Okay, so I suck and haven't been keeping up the interim reviews, but I have sort-of-permanent access to my own computer now; I'm still working on getting employed so that it will become PERMANENT permanent access, but in the meantime, have an old lengthy review.
So I recently picked up a copy of Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, because it's a remake of the original Silent Hill game, which rocked, but is now just a liiiiittle hard to come by. Unless you want to be a pirate and steal the ISO off the internet. But then you don't have a hard-copy disc that'll work in an unmodded Playstation, and then the FBI laughs at you just before they slap on the handcuffs.
Anyway, I wanted to see how they did things after changing everything around: Unholy amounts of fog and falling ash became frost and snow, which was intriguing, and the game profiles you as you play. Meaning what, exactly?
Why, it can freak you out more effectively as you progress, of course.
Now all this sounds nice: A complete reboot of Silent Hill, with the original protagonist, Harry Mason, running around a seemingly-abandoned, frozen-over resort town looking for his missing daughter and encountering horrors custom-tailored for you, the player. Real creepfest, right?
It's all nice... in theory.
I won't lie. I'm disappointed here.
SH:SM isn't scary, at all, unfortunately. The game starts out well enough- Harry swerves to avoid something, the car slips on ice, and he loses control and crashes into a fence.
And then once you get control, you're in a therapist's office.
Yup.
This is how the game profiles you as you play: By asking you questions during intermissive segments. How was high school, for you? Were you the jock, the nerd, the class clown? What does family mean to you? Do you drink? If so, have you ever gotten thrashed for the hell of it?
The game then proceeds to load a level according to how you answered the topic of the segment, and proceeds to watch what you, as Harry, interact with, profiling you according to what you, the player, take interest in- though to be honest I couldn't see any change in one level to the next. Same crap, different place.
Let's change rails here for a bit.
There are, as some of you may well know, three distinct layers in the world of Silent Hill. But for those who don't, let me explain: There's Reality (The world outside Silent Hill, where all is as it should be. Reality is never visited in the games, except in epilogues), Purgatory (the 'second layer', where monsters exist, ash falls, humans are nowhere in sight, and fog reigns supreme. Otherwise indistinguishable from Reality. Half of the games take place here), and there's Hell (the 'nightmare world', where monsters are stronger, faster, and freakier, and the world becomes much more disorienting. The other half of the games take place here).
There is no Purgatory. Either that, or there is no Reality, and there are no monsters in Purgatory.
While we're at it, there's no combat system either.
Yyyyyep.
While Harry is in the Nightmare World, he has to run his tail off to escape from everything, slamming through doors, vaulting over ledges, crawling under fallen objects, and slamming obstacles into the way of the things chasing him.
This, kinda blows.
Especially since they changed the control scheme.
Harry now controls like Master Chief, with one control stick moving him, and the other (or the Wii remote's motion sensor) controlling where he looks. Meaning that to get him to turn away from the monster running straight at him, you have to use two different control sticks.
That wouldn't be a problem if you could raise a shotgun and blow the SOB away. But you can't. You have to run away awkwardly from things that are slightly faster than you, with a control scheme that makes you move like a tank, while said things jump on you and try to choke you to death. Oh yeah. You can pick up flares to ward off the creatures, but they only last so long, and then it's back to being chased.
There is also no exploring Hell. Because if you don't go straight from point A to the end of Hell, Silent Hill's trademark creepy mummies can now run like Olympians, and will catch you and choke you to death. Over. And over.
Your ultimate goal is to get from the beginning of where Hell took over to point B (being where Hell ends, wherever that is), after slamming through wrong door after wrong door and dying at least once because they caught you once too many while you were trying to figure out exactly where in Hell you are, because the programmers were bastardous enough to put looping paths that can take you back to a room you've already been in, if you don't slam through the correct door the first time.
Navigation is a huge problem here. The game offers you very little in where to go in either Purgatory/Reality or Hell. Just, here's a waypoint, have fun finding your way! And in Hell, it isn't even that nice. La, la, la, oh crap, things are icing over, time to run blindly and die at least once because the new controls combined with confusing paths fail.
