Consequently, the loss of agency felt by the player as she's fighting the spirit in the first person viewpoint (who, by the way, also possesses the ability to teleport and attack from any direction!) creates a supremely unsettling experience.įF2 also suppresses the agency of a player through the linearity of its level design. By contrast, the first person viewpoint restricts the player through a narrower field of vision, limiting a player's knowledge and demanding a more improvisatory approach to combat. Games scholar, Kelly Boudreau, speaks of the way the third person perspective creates a broader field of vision for a player, enabling her to make more educated decisions in regards to gameplay. This feature - of forcing the player to switch perspectives while fighting an enemy - is a clever one. During fight sequences, the perspective changes from the third to the first person as the player attempts to exorcise the spirit by taking pictures of it using the Camera Obscura – the only means of ‘damaging’ the enemy. While the game is mostly experienced through the third person perspective, this viewpoint shifts dramatically when engaging in combat. Not only does the game's excellent use of predetermined framing (a common feature in survival horror games from the early noughties) make a player feel trepidation as to what lies ahead, it's the game's highly original manipulation of perspective that is its real genius. The developers of FF2 knew this and suppressed player agency in a number of creative ways to instil feelings of terror within the player. Focusing solely on the game’s opening chapter, in which the twins explore the game’s first environment, Osaka House, I'll explore the myriad techniques FF2 uses to elicit fear from the player and explain why it is I think this game has the capacity to terrify like no other.Īny survival horror developer worth their salt knows that increasing a player's feelings of disempowerment is a highly effective strategy for enhancing their fear. Following the fate of twins, Mio and Mayu, as they’re spirited away to an isolated settlement hidden deep within the Japanese mountains, the game has a reputation for terrifying its players - as evidenced through its frequent inclusion in several ‘scariest games of all time’ lists. Tecmo's Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly (referred to hereon as FF2) remains, in my opinion, one of the greatest survival horror videogames of all time.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |