Announced on this morning’s Nintendo Direct broadcast, ghost-busting horror game Project Zero 2: Wii Edition is a welcome addition to the Wii library. But why release it now? We investigate…
Project Zero 2: Crimson Butterfly is without question one of the scariest games I’ve ever played. Maybe even the scariest. A graduate of the ‘less is more’ school of horror, the game snares you by building tension through protracted periods of silence punctuated by creepy music, half-glimpsed shadowy things in corners, excellent use of lighting and a solid narrative. When the scares come – and come they do – it’s thanks to the aforementioned elements that they’re so effective.
It also doesn’t help that your only weapon in Project Zero 2 – or Fatal Frame 2 to give it its Japanese name – is a special ghost-munching camera, the Camera Obscura, and when you’re using said camera the game switches you to a first-person viewpoint, leaving you feeling horribly vulnerable. Anything could creep up behind you while you’re behind the lens.
And it’s the game’s myriad ghosts that do the creeping around, lunging at you from behind doors and windows or out of wardrobes or chests or sheds in spectacularly awful fashion. Project Zero 2 may not be a game with any gore, but it’s certainly not for the faint-hearted.
Then there are the two characters, the cute sisters who follow each other around (well, for some of the game they do. Don’t ask about when they get separated…). One of them has a limp, dammit, and starts to get tearful if you leave her lagging too far behind while you’re in the shoes of the non-limpy sister. As if you weren’t feeling vulnerable enough to start with…
Above: The Project Zero: Wii Edition trailer from this morning’s Nintendo Direct broadcast. Brrrrrr.
So, a great game is Crimson Butterfly, and we’re looking forward to its appearance on Wii, the Wii remote being particularly suited to the game’s torch and camera gameplay. But as the headline to this article suggests, it’s all rather curious that Project Zero 2 has now been ported for a European release.
The original game was released in Japan nine years ago. Nine years! The PAL version followed a year later on PS2 and then a director’s cut made it to the original Xbox a year after that, but it’s still seven years since Project Zero 2 last made an appearance on these shores.
What happened? Did someone at Tecmo find the code down the back of a sofa last week like you would a crumpled five pound note and think ‘Aha, I know what we should do! Let’s get this on Wii. Where’s that localisation document?”
While that’s probably not the case, why on Earth wasn’t the port done several years ago when Wii was at the height of its powers rather than in its twilight days with Wii U around the corner? Bizarre. Even more bizarre is that Fatal Frame 4: Mask Of The Lunar Eclipse was released in Japan in 2008 but was never localised for Europe or America. Why couldn’t we have that game instead?
Here’s a theory: Project Zero and its camera mechanic is obviously very neatly tailored to fit Wii U’s controller and telly combo. So could the arrival of Project Zero 2 on Wii be a precursor to either a new Fatal Frame/Project Zero Wii U game, or to a Wii U localisation of Mask Of The Lunar Eclipse? Or indeed both. That would make sense, right?
The Wii port of Crimson Butterfly clearly wouldn’t cost too much in development cash or man hours, so it’s a fairly low risk release for Tecmo, especially if they can rely on Nintendo backing for the game too. Western gamers get reintroduced to the franchise, and their appetites are nicely whetted for when Project Zero Wii U comes along, Project Zero Wii U is a massive sales success, everyone’s happy.
Mystery solved, then. Possibly.
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Brings up good points. Why now, brown cow? Maybe there really is a Wii U localisation of Mask Of The Lunar Eclipse.