The game was developed for Wii, initially (I'm playing on a PS2), which presents a new problem: It's gimmicky as hell. Puzzles consist of the following: Oh no! There is a locked door! I must now find the key by locating and going to one of the extremely few points in the room I can truly interact with, and solving the order of events there! (Find window, move cursor to nails, hold X and drag away from sides to pull out nails, move cursor to window pane, hold X and drag toward side to open, reach in, click X to grab key.)
Harry now lacks a radio to tell him where monsters are (because there are none, unless he's running like a panzy from things trying to choke him). Instead, he has a cell phone, and with it, he can take pictures and find "echoes" of past events, none of which seem to have any relevance to the plot of him trying to find his lost daughter. How is this done? When the cell starts to crackle and his flashlight starts to flicker, move toward (!) the event. If the crackling dies off and the flashlight goes steady, you're going the wrong way. If, however, the flickering becomes worse and the interference on the phone gets louder and more freaky, you're getting closer.
Yes, that's right. It's "Hot and Cold". With tank controls.
Actually finding the events and discovering what happened is interesting enough, but, ah... You know, I don't honestly care about some kids playing The Choking Game, and one of their brothers dying because of it. Unless it's part of the plot, 'cause, you know, story tying things together makes the trouble taken to seek it out, worth it.
The cell phone does have two legitimate uses, though: First, it contains a GPS. This is the replacement for the Silent Hill town map from the original game, and it shows you where your next objective is, and the locations of all the doors. Which is kinda useful. Except when it's not.
The other use for the cell phone is to save the game. Yep, Harry's cell saves the game.
Besides that, it can also view the photos you've taken thus far, any text-message "echoes" you've encountered, any voicemails you've gotten ("echo" or no), and can call either home or Cybil Bennett (who is either a cop or a barista, depending on the answers given for the first set of questions. I got her as a cop, like she's supposed to be, but that's beside the point). I'm not entirely sure what purpose this serves, but it seems like a neat add on.
Now what DO I like about Shattered Memories?
Well, being a remake (though it could hardly be called as such), there's a fair number of references back to the original, including street names and locations, which were references and tributes in and of themselves. Depending on how you answer questions, the game can be completely different each and every time you play. Some of the locales are legitimately unnerving (The equivalent of McDonald's, completely dark, with the crackling of the cell phone and the failing flashlight? Hell yes I wanted something to attack me.) Shadow children are back in full force (either hailing the next takeover of Hell, an "echo", or just being creepy), and I noted the bridge from Silent Hill: The Movie at the end of one level, which was an amusing tribute. Harry being able to vault over fences and such, even when not in Hell, is kinda cool, and the idea that the game is trying to get under my skin and into my mind is really nifty, even if it's completely failed thus far.
Final breakdown:
Graphics: 8/10- Nice, but sometimes suffers from graphical fail, especially in Reality/Purgatory. Then again, developed for the Wii, originally, which isn't the most graphics-intensive console out there. THEN AGAIN, Silent Hill (the original) was developed specifically to sidestep and work with the limitations of the Playstation (low draw distance became fog, etc.).
...And no, I'm NOT talking about the 'echo' spots.
Sound: 8/10- Par for the genre. There are subtle touches here and there, like a mysterious rattling in a vent above you following you, and what I percieved to be another set of footsteps following me in the woods, but I wasn't sure about that one. There's this one really wierd noise I can't quite pin down, when Harry runs. I think it's the keys in his pocket. The monsters simply didn't make freaky sounds, though, so points off for that.
Akira Yamaoka does the soundtrack (again, which is EXCELLENT, because he does REALLY good work), but his talents are sadly wasted here, because...
