for example, equipment and inventory. Most of the chapters are devoted to exploring one of the key locations in the mountains, however, you will also get an interesting boost in the form of protecting your own home from the invasion of demonic forces that will reach the city after sunset. Fans of Japanese horror films like The Ring or Cairo will be in their element and will surely forgive the pair for their biggest flaws: clunky exploration controls and relatively regular reworking of locations.

Slow exploration, wild action

Movement and exploration of game locations is relatively traditional in the style of the third-person survival horror genre (the camera is dynamic, although often “tied” to the rail). Sometimes you need to find a clue, you collect notes with all sorts of hints and explanations of the story, but above all you need to look for healing items and “ammunition” in your weapons or films of various strengths in your camera obscura. weapon. In terms of content, the game’s exploratory content is compelling and traditional, but the slowness and clumsiness of character control is often annoying. However, I dare say that it is worth overcoming this, by far, the game’s biggest weakness – mainly because it more than compensates for the very successful management of the combat system.

As soon as one of the ghosts or demons gets in your way, it’s time to bring your camera’s viewfinder up to your eye. At this point, the game switches to the view through it and the controls change to very fast and dynamic, so you have no chance of catching up to the target of often fast moving opponents. In the case of the PS5’s DualSense controller (equipped with a gyro motion sensor), you also have the ability to “measure” the nuance and tilt of your viewfinder by turning the controller, which is very precise and sensitive. Together with the combo system, shooting at enemies turns into wild action, for which no automatic shooter will be ashamed. As such, the duel sequences alternate with the slower polling sequences and are a very healthy core of the gameplay of the entire title while maintaining some really interesting lore and history at the same time.