If an otherwise-levelheaded gamer were to tell you that the most recent PS2 "XtReME" snowboarding title was "like, too much of a rush, dOOd..." well, you'd be tempted to pour your "XtReME" sports-drink down the front of his X-Games T-shirt, and rightly so; but take a well-intentioned warning, here -- superstitious (and just plain overly-sensitive) types should stay the hell away from Fatal Frame III: The Tormented. You see, as much as any current video game can, this one conveys the eerie sense of supernatural forces right there in the darkened room with you (you are playing with the lights off, aren't ya, sissy?)

Following in the camera-oriented, decidedly-Japanese, "shudder-bug" footsteps of the Fatal Frame series, this third installment introduces a new player-character -- a professional photographer named Rei Kurosawa, figuratively and literally haunted by guilt over the death of her beloved fiancée, Yuu (dead in a recent car crash...with Rei behind the wheel at the time).

It sounds like a harsh-enough, nasty premise for a "game," but it gets much, much worse: Bereaved Rei soon believes she sees her own dear departed fiancée during a photo-safari at a supposedly-haunted location. What follows is a gradual descent into an ever-disintegrating supernatural borderland between Rei's mournful, modern-day waking life and the "House of Sleep" -- an old-Japan dream-world filled with dark hallways, crumbling shoji screens and the vengeful dead.

In terms of game mechanics, little has changed from earlier Fatal Frame games. Here, as before, the player's only weapon against the restless dead is the mysterious Camera Obscura -- a strange old camera that, for reasons never thoroughly explored, has the ability to dispatch the souls of the ghosts it captures on film. This photographic conceit regularly turns the mostly third-person spooky adventure into a sudden, disturbing, in-your-face first-person "shooter." The closer (and better-framed) a shot you take with the Camera Obscura of an angry, shrieking ghost, the more damage you deal to said unearthly attacker, but letting the angry dead get too close is obviously dangerous, sometimes fatal...

Players control multiple characters over the course of the game; in addition to Rei, The Tormented features the return of Miku Hinasaka (from the first Fatal Frame) as well as Kei Amakura (Rei's journalist friend who, as it turns out, is simply no good with ghosts). In fact, each character has his/her own unique strengths and weaknesses; Rei, a photographer, is a natural with the camera, but her slinky frame isn't suited for moving heavy objects; her assistant Miku can use the Camera, but is also physically small enough to get into crawl spaces and other places the others simply can't.

Fatal Frame III: The Tormented hasn't strayed too far from the mostly-excellent FF formula -- and that means some of the downsides are intact, too. It's paced slowly at times, especially at the outset -- albeit one that builds to sublime heights (depths?) of creepy unease, waiting for the next howling horror to come clawing and shrieking out of the walls. Also, it's easy to get stuck if you accidentally overlook some small but crucial game element, or neglect to explore some out-of-the-way darkened room, but the story won't progress until you deal with it.

From its first installment, the Fatal Frame series made a place for itself somewhere between the paramilitary machismo of Resident Evil and the creeping-chills unease of Silent Hill -- and The Tormented walks a spooky line between nasty, jolting surprises and mounting, hackle-raising dread: Watch every darkened corner of the screen for suspicious details, and things moving that ought not to move. It's a first-person shooter with the macho stripped away, the disconnection of the Camera ready to rip your soul out through your eyes. Play in the dark for maximum effect ...and alone at your own risk.