I never played clock tower, but Fatal Frame is an awesomely freaky series. I started off renting Fatal Frame II: Crimson Butterfly on a slow night a few years back, after about two hours I first encountered the main villain, and she makes one hell of a disturbing entrance. This is followed up by several freakish story events, and a point where you realize you have to go back to the room where you encountered her, and she literally, laughs at you. And it helps, in a terrifying way, that she has the most freakishly, demented, disturbing, insane, I'm going to kill you through fear, sort of laugh that I have ever heard. My hand was literally trembling so hard I could barely save and turn off my PS2. I just sat there trying to steady my nerves for a while before going to my computer and googling some hello kitty images for the sake of seeing something cute and adorable.

And THAT my friend, is the game just getting warmed up. Later on it does all sort of freaky, my gawd I wish I hadn't seen that, and you thought the RING gave you nightmares, types of images, story telling events, and enemies. The entire game, from the graphics, to the incredibly well written yet super scary story, the voice acting, and the ambience (Fatal Frame is legendary with scaring you just by putting in freaky voices and sounds that come out of nowhere) all work hard to give you the ultimate haunted house trip. It's the kind of game you have to beat, just so you can say you defeated the fears this game made you feel.

I'd honestly say Fatal Frame II is the scariest. But that doesn't mean the other two aren't great. Fatal Frame I and III are both awesome titles that work the fear factor very well. I just think the creators channeled something really special with the second title.

Oh yah, and the combat works to freak you out as well. You basically fight ghosts with a camera, that you use in first person view. It's based on an old japanese superstition that a camera works by stealing a portion of your soul, and this camera is specially created to photograph paranormal phenomenon. Trick is to do the most damage you got to get very close, and to really score points to upgrade your camera and unlock the really cool abilities, and thus survive, you got to wait until the ghost is attacking, thus giving you a chance to take it's "fatal frame" shot, IE when you can combo the bugger with one super devestating shot after another so long as you get the timing right.

So yah, I'd definitely say the Fatal frame series surpasses Silent Hill in every way. As for clock tower, I've never played it so I can't say.