Effectiveness: 3/10- This is a horror game. Not just any horror game, but one that actively tries to get into the player's head, in a series that revels in getting into the player's heads. So why aren't I scared? There's no way I should be less freaked out running away from things trying to kill me than when I had the option of taking everything on with a lead pipe and a small pistol... In fact, getting lost in Hell and dying because of it is just extremely frustrating, not frightening. (EDIT: The reason for this is probably two things: In every other Silent Hill, you can die fighting the monsters, and it means game over, where in Shattered Memories it slaps you on the wrist and sends you back to a checkpoint. That's one. Two, the therapist scenes where it profiles you are 'safe points'- there's no danger and the player can take the time to calm their nerves before returning to the game, which defeats the whole fricking purpose. Safe points do not- I repeat NOT- exist in any other SH. Except maybe save rooms, which still retain a creepy atmosphere.)
Fun: 5/10- It'd be tons better if the aforementioned problems didn't exist.
Final Score- Rent it for some cheap thrills, don't buy it. I'm trading this one in now that I've finished it (something I NEVER do, because I like keeping games). Preferrably, for Silent Hill 2, which I've heard is the best in the series and was really freaking creepy... A welcome change from the stale, frustrating mess that is Shattered Memories. (EDIT: Yeah... it is. I'll review SH2 later, after I've replayed it a little. :) )
Team Climax does make some noble efforts. Really, they do. But for the couple of gleaming, unsettling, wonderfully awesomely creepy moments they do present, the rest of the game is a complete wall-banger and bears only passing resemblance to the original it attempts to remake. The game could have been brilliant. It really could! The ending is an example of how brilliant the rest of the game could have been! But unfortunately, there's just no follow through, and that makes me a very, very sad gamer.
And now I address you, the team, directly: Your goal, as the crew handling the Silent Hill franchise (which I understand a lot of oldbies think you're doing poorly, just so you know), is to
-keep tensions high,
-give us some truly freaky crap
-psyche us out through liberal use of the environment,
and if you're remaking one of the games,
-make it close to the original (not a carbon copy, mind you, just close), while tossing in enough new and updated content to throw off those who had mastered it, thereby making it a new, yet nostalgic, unnerving, yet excellent, experience.
Team Climax, I am disappoint. Shattered Memories had so much wasted potential that it's not even funny. I believe you really are trying, so the next time you release a SH title I'm actually interested in, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, and hope you improved.
This game gets a 6 out of 10. A for effort, but it flunked the assignment.
So I recently picked up a copy of Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, because it's a remake of the original Silent Hill game, which rocked, but is now just a liiiiittle hard to come by. Unless you want to be a pirate and steal the ISO off the internet. But then you don't have a hard-copy disc that'll work in an unmodded Playstation, and then the FBI laughs at you just before they slap on the handcuffs.
Anyway, I wanted to see how they did things after changing everything around: Unholy amounts of fog and falling ash became frost and snow, which was intriguing, and the game profiles you as you play. Meaning what, exactly?
Why, it can freak you out more effectively as you progress, of course.
Now all this sounds nice: A complete reboot of Silent Hill, with the original protagonist, Harry Mason, running around a seemingly-abandoned, frozen-over resort town looking for his missing daughter and encountering horrors custom-tailored for you, the player. Real creepfest, right?
It's all nice... in theory.
I won't lie. I'm disappointed here.
SH:SM isn't scary, at all, unfortunately. The game starts out well enough- Harry swerves to avoid something, the car slips on ice, and he loses control and crashes into a fence.
And then once you get control, you're in a therapist's office.
Yup.
This is how the game profiles you as you play: By asking you questions during intermissive segments. How was high school, for you? Were you the jock, the nerd, the class clown? What does family mean to you? Do you drink? If so, have you ever gotten thrashed for the hell of it?
The game then proceeds to load a level according to how you answered the topic of the segment, and proceeds to watch what you, as Harry, interact with, profiling you according to what you, the player, take interest in- though to be honest I couldn't see any change in one level to the next. Same crap, different place.
Let's change rails here for a bit.
There are, as some of you may well know, three distinct layers in the world of Silent Hill. But for those who don't, let me explain: There's Reality (The world outside Silent Hill, where all is as it should be. Reality is never visited in the games, except in epilogues), Purgatory (the 'second layer', where monsters exist, ash falls, humans are nowhere in sight, and fog reigns supreme. Otherwise indistinguishable from Reality. Half of the games take place here), and there's Hell (the 'nightmare world', where monsters are stronger, faster, and freakier, and the world becomes much more disorienting. The other half of the games take place here).
