Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water - review round-up

Nintendo Everything
Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water delivers a genuinely fantastic horror experience that the Wii U has been missing since its release. For fans of horror, we’ve gotten plenty of great titles on the eShop that have quenched our thirst, but have never fulfilled our hunger. Finally, Fatal Frame gives you the fill from a series that’s spanned over a decade of eerie spiritual photography. The use of the GamePad to serve as the Camera Obscura puts you right in the action and increases the intensity of the horror Fatal Frame delivers. I know the large amount of space that Maiden of Black Water requires may deter some from wanting to install it on their Wii U, but for those that are the utmost fans of horror, this is a game you absolutely want in your library. For North American consumers, get external storage if you have to since Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water will absolutely be worth your time – not to mention it’s just in time for Halloween.

Gaming Nexus
Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water is going to be a tough sell for those who aren't familiar with the franchise. It's got a lot of questionable design decisions and feels like a more bare bones experience than past games of the series. But it's Fatal Frame, these games only come along in a blue moon these days, so savor them while they still exist.

GameSpot
Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water is a well-intentioned addition to the Wii U’s mostly family-friendly library and does an excellent job of transporting you to another place and time. That’s about it, though. Its story and characters are not compelling, and the GamePad-as-camera controls are frequently unreliable. These prevent the game from attaining any real sense of excitement or drama. With too much out of sync--from wildly variable handling to the way you use items to the unconvincing character relationships--Fatal Frame: Maiden of the Black Water isn't anything more than a mediocre experience.

IGN
Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water is a disturbing tale well told. While the GamePad brings the series’ camera-as-a-weapon concept to life in a way that feels very natural, the combat lacks real mechanical variety, which, combined with overly repetitive encounters, undermines the impact of its most terrifying enemies. Fortunately, there’s an abundance of darkness to be found, with some of the most unsettling and stylish scares I’ve experienced in a while.

Nintendo Enthusiast
With all this said, Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water is easily one of my favorite Wii U games to date. It feels like an old-school horror game but has the modern twists such as GamePad use and HD graphics to make it stand out in the gaming world today. It’s a shame that this game didn’t get a physical release, because I fear that it might hurt sales for this game. Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water is a must own title for Wii U owners, and horror fans in general might want to pick up a Wii U just for this game – it’s that good.

TechnoBuffalo
As for established fans, it is a solid game. If you are willing to adjust your gaming posture and stretch your back a bit, you’ll find a nice package here. The new ideas can be a bit gimmicky, but they all work together nicely. It’s the controls, both the motion and dual-analog, that are what hold it back from a full recommendation.

Examiner
Although it's not a terrible game, the Wii U's edition of "Fatal Frame" feels awfully dated, with sloppy controls and the type of presentation you would have expected a few console generations ago.

NintendoLife
Project Zero: Maiden of Black Water has been put through a wringer of doubt and speculation in the run up to its release, but manages to come out the other side still just as drenched with atmosphere and intrigue as ever. Innovation should give fans that spark of renewed excitement, while newcomers are eased into an excellent horror adventure with plenty of time to learn the mechanics. A bit too much repetition and a few rough edges do mar the experience a little, but that absolutely shouldn't stop you from taking the plunge regardless. The water is lovely.

N-Europe
Perhaps the greatest camera simulator on a Nintendo platform since Pokémon Snap, Project Zero: Maiden of Black Water is a solid survival horror which makes great use of the Wii U’s Gamepad.

thesixthaxis
Those looking for a spooky adventure for Halloween can certainly find one in Project Zero: Maiden of Black Water. Taking photos of ghosts while trying to keep dry is enthralling, while Mount Hikami’s forests and shrines are among some of the spookiest locales in the franchise. Once you have gotten used to the mechanics though, it’s far too easy to just plough through the game and the characters themselves are almost as vacant as… well ghosts! An enjoyable treat at least, but not enough tricks.

Lazygamer
Overall, Project Zero: Maiden of Black Water is a superb return for the series, and while it will undoubtedly frustrate most players with its archaic and downright atrocious control scheme, it makes up for its shortcomings with a fun and intuitive combat system, a scary and obscure story and stunning sound and art direction.

