Where's Your Face At?--The Spirit Camera Nintendo Event

Apparently, someone was having a late dinner on the roof of the hotel and stuck their legs over the side. She was kicking them a bit, carefree as anyone could on a 3 story building with no visible railing. Reminds me of the dangling arm in the round window in Fatal Frame 2. Only without the associated fear of a ghost dropping down from the ceiling.

Once we were allowed inside, they divided us into a small group, with no more than maybe 7-8 per group. We were led inside the hotel, and up the small stairs. If you've ever visited the Winchester House in San Jose or even any historical house from the 1800s, you might remember how...TINY everything is, from the narrow hallways to the narrow staircases. While the stairs of the San Remo were thankfully sized normally rather than Sarah Winchester's thin but wide stairs (for her arthritis), everything in the hotel was small. This pic was taken while I was climbing up the stairs and Doc was already in the hallway. I look like I was only a foot or so below him, and I almost was.

Gotta love Holga shots. XD

After being led to one small room that barely was able to hold the giant flat screen tv for the trailer demo and a quick how-to on game mechanics from a staff member, we were conducted by other staff dressed up in period costumes and ghostly make-up, including red eye contacts and darkened eyes. It was akin to a theme park haunted house attraction, but more intimate. The ladies carried red flickering electronic candle lanterns, while the men loomed by stairs, corners, and hallways, keeping their eyes locked on you. One fun staff member snapped her teeth at me as we entered room 42, which made me giggle. I loved it (and we all know my loathing about haunted house attractions. I guess I was giddy with excitement over the event).

Room 42 was infamous for haunting, as we learned in the room. We were introduced to the history of the hotel by a local paranormal investigation group, who shared stories about the ghosts roaming, such as a little girl who knocks on the doors too low of adults to knock on, and even gave us a listen to an EVP they picked up in this room. Apparently, a long time occupant eventually committed suicide via gunshot to the head, and his corpse was found, incidently, right where my feet where; the ghost hunters were kind enough to show us with a flashlight pointed at my toes. Awesome. I haven't been this close to a death site since I heard that the occupant of my current home was where the last occupant died. Morbid? Perhaps, but I just really, really want to see a ghost one day. :(

We were led from room 42 to hallways leading to our demo rooms, past creepy old woman animatronics in rocking chairs, black lit murder scenes, and even room dioramas (one of which I accidently walked into). Finally, we were led into small rooms, 2 each (even one each, for my friend since he was in our group of 3), all equipped with 2 3DS's with long tethers, a pair of headphones, swivel chairs for comfort, and a copy of the game.

Doc, who had never played any Fatal Frame before, opted to stand and play rather than sit. Experience with AR games like Face Raiders led both of us to conclude seats were not required for a game like this. And I was glad we did, since I heard those that sat down ended up getting tangled in the tethers when in combat. XD

The earphones were a must, both for ambient immersion in the horror game, as well as--for you FF vets out there--to help you locate the ghost during combat by listening and triangulating their position. Sometimes, the red filament wasn't enough to track the spirit, whom in this demo was the Masked Boy, one of the known antagonistic ghosts from preview images.

The first thing we were able to do was pick up the AR diary book, and flip to the appropriate page, in this case page 9, which shows a drawing of a child whose features were all shifted to the side and all over the place.

Looking at it with the 3DS, it would periodically chant, "face", until you figured out the puzzle. I spent the most time on that, since it was difficult to figure it out. Most AR markers sit flat, but the diary wants you to pick it up and fiddle with it. When I couldn't figure out what to do, I looked around, and lo and behold, Maya was sitting in the room with me, off to my right. It was kind of nice, since she gave me progressively more obvious hints the more I spoke with her. Its nice. After all, this time since the main character of the game is yourself, you don't have to go at it alone. Though Maya doesn't seem to do much more than encourage you and look pretty (and look pretty she does, as one of the most beautifully rendered females in the series), it made the game more unique.

When I finally cracked the AR puzzle and engaged in combat, it was every bit as exciting, difficult, and intuitive as I hoped for in a 3DS Fatal Frame game. Now, I have an actual camera in my hand, and I have a viewfinder to use. The shutter releases were the trigger buttons, intuitive to say the least (more so than the wiimote controls of 4), and tracking the ghost was as easy (or difficult, if you've never tried taking pictures of moving objects) as pie--that is, if you're not sitting. This game is, without a doubt, the most fun of the series, the logical conclusion to a unique and severely underrated horror series.

After the puzzle, and then the inevitable combat sequence, it took me roughly 3-4 minutes to put him down, accounting for the 2 hits he nailed me with (damage is shown by your health meter as well as cracked "glass" on your screen) and figuring out his movement patterns--keep the viewfinder on him at all times, and when he disappears, he'll reappear in the same place, then lunge. A heavy knock on our door just after I finished and tried to help Doc signaled the end of our demo time. The door opened to the man at right, who I swear to god, looked 7 feet tall. He was ENORMOUS. I loved it. We were led from our demo rooms to another hall, where a screen was installed in a window dressing and depicted an unfortunate zombie victim being mauled against the "window pane" or screen. I want one of those for our place. :3

Once we passed the zombie window, we were led back to the entrance, where we exited the hotel, gave our encouraging thumbs up to the line outside, then ushered to the hotel bar lounge, where more demo 3DS's were clustered. We were free to play other portions of the game, such as taking spirit photos or combating ghosts. In fact, the copies in the 3DS's looked as if they were complete copies, since we could select other missions in the main game. Not wanting to spoil myself, I simply limited myself to taking pics and munching on the snacks provided by the hotel.

I noticed a stereoscopic camera that the staff used for interviews, so there's a chance we'll see parts of the event on Nintendo Video in the future. :3 I even got to see one of the new pink 3DS's, which made me want one even more. :(

There wasn't in the way of much free swag, only these neato lenticular hologram cards with ads for the game on them. I nabbed a few myself. One of the mini games in the game was a neat variant on the Face Raiders type of AR game. You took a picture of someone's face, such as your own or someone else's, which would be superimposed over a ghost model in the game. It would be given random stats in speed, health and stamina among other stats, then you would then need to combat it to exorcise it. It was a cool little game, and its amusing to see male faces get stuck onto kimonoed yurei, leering at you.

The other mini game was more akin to Real Zero, which allowed a user to take pictures with the camera, then super imposed ghosts over the image. They would come with flavor text, and presumably would be added to a spirit list; the ghosts I was able to see were from different games across the series, like Chitose from Crimson Butterfly or the Shine Carpenter from Voice of the Tattoo. You could keep the photos saved onto your SD card, and share them with others. In fact, in the Iwata Says interview, it was commented that the game could be called a "portable fear" for "singles parties". An odd way to talk about a horror game to be sure, but I can't tell you how amused I was to see how much fun I was having with this one mode.