Tecmo's frightening Fatal Frame series has always been the epitome of quality and the company's third installment, The Tormented is yet another solid product that offers up lots of scares. The creepy environments, pulse pounding gameplay, and intriguing story all fall into place to produce yet another enjoyable survival horror adventure, even though it's horribly obvious that Tecmo really needs to make some changes to the franchise if it intends to push it forward.

Unlike previous Fatal Frames, this one allows you to play as three different characters throughout the course of the 12-15 hour adventure. You begin the game as photographer Rei Kurosawa, a young and attractive female who is drawn into a supernatural realm after catching brief glimpses of her recently deceased boyfriend. However, even though she's technically the story's main character you'll also take control of Yuu's pal Kei Amakura and Fatal Frame series familiar (and favorite) Miku Hinasaki. Each of them has unique abilities that must be utilized in order to progress, and the variation helps to keep the game even more interesting than it already is.

Another unique feature is the ability to travel between two different realities, the nightmare realm and the present, and you'll need to visit both in order to solve some of the various puzzles the game tosses your way.

Aside from those changes, The Tormented is by and large a standard issue Fatal Frame. You explore creepy locales with a supernaturally charged camera and dispose of numerous ghosts by snapping their pictures. And like the other games in this series, you'll still need to hunt down a bunch of cookie cutter items, then back track in order to use them. It's all good stuff, yet it's definitely not as entertaining as it used to be, primarily because games of this type have begun to evolve. Resident Evil 4, for example, uses a much improved control system than its predecessors and back tracking is practically non existent, but Fatal Frame III exists within this old school reality where characters move like they have a Super Scope up their asses, they constantly need to be maneuvered to pick up small objects, and the gameplay, while still entertaining, is basically everything that series fans have come to expect. Not that there's anything particularly wrong with this, especially if this is the first Fatal Frame you're going to play, but this should be without question the last time Tecmo ever uses this formula.

Even the intro feels too familiar for its own good. After a very short cut scene of Yuu grieving over her boyfriend's dead body, things transition to a brief interactive sequence inside of a decrepit Japanese mansion, and over the course of several minutes the developers toss ghostly images into the mix every time she enters a room. This is great stuff for first time players, but I find it to be completely passionless and rushed.

Predictability is another area where The Tormented falters. Since the gameplay is practically unchanged I always have a fairly good idea what to expect. I'm not saying that the game doesn't throw any curves because it most certainly does, but having played lots of scary games, it was a bit too easy to figure out when I was in danger.

Even with all of these criticisms pressing against its very fabric, Fatal Frame III is still a good videogame. Sure, the whole camera mumbo jumbo feels more like deja vu than something truly unique, but that doesn't make it awful. Not being armed with a bazooka and having to capture photos of absolutely terrifying creatures still sends multiple shivers down my spine and causes all of the hairs on my arms to stand at attention.

The multiple environments are also scary as hell, and the graphics, while similar to the last two games, are still quite impressive. However, the ghosts are the true stars, and Tecmo certainly deserves a round of applause for creating another batch of disturbing characters.

Fatal Frame III feels like a rehash but I'm willing to let that go because it's only the third game in the series. It's also pretty friggin' enjoyable and best played with all of the lights off. However, I think Tecmo has now approached a point where it needs to do some serious tweaking to reinvent the franchise, because while it's cool having a trilogy of titles that march to the same beat, a similarly fourth entry will begin to tarnish the series. But that's looking a bit too far into future, and with that being said, neither fans nor newcomers will be disappointed with The Tormented.