Project Zero: Maiden of the Black Water Review

Dive Back In:

Maiden of the Black Water is the fifth entry in the excellent Project Zero / Fatal Frame series, a spooky ghost-snapping franchise that is up there alongside survival horror greats such as Resident Evil and Silent Hill. Despite having given us some of the genres best games (with PZ3 being a personal favourite and PZ2 being the world’s) the series has struggled, at least in the West, to the point where we didn’t even get the (excellent) Project Zero 4. I’m glad to see Maiden of the Black Water avoid such a fate, and it demands every genre-fans attention and support.

Story:

Much like the games that came before, Maiden of the Black Water is a fairly standalone experience. There are links to previous games, but if you’ve never played a title in the series you’re not going to be at a loss. Much like its predecessors PZ5 is about good looking Japanese people coming into possession of the Camera Obscura and exorcising ghosts with it in spooky locales.

Said locale of Maiden of the Black Water is Mikami Mountain and the structures and forests surrounding it. This fictional mountain draws unashamed illusions to Japan’s own Fujisan and its very real Suicide Forest (Aokigahara) that rests at its base. Mt. Mikami is also infamous for suicide, with people coming from all over to end their life amongst its sea of trees.

PZ5 is, undoubtedly, one of the darkest games I’ve played on a Nintendo console. Suicide is still a fairly untouched taboo when it comes to gaming – a lot of publishers like to avoid the subject, though some are braving it with mixed results – yet Maiden of the Black Water is obsessed with suicide. Japan has a depressingly high suicide rate, and their culture recognizes this in their movies, books and videogames. The game’s handling of the subject is sometimes crass, with people literally killing themselves violently in front of your character, but it’s not so blunt as to lose its impact or meaning – especially in terms of narrative. I’m still undecided on whether the title is tasteful or not, but it’s certainly important stuff that demands attention.

Snapping ghosts, both passive and malicious, and grabbing notes and journals left lying around reveals a lot about the way these undead lived – and often died. It’s these mini-story threads that are the most interesting, especially when some of the more unique ghosts re-enact their deaths as part of their battle. An early highlight is a woman who repeatedly throws herself off a cliff at you, and should you capture her mid-descent – a tricky feat – you’ll do massive damage.

Gameplay:

Maiden of the Black Water is old-school, unapologetic survival horror, and I love it. Whilst many of the genre staples have moved on to more action-orientated entries that undeniably draw in bigger crowds, Koei Tecmo have stuck adamantly to their roots. For the uninitiated, this means a whole lot of pick-ups, backtracking and tank controls.

This is probably going to sound like torture for some gamers, but there will be a small group (an ever dwindling one) that have been itching for something like this. The controls are awful, especially when you’re in the middle of a tense battle, but I clicked with it anyway because I got my Tank Operator License a long time ago with Resident Evil. Elsewhere the throwbacks are more welcome – huge areas to explore, item-based health regeneration and interesting puzzles made good on my nostalgia, and the very unique camera based battle system is still great – though maybe not perfected.

The Camera Obscura – your one tool against spirits and spectres – can damage ghosts when it captures them on its film. Letting the ghost get closer to you, getting multiple ghosts in frame or drawing out spirit orbs and snapping them aswell all do much more damage. It’s a neat mechanic that has served the series really well, with a couple of twists in every new incarnation. In Maiden of the Black Water, the gamepad intuitively becomes the camera itself. You can hold it up and use its screen as the viewfinder and snap pictures with the benefit of three-sixty degree movement.