Water, for example, is a prominent element, both in terms of story and gameplay. There are a few other mechanics which feel similarly unbalanced and underdeveloped. It’s powerful enough to render all the others pointless, unless you want to deliberately handicap yourself. But after some experimentation, I found myself using the same lens – the one that dealt the most damage – all of the time. Different characters also have slightly different cameras, too – one, for instance, can take four pictures in rapid succession. “ Camera lenses can be swapped, unlocking secondary abilities like being able to freeze ghosts or forcefully knock them back. Considering how well the GamePad is implemented, it’s such a shame these more basic controls aren’t better. Occasionally, I found myself accidentally leaving a room I had just entered or heading directly into the embrace of a ghost I wished to avoid. This is all the more frustrating since you’ll often want to turn around quickly and put distance between yourself and an evil spirit. This is a game with a lot of tight corridors and small rooms, and it’s fiddly to manoeuvre with any precision. The general characters’ controls, however, are much less intuitive and precise. It pleasantly reminded me of a light-gun game, but instead of being tethered to the TV, you can spin around with the GamePad, and effectively hunt ghosts around your living room. If you take the perfect shot, with the ghost and stray pieces of its spirit in view, you inflict more damage. When you activate the camera, the screen on the GamePad functions as the camera’s viewfinder. The only protection characters possess is a camera obscura, a mechanical device which allows you to exorcise spirits by taking pictures of them – an idea the Wii U’s GamePad was made for (or vice versa). There’s a fair bit of backtracking to be done, but the threat of repetition is well countered by the feeling of uncanny suspense created by this new information. Sound design and lighting obviously play an important part, but simply knowing what had taken place here in the recent past was just as effective. It’s so potent that when I found out what terrible event had occurred in a particular location, I became much more unsettled the next time I had to pass through.
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