There’s a well-known saying about which states that one ‘shouldn’t take a knife to a gunfight’, the upshot of which being that one should always prepare his or herself properly for tasks that lay ahead. With that in mind, the fact that Project Zero 2: Crimson Butterfly sees you taking on an entire village of bizarre and angry ghosts whilst equipped with nothing more than a special camera could lead you to wonder whether the game’s developers actually want their lead characters to make it through the story in one piece.

I jest. Following on from the sleeper-hit of Project Zero (Fatal Frame across the pond), Crimson Butterfly follows the tale of sisters Mio and Mayu, whom wake up after a pleasant nap in a forest to find themselves lost and on the outskirts of a bizarre, haunting village. Mayu becomes captivated by a crimson butterfly and follows it into the village, meaning that an increasingly desperate Mio becomes the focal point of the adventure as the player guides her around the village, discovering terrible secrets and history as she goes.

Now, I don’t scare easily. I’ve sat through countless Silent Hill games, Condemned on the 360 and a plethora of Resident Evil over the years, but when it comes to genuine chills, Project Zero 2 tops them all. Lonely, frightened ghosts lurch at you from all angles whilst the game’s setting is a relentlessly dark, empty place. Basing most of its story upon Japanese mythology, Crimson Butterfly leaves you feeling isolated and genuinely insecure the further you plunge into it. At no point are you ever fully convinced that things are what they seem, and more than often the game throws something at you that will make you jump or not feel like walking around the next corner until you’re completely sure you’re ready to face any potential threat.

Once that threat does present itself, self-preservation is based around the much-discussed camera that Mio wields. The basic premise of the camera is that, once used, it switches the game to first-person and relies on you keeping each ghost locked in the centre cursor. The longer the ghost is kept there the more charge the camera builds up, and the more powerful an ‘attack’ will be dealt upon it once you press the shutter. As you progress through the story and defeat more ghosts, power-ups will become available which range from shortening the time it takes your camera to charge to increasing the damage each attack will deal.

Adventuring takes place in the third-person and sees the game fit neatly into a similar kind of feel that the Silent Hill games have. Whereas the first game in the series disappointed many by having a fairly simple task mechanic which saw you wandering between locations picking up items, Crimson Butterfly feels much more varied and offers a whole range of puzzles and situations that allow progress through the game. In doing so it ensures that, as much as the unsettling atmosphere might not make you want to, you have to explore each area and look for secrets and solutions.

The story itself is enticing and interesting enough to maintain your interest throughout, with the ever-increasing fragility of the two sisters and the deepening crisis that they are sliding into providing some vivid imagery and some truly startling moments. The nature of the horror portrayed is far subtler than your typical Resident Evil title and relies on gently nudging the player in the ribs with bizarre and shocking portions of chills that only serve to strengthen the ties between player and character.

Given the nature of the game, striking a balance visually and sonically was obviously going to be important. Graphically the game mixes dark, grainy surroundings with occasional vivid doses of crimson. Light is also cleverly used to trick the player into thinking some areas are safe when they are not, and vice-versa. Audibly, the game makes stunning use of the most powerful sound available: silence. Not noticeable so much when it’s there, you certainly miss it when the game throws nightmarish gurgles, screams and clangs at you in a relentless assault on your senses. At times you practically find yourself begging for the noise to subside again and give you some respite.

Overall, Project Zero 2 offers an intriguing, compulsive slice of puzzle horror. Cleverly blurring the lines between genres and offering the player an experience which will hook them in and drag them right the way through the to conclusion, Crimson Butterfly now means that Tecmo’s own brand of horror stands as tall as anything else the genre has to offer.