There is no Purgatory. Either that, or there is no Reality, and there are no monsters in Purgatory.
While we're at it, there's no combat system either.
Yyyyyep.
While Harry is in the Nightmare World, he has to run his tail off to escape from everything, slamming through doors, vaulting over ledges, crawling under fallen objects, and slamming obstacles into the way of the things chasing him.
This, kinda blows.
Especially since they changed the control scheme.
Harry now controls like Master Chief, with one control stick moving him, and the other (or the Wii remote's motion sensor) controlling where he looks. Meaning that to get him to turn away from the monster running straight at him, you have to use two different control sticks.
That wouldn't be a problem if you could raise a shotgun and blow the SOB away. But you can't. You have to run away awkwardly from things that are slightly faster than you, with a control scheme that makes you move like a tank, while said things jump on you and try to choke you to death. Oh yeah. You can pick up flares to ward off the creatures, but they only last so long, and then it's back to being chased.
There is also no exploring Hell. Because if you don't go straight from point A to the end of Hell, Silent Hill's trademark creepy mummies can now run like Olympians, and will catch you and choke you to death. Over. And over.
Your ultimate goal is to get from the beginning of where Hell took over to point B (being where Hell ends, wherever that is), after slamming through wrong door after wrong door and dying at least once because they caught you once too many while you were trying to figure out exactly where in Hell you are, because the programmers were bastardous enough to put looping paths that can take you back to a room you've already been in, if you don't slam through the correct door the first time.
Navigation is a huge problem here. The game offers you very little in where to go in either Purgatory/Reality or Hell. Just, here's a waypoint, have fun finding your way! And in Hell, it isn't even that nice. La, la, la, oh crap, things are icing over, time to run blindly and die at least once because the new controls combined with confusing paths fail.
The game was developed for Wii, initially (I'm playing on a PS2), which presents a new problem: It's gimmicky as hell. Puzzles consist of the following: Oh no! There is a locked door! I must now find the key by locating and going to one of the extremely few points in the room I can truly interact with, and solving the order of events there! (Find window, move cursor to nails, hold X and drag away from sides to pull out nails, move cursor to window pane, hold X and drag toward side to open, reach in, click X to grab key.)
Harry now lacks a radio to tell him where monsters are (because there are none, unless he's running like a panzy from things trying to choke him). Instead, he has a cell phone, and with it, he can take pictures and find "echoes" of past events, none of which seem to have any relevance to the plot of him trying to find his lost daughter. How is this done? When the cell starts to crackle and his flashlight starts to flicker, move toward (!) the event. If the crackling dies off and the flashlight goes steady, you're going the wrong way. If, however, the flickering becomes worse and the interference on the phone gets louder and more freaky, you're getting closer.
Yes, that's right. It's "Hot and Cold". With tank controls.
Actually finding the events and discovering what happened is interesting enough, but, ah... You know, I don't honestly care about some kids playing The Choking Game, and one of their brothers dying because of it. Unless it's part of the plot, 'cause, you know, story tying things together makes the trouble taken to seek it out, worth it.
The cell phone does have two legitimate uses, though: First, it contains a GPS. This is the replacement for the Silent Hill town map from the original game, and it shows you where your next objective is, and the locations of all the doors. Which is kinda useful. Except when it's not.
The other use for the cell phone is to save the game. Yep, Harry's cell saves the game.
Besides that, it can also view the photos you've taken thus far, any text-message "echoes" you've encountered, any voicemails you've gotten ("echo" or no), and can call either home or Cybil Bennett (who is either a cop or a barista, depending on the answers given for the first set of questions. I got her as a cop, like she's supposed to be, but that's beside the point). I'm not entirely sure what purpose this serves, but it seems like a neat add on.
Now what DO I like about Shattered Memories?
