There's nothing more frightening than the great unknown. The unexplained creaks in the middle of the night, the implausible short burst of swirling winds that pass through your room and brush your tiny hairs on the back of your neck occasionally - the fear and anxiety your mind can cause you, working you into such a frenzy that you have to check over your shoulder, just for piece of mind. Ghosts. They might exist. There is no proof that they don't and those that do claim to have encounters are written off as crazy nutjobs before they have a chance to fully explain themselves. But what if they do exist? What if they are real? What if there's one there right now, watching me type this review? Although I've just looked over my shoulder to see that nothing is there, that's hardly conclusive. All these questions, all these unexplained phenomena, this very babbling introduction was all caused by Project Zero 3: The Tormented (or Fatal Frame as it's known overseas) - you can't possibly start to imagine the amount of emotional damage that this game has caused me.

I love this game. I'm afraid though. Afraid in two ways. I'm afraid of this game, period. I'm also afraid I'm going to have to love to hate this game. To be honest, brutally honest, I haven't played this game much at all. I've given it more than enough hours for the purpose of this review, but I haven't really scratched the surface. I love it more when it's turned off. I love it more when it's paused. I love it more when I'm saving it rather than playing it. I'm sure most of my playtime statistics were accrued pondering over the pause menu.

Not that I'm a wimp when it comes to horror games, insert a wisecrack here Mr Editor, sir - but this game could be considered to be walking the fine line between fact and fiction. I find most horror amusing. Zombies aren't that scary and fat men with smelly armpits, string vests and chainsaws, apart from the smelliness and the chainsaw parts, aren't that scary either. But ghosts. Well, like I said, they could be real. My location, the place I live, is quite secluded anyway, and the history of this very house holds tales of ghostly goings on. I'm in no fit state to play this game, I thought to myself, as I walked the haunted dark corridor.

Unlike other horror games, Project Zero 3 doesn't have you kill these horrific ghosts you come across with conventional means. Instead, you have to take pictures of them. I suppose you don't even have to do that, but if you want to gain any kind of score, you have to look through the lens at these ghosts and take pictures of them. Besides, you're going to be scared taking pictures or not - and seeing as taking pictures of ghosts makes them disappear, mostly, it's probably in your best interests to be snap happy. Some ghosts actually come after you and try to kill you, but most just appear when you least expect it, play with your mind, and scare the living shit out of you. Let me give you some examples.

For one, you're walking slowly down that haunted dark corridor; it's worth mentioning that your Japanese le Femme can't really run at all - pressing the run button only brings you to your destination a little bit more quickly. So the camera cuts to a window as you run past. It's thundering at this moment in time too. And this ghost, quite short, female, long hair - hair that's covering her face - almost floating over the ground appears. If that's not scary enough (and you're probably sat in your chair laughing at the pettiness of it all) try hearing this bitch talk in her haunting, spine chilling voice - something along the lines of "Don't leave". Don't leave? Screw you, I'm holding this run button down the hardest I can and I'm getting out of here! If you try to get your camera out quick though, she might disappear. Which then leaves you looking over your shoulder to see if she's behind you. She's not there. You can hear her. Oh God, run, run, run - forget the points, I have to get out of this claustrophobic corridor.

You might take a picture of this ghost and the whole picture preview might come out distorted, morphed and twisted; it will play with your mind, the game will torment you. Ghosts now have more realistic facial expressions, as they come for you, their eyes so wide, their mouths so small, their faces too sorrowful - some images take some getting out of your head, that's for sure. The story in the game is kept to a minimum really, although the plot does unfold as you progress. I didn't really play for the story in the end though; I was more or less going through to test my courage and to get the highest possible score I could without staining my under crackers. You're playing as that Japanese bird, Rei, who is a freelance photographer, trying to grieve for her fiancé who died two months prior in a car accident that was her fault. Things can get really creepy later on, a plot that I'm not going to reveal here.

Scarier still are the almost unbearable voiceovers in this game. Actresses with hardly any fear in their voice cover the Japanese girls in conversation, professional voiceovers that wouldn't sound out of place doing a season of Desperate Housewives, more seductive than scary, and they just don't deliver that oomph I'm looking for. I wanted to here authentic Japanese screams and whimpers. The sound department more than makes up for its poor voiceover efforts though, with the best sounding eerie effects my ears have ever had the pleasure of listing to - well, make that displeasure. The ghostly laughs, the taunting moans in the distance, the spine chilling music that only a musical genius could pull off, they're all here.

Although the game isn't a graphical masterpiece, it plays a massive part in making you so very scared in the first place. Like I said earlier, the morphing faces, the ghosts with ghastly expressions, they all contribute to making your boxers brown. Most of the game is quite dark, which means playing this game in the sunlight (chicken) or with the light turned on for that matter (bawk-bawk!) is difficult - darkness on darkness works the best, even if it does add to the intensity of the game. Rei, the main character also looks very shagadelic, I wouldn't mind a piece of that myself. She takes pictures of ghosts, I'm not as scary as a ghost, but maybe I'm in with a chance? [Well you are a Yorkshireman, so that's probably scary enough! Biding-his-quip-time Ed]

Project Zero 3: The Tormented, as it's officially written, is one bloody scary game. There a few problems, such as control, the slow running and the fact that the game sports a hell of a lot of backtracking, meaning you'll have to visit those same places every now and again, which can get rather tedious from time to time. Sometimes it even feels like you're playing though a film that forces you to go forward - rather than a game, the whole walking around with a torch thing is good, but it's not shotgun and herb good. Project Zero 3 sports quite a bit of replayability, and you can go over it again with new ghosts appearing in addition to the old ones, to add a little bit of variety. There are also goodies like costumes to unlock, so the twelve hour game might last you double or even triple that amount if you like your horror games. I'll just issue a warning that this game isn't for the faint hearted - don't buy it in haste, or you'll have plenty of time to repent at leisure when it's sat in your PS2, not getting played, because you dare not unpause it.

Reviewed by Dexter Pearson for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).