Nintendo World Report
Despite these nitpicks, this game is a triumphant revival of a series that has remained dormant in North America for several console generations, and for those who did get to play the Wii iterations there is much new spooky fun to be had. Fatal Frame is still the crowning king of the genre, and Maiden of Black Water holds the best representation of everything that makes the series great. The fact that an English release of this game exists at all is cause for celebration, and should definitely not be missed by fans of survival horror or Japanese ghost stories. Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water is good to the last drop.

Game Informer
Some horror games skillfully wield repetition as a tool, letting players grow accustomed to the familiar to set up scares both subtle and cuss-worthy. Unfortunately, Maiden of the Black Water is waterlogged with repeated environments and monotonous phantasmagorical photo sessions.

Nintendo News
Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water is a heart-racing, immersive survival horror experience thoughtfully tailored for Wii U. The perfect treat for Halloween.

GameRevolution
Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water has a decidedly-Eastern horror feel to it, very much more 1998 Ringu than 2002 The Ring. Eastern spiritualism seeps into the environment and invokes an atmosphere of creepy tension, broken up with interspersed touching or lighthearted moments, and yes, who doesn't want to investigate the paranormal in Samus's Zero Suit or Zelda's full Hyrulian regalia? Instead of the in-your-face outright scare without substance, Maiden of Black Water goes for a sense of dread paired with an insatiable curiosity to know what happened next. It's a welcome re-introduction to the franchise in the West, a hit for the Wii U, which is still trying to prove it can appeal to "Mature" gamers. It will make you wonder just what was that sound down your dark hallway at 3am, and just when did your bathroom faucet start leaking?

Attack of the Fanboy
Fatal Frame: Maiden of the Black Water is a game that horror fans will want to love, yet will come away totally frustrated at the few aspects that ruin the whole. It does so many thing well, with the Gamepad integration and the overall feel of the game. However, the controls, camera, and mission structure destroy a good portion of this work. With a bit of retooling this could be the ultimate survival-horror experience on the Wii U, or this entire console generation, but as it is, Fatal Frame: Maiden of the Black Water is an unfortunate mess.

The Jimquisition
It commits perhaps the worst sin a horror game – or indeed any game – could commit. It is boring. Once you’ve made the audience yawn, you’ve lost your ability to frighten them forever.

Destructoid
Nintendo seemed hesitant to bring Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water overseas, and I'm sure they'll be monitoring how it sells to gauge interest. Twelve-year-old me would be upset with this review, and he'd blame that asshole Zack Furniss for condemning the series to death with a damning review. He'd be in the comments below telling me that I wasn't playing it right, or that it wasn't my type of game. All I would have to say to him is this:

GamesRadar+
Enjoyable combat and bold enemy design can't save Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water. With a dull, repetitive story that abandons any sense of horror, it's a shadow of what it could have been.

GamingTrend
Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water finds a wildly effective new way to utilize the GamePad as the Camera Obscura, and builds some great story and atmosphere. Barring an odd control scheme and some tedious missions, this is a stellar horror title for any Wii U owner.

Daily Dot
Maiden of Black Water is decidedly an example of a game where genre experience and fandom has everything to do with its appeal. Games like this are fan service at this point, and Maiden of Black Water strikes all the correct notes.

ZTGD
It’s great to see a return to the series in the US. It’s been a long time coming, and having been a huge fan since the first game I was worried that some of that appeal might have been lost between releases. Yes, it still does retread a lot of what the series has always been known for, and can comes across feeling as more of the same. This doesn’t matter though, Fatal Frame has been the top tier of ghostly survival horror adventures, and Maiden of Black Water proves you can’t keep a good franchise dead, even when that’s what its entire premise is about.

Digital Chumps
Excitement over the prospect of a new Fatal Frame game was quickly extinguished by the reality of a new Fatal Frame game. Rejecting genre conventions once allowed Fatal Frame to stand alongside Siren, Silent Hill and Resident Evil, but declaring antiquated ideas sacrosanct leaves it, ironically, in a modern version of the same company. Survival horror hit a wall, and Maiden of Black Water isn't the one to overcome it.

VideoGamer
Project Zero: Maiden of Black Water is an old-school horror game with a dash of something new. If you're bored of relentless jump scares and would rather feel the same way you do when you catch the reflection of the fridge light in the glass of your back door, momentarily, irrationally believing something is about to get you, you'll probably get a nice kick out of this paranormal adventure.