Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water (Switch) Review – Long Live Waggle

Happy (almost) Halloween!

In honor of the spookiest of days, today we’ll be taking a look at the newly-released uh

Remaster? Re-release? Port?

Of Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water for the Nintendo Switch.

Fatal Frame (or Project Zero for the EU and Japanese readers) is a bit of an odd series. Born during the time when Resident Evil and Silent Hill were fresh and new and exciting, Fatal Frame set out to join the crowd but also set itself well apart from its contemporaries. Whereas Resident Evil and Silent Hill take inspiration from western media (ie old Universal Monster Movies, Dawn of the Dead, Twin Peaks, etc.), Fatal Frame truly embraces its Japanese origins while also trying to pin itself as being the scariest goddamn thing you’ll ever play (although horror is totally subjective). But the series’ relevancy has mainly come and gone.

While the first few installments came out at a pretty regular pace, Nintendo decided they wanted to co-own the franchise for whatever reason. The original three games were never on Nintendo systems (although a remake of the second game was made for the Wii) and ever since the deal the series has been mostly dormant outside of a Japanese-only 4^th game (which was being localized for the west but Nintendo stopped the project near completion), a really bad 3DS spin-off, and the 5^th installment Maiden of Black Water for the Wii U. Although it’s curious to see that this new release of Maiden of Black Water is coming to all platforms, and not just Switch. Nintendo still has a hold on the copyright of this game but it does make some wonder if Nintendo is beginning to let go of the series unless this is just a one-time thing.

This review will focus mostly on how the Switch version of the game holds up as opposed to a general review. The main reason for this is because the game is almost entirely unchanged from the Wii U original. I would know since I not only played the game on Wii U when it was released (I was stoked) but also because I booted up my old save file on the system to compare and contrast. Perhaps one of the biggest sources of ire of the Wii U was its gamepad and the way it was implemented in many games. Gamers sure do hate their controller gimmicks. But I’m sure even the most anti-waggle people out there could at least agree that some games were just a perfect match for the controller, and Maiden is one of those games. Having a game mostly focused on using a camera throughout its duration on a console where the controller is a tablet with gyro seems like a perfect match. And it is! The gamepad’s implementation in Maiden of Black Water is perhaps one of the best uses of the gamepad in the Wii U’s entire library. So how does the game work when brought to a console that only has one screen?

It’s really simple. Handheld mode on Switch is borderline identical to how playing “Off-TV” on just the Wii U gamepad played. With very few minor changes. Probably the most obvious changes are the boost in both resolution and framerate. The original Maiden of Black Water on Wii U seemed to run at 720p at 30fps (although the gamepad’s screen was a whopping 480p so you weren’t exactly getting a crisp image), meanwhile the new Switch edition runs at the native 720p in handheld mode and now seemingly boasts an uncapped framerate. I say “seemingly” because while it sure looks and feels a lot smoother than the Wii U original, it definitely isn’t always hitting that 60 fps mark. Another change is the border in the “Camera Obscura” mode being mostly removed which gives the player a much wider field of view. You also can’t tap on the screen to view the map screen which isn’t a big deal but could’ve been nice, I guess. Otherwise, yeah, it plays almost exactly, if not, better than how it did on the Wii U original.

Oh, right they also added a photo mode. In case you like that sort of thing.

Speaking of handheld mode, I’ve been playing the game on the newly-released OLED model of the Switch, and good lord this game looks incredible. While Maiden of Black Water is far from being technically impressive (fans of modern post-processing are gonna be sorely disappointed), the highly detailed models and lightning paired with the slightly over-saturated OLED screen results in a lot of in-game situations looking really, really, REALLY good. I could see this game hitting some “best looking games on Switch” lists.

But what if you’re not here to waggle? What if you predominantly play your Switch mostly docked with a Pro controller? Well, you’re probably not going to like this game much. I spent most of my time playing this game handheld because let’s be fair, that IS the intended way to play. Of course, removing a detrimental component in how the game was designed is going to result in a less-than-ideal experience. And while I understand some folks just outright hate motion controls (and yes, you can turn them off here) whether it be by choice or physical incapability, I do think playing the game “normal” is an absolutely downgraded experience. Even with gyro on there’s a pretty big inconsistency with “aiming” the pro controller and the on-TV image. And aiming with sticks is even worse. I can’t imagine how people playing this game on an Xbox or PC are going to deal with the controls. Even if the controls were perfect, the docked experience on Switch is pretty sub-par when it comes to performance. When compared with the Wii U version we’re still seeing a bump in framerate from 30fps to uncapped and a resolution bump from 720p to 1080p. But that resolution may have caused some issues. Whereas handheld mode is (nearly) smooth as butter, performance in docked mode can only be described as “jittery as hell”. It’s not unplayable bad but it doesn’t get extremely close to. Especially since the dropped frames results in massive delays in input which at times got so bad I had to check if my TV was still in Game Mode or not. And it’s weird because again, handheld mode is practically perfect. Maybe a future patch can add a 30fps cap or dip the docked resolution down to 900p. It feels close to being perfectly fine but I would just recommend sticking to handheld mode only when playing this game on Switch.

All that’s really left to talk about is the game itself and this I’ll keep brief since I don’t think there’s too much to say about this game that hasn’t already been said over the last 6 years. Many feel that Maiden of Black Water is the weakest mainline entry of the Fatal Frame series and I am inclined to agree. The ‘lore’ behind this game’s development is simply that the game was mostly made by new hires. Developers who had never really worked on a big ‘AAA’ game before and it definitely shows. There’s a real lack of polish in a lot of the animations and some of the game’s mechanics that definitely feel like they hamper the overall experience. There’s one mechanic where the character slowly reaches down to pick something up but sometimes a spooky ghost hand will come up and try to grab the player’s hand. You dodge the ghost hand by letting go of the grabbing button but the ‘dodge’ animation consists of the ‘grab’ animation being slightly reversed and the ghost hand barely clipping through the player’s hand while the music completely cuts out. It’s really awkward for a re-occurring mechanic and there’s plenty of similar instances to this throughout the game. But perhaps my biggest complaint with Maiden is simply that the game has no real sense of urgency. Almost every story beat and objective is given to the player as dryly as possible and you always feel like you’re waiting for something to happen as opposed to anticipating something to happen. Which is a pretty big no-no by horror standards.

But I also wouldn’t really call Maiden of Black Water bad either. Maiden feels a lot more akin to like a weird low budget B-movie. With a heavier emphasis on “oh my god that little girl just cut her neck open and gore is just spilling out holy crap isn’t that wacky?????????”. And if you love that kind of zany schlock (I know I do), then you’re still gonna have a generally good time with what the game has to offer. Especially when paired with the game’s fantastic control schemes. If Koei Tecmo was actually printing physical copies of the game, I’d suggest giving it a rental or buying a used copy. But uh, no, I guess you can’t do that. Regardless, I had fun revisiting the game. But I probably won’t play it again anytime soon.

Many thanks to Koei Tecmo for sending us a code for review, and Happy Halloween from all of us at Source Gaming!