Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly

Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly, known in Japan as Zero: Akai Chou, still ranks among the scariest games ever released on the PlayStation 2, with many players and critics counting it among the greatest survival horrors in history. Twins Mio and Mayu Amakura wander into the abandoned village of Minakami, trapped between the world of the living and the dead because of an ancient Crimson Sacrifice Ritual that was never completed.

The only defense against the ghosts isn't a weapon in the traditional sense but an ancient device called the Camera Obscura, which can capture and harm supernatural beings. When taking a photo, the view switches to a first-person viewfinder perspective, so the player loses track of the surroundings exactly when it matters most. The combat system rests on a paradox: the closer you let a spirit approach and the better you capture the moment right before its attack in a so-called Fatal Frame, the greater the damage you deal, forcing the player to suppress the instinct to flee. Points earned from photographs can be used to upgrade the camera and add lenses with different effects, giving even the horror its own small layer of progression.

Tecmo, or rather the internal Project Zero team led by Makoto Shibata, leaned into an oppressive Japanese atmosphere drawing on folklore and Shinto rituals tied to twins and death. The story is deeply sorrowful, full of the tragic fates of the village's inhabitants and a recurring curse motif that the player gradually pieces together from diaries and memories; the ending also has several variants depending on how far you get in uncovering the mystery. Visually, the game made the most of the PS2 hardware of the time through dense fog, static camera angles, and thoughtful lighting that creates a claustrophobic feeling even in empty rooms, and the sound design, full of noise, footsteps, and whispers, is equally crucial. Crimson Butterfly later received expanded versions and a remake on other platforms, and the game still appears on lists of the best horror games of all time, thanks in part to the originality of its ghost-photography mechanic, which the genre still has nothing to fully replace with.