Well, being a remake (though it could hardly be called as such), there's a fair number of references back to the original, including street names and locations, which were references and tributes in and of themselves. Depending on how you answer questions, the game can be completely different each and every time you play. Some of the locales are legitimately unnerving (The equivalent of McDonald's, completely dark, with the crackling of the cell phone and the failing flashlight? Hell yes I wanted something to attack me.) Shadow children are back in full force (either hailing the next takeover of Hell, an "echo", or just being creepy), and I noted the bridge from Silent Hill: The Movie at the end of one level, which was an amusing tribute. Harry being able to vault over fences and such, even when not in Hell, is kinda cool, and the idea that the game is trying to get under my skin and into my mind is really nifty, even if it's completely failed thus far.
Final breakdown:
Graphics: 8/10- Nice, but sometimes suffers from graphical fail, especially in Reality/Purgatory. Then again, developed for the Wii, originally, which isn't the most graphics-intensive console out there. THEN AGAIN, Silent Hill (the original) was developed specifically to sidestep and work with the limitations of the Playstation (low draw distance became fog, etc.).
...And no, I'm NOT talking about the 'echo' spots.
Sound: 8/10- Par for the genre. There are subtle touches here and there, like a mysterious rattling in a vent above you following you, and what I percieved to be another set of footsteps following me in the woods, but I wasn't sure about that one. There's this one really wierd noise I can't quite pin down, when Harry runs. I think it's the keys in his pocket. The monsters simply didn't make freaky sounds, though, so points off for that.
Akira Yamaoka does the soundtrack (again, which is EXCELLENT, because he does REALLY good work), but his talents are sadly wasted here, because...
Effectiveness: 3/10- This is a horror game. Not just any horror game, but one that actively tries to get into the player's head, in a series that revels in getting into the player's heads. So why aren't I scared? There's no way I should be less freaked out running away from things trying to kill me than when I had the option of taking everything on with a lead pipe and a small pistol... In fact, getting lost in Hell and dying because of it is just extremely frustrating, not frightening. (EDIT: The reason for this is probably two things: In every other Silent Hill, you can die fighting the monsters, and it means game over, where in Shattered Memories it slaps you on the wrist and sends you back to a checkpoint. That's one. Two, the therapist scenes where it profiles you are 'safe points'- there's no danger and the player can take the time to calm their nerves before returning to the game, which defeats the whole fricking purpose. Safe points do not- I repeat NOT- exist in any other SH. Except maybe save rooms, which still retain a creepy atmosphere.)
Fun: 5/10- It'd be tons better if the aforementioned problems didn't exist.
Final Score- Rent it for some cheap thrills, don't buy it. I'm trading this one in now that I've finished it (something I NEVER do, because I like keeping games). Preferrably, for Silent Hill 2, which I've heard is the best in the series and was really freaking creepy... A welcome change from the stale, frustrating mess that is Shattered Memories. (EDIT: Yeah... it is. I'll review SH2 later, after I've replayed it a little. :) )
Team Climax does make some noble efforts. Really, they do. But for the couple of gleaming, unsettling, wonderfully awesomely creepy moments they do present, the rest of the game is a complete wall-banger and bears only passing resemblance to the original it attempts to remake. The game could have been brilliant. It really could! The ending is an example of how brilliant the rest of the game could have been! But unfortunately, there's just no follow through, and that makes me a very, very sad gamer.
And now I address you, the team, directly: Your goal, as the crew handling the Silent Hill franchise (which I understand a lot of oldbies think you're doing poorly, just so you know), is to
-keep tensions high,
-give us some truly freaky crap
-psyche us out through liberal use of the environment,
and if you're remaking one of the games,
-make it close to the original (not a carbon copy, mind you, just close), while tossing in enough new and updated content to throw off those who had mastered it, thereby making it a new, yet nostalgic, unnerving, yet excellent, experience.
Team Climax, I am disappoint. Shattered Memories had so much wasted potential that it's not even funny. I believe you really are trying, so the next time you release a SH title I'm actually interested in, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, and hope you improved.
This game gets a 6 out of 10. A for effort, but it flunked the assignment.
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