Spirit Camera: The Cursed Memoir

Many may bemoan the fact that Spirit Camera: The Cursed Memoir is a bite-sized gimmick of an adventure, but it stays true to the Project Zero series, mixing in some intriguing new gameplay techniques, and has plenty of depth for those that bother to scratch away the surface and delve deeper.

The only 3DS game that rivals the AR integration in this game is the card collection that came with the handheld. It's just too bad Spirit Camera's play length is disappointingly short, even when you include the non-story modes.

Spirit Camera: The Cursed Memoir is an interesting experiment in AR gaming that expands the possibilities of the 3DS beyond that of just a gaming handheld.

Criminally short. [May 2012, p.88]

The short Story mode was the most disappointing part, but I liked using the AR booklet and my own environment to make a largely satisfying experience.

If you enjoyed the system's preinstalled AR Games, consider this a title worth investigating. [April, 2012, p.82]

Isn't anything more than a tech demo. [July 2012, p.86]

A tragic shame. The game offers up incredible potential, both for new creative possibilities in design and in unorthodox but engaging controls using the AR and camera feature of the 3DS.

There's no shortage of ideas on display, featuring some of the best use of AR tech on the handheld to date, but ultimately the 3DS feels more like a curse for the franchise, rather than a blessing.

Spirit Camera takes on the ambitious challenge of offering to the players a ghost hunt in augmented reality. A direct spin-off of Project Zero, this title is full of scary but fun ideas, and also excels in terms of sound design. Too bad though that one will have trouble sometimes to dive in the game because of the need for light for it to run smoothly, an AR requirement.

When it works, the walls between reality and the Diary of Faces melt away, exposing an adventure truly suited to the 3DS. Unfortunately, the hokey story and technological limitations do the opposite, reaffirming the reality that you're just standing in your living room, spinning in place.

Does an excellent job building suspense, and so long as you have the proper lights, works quite well. Not exactly the game that'll save AR, but after several years of failure, it's a step in the right direction.

The ultimate knock against Spirit Camera is that it just doesn't have very much content. It's well-produced while it lasts, but it doesn't last long.

A brilliant idea that works well, but it's far too short to offer value for money. [June 2012, p.106]

A wonderful idea, but poorly executed. It doesn't work in the dark and it loses it's horror essence during the day. For once we're glad a game only lasts three to four hours.

A good idea has not gone that high as it could. Puzzles and minigames for 3DS cameras, sometimes they fail and hinder the fun. Short and shallow.

The underlying idea behind Spirit Camera: The Cursed Memoir good, but the overall package isn't up to snuff.

With a longer campaign and more content, Spirit Camera could have been a revolutionary experience. As is, it fails to go much farther than Face Raiders did - and that was free.

As if it were an experimental title in augmented reality, Spirit Camera shows that stories can be told using this technology, offering an inmersive experience in which you can blend the console with the players' environment. Despite these good things, the game is too short and has its flaws, especially in the interaction with the cameras, But it is a bold game, with some interesting ideas, which acts as a pioneer in a new genre.

Short and uninspired. Spirit Camera tries many good ideas but most of them are poorly executed.

Spirit Camera is one of those games with a funny concept and that, while not resulting in the expected scale, always end up creating a certain willingness to finish the narrative presented.

An original idea of a ghost-chasing and solving puzzles through your augmented reality is, however, buried by its brief stereotypic gameplay with technical issues. Buy it at a bargain price, otherwise not.

Spirit Camera is a nice concept but one that's a little too demanding to be easily enjoyed. It's full of neat spooks and tricks but there are far cheaper and better ways of getting your freak on.

The AR booklet offers an interesting concept and a few great puzzles, but Spirit Camera lacks the necessary compelling gameplay and scares to keep you on the edge of your seat.

Great atmosphere and good potential for this Project Zero spin-off, that unfortunately fails in every other possible way.

I was thankful that this experience didn't last over three hours total, but players who paid money for it might not be as pleased. Spirit Camera has some extras to check out, but most of them involve repacking campaign content or taking photos with silly ghosts inserted into them. You can always play through a harder version of the campaign with added text and a cute new outfit for Maya, but I wouldn't recommend it.

Spirit Camera is an interesting tech demo but a disaster as a retail title: in fact, it lacks so much in gaming elements you could hardly call it a video game.

Unsatisfactory survival horror shows an interesting concept but every positive feeling is wiped out by its overall shortness and a weak presentation of augmented-reality. [Issue#220]

With less focus on unspectacular Augmented Reality and more focus on suspense, psychological terror and atmosphere this could have been a great horror game for Nintendos mobile system.

If Spirit Camera wasn't so tied to the AR booklet, the experience might be a little better, but the inherent problems with the 3DS' camera sensitivity and being tied to the booklet really drags the game down. Add to that a boring storyline and uninspired puzzles and you're left with a pretty worthless experience. No real reason to pick up this ghost story, folks. The AR games that came with your 3DS are better.

A game broken in so many ways there's no point in even trying to press "start" in the menu screen.

While Spirit Camera: The Cursed Memoir has a genuinely interesting premise, it's let down early by its own technological limitations, and the disappointment is fairly consistent from there.

A laughably bad ghost story whose broken technology and shallow gameplay cannot sustain even its meagre two hour running time.