Do you think Silent Hill Origins was worth playing?

Truck drivin' Travis detours into Silent Hill. Tree Top Tall & Wall-to-Wall, Good Buddy.

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Do you think Silent Hill Origins was worth playing?

Yes
65
76%
50/50
16
19%
No
5
6%
 
Total votes: 86

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Eddie So Crazy
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Do you think Silent Hill Origins was worth playing?

Post by Eddie So Crazy »

The title says it all really.
Personally I enjoyed the game for what it was, the plot was kinda thin in places and the characters seemed less developed its understanable considering it wasnt made by Team Silent but overall it was enjoyable because they tried new things. Did you like or dislike it? Please give reasons if possible. It will be interesting hearing other people`s views.
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Tabris
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Re: Do you think Silent Hill Origins was worth playing?

Post by Tabris »

I absolutely adore this game. Something about it makes me really happy to play it. The atmosphere, music, sounds all get to me in a really serene way. I can curl up and listen to the ambiance of the game and be in heaven.

I love actually being able to wander around the town of Silent Hill. Alchemilla was nostalgic, short and sweet. The sanitarium was very cool, though maybe 20 minutes too long. The theater was a very oddball and unique level. The motel is one of my most favorite levels in the entire series. It's just sad and peaceful. Until it's industrial music rusty anger fun time anyways.

It's one Silent Hill I just can't get over for some reason. It's definitely not the best either.

I also never understood the bitchiness about a portable Silent Hill when it was initially announced. Take that shit out to a forest with some headphones people! Being able to choose where you can play it, can make that game a lot more terrifying. It's not much of an option with the other games unless you're SERIOUSLY determined. If any of you have done that, good job, you are a winner.

Anyways, it's not without fault. They could have cut down on the sanitarium a bit and added some more development with the characters. I get Travis was rather ignorant of the events he accidently fell into, but that doesn't excuse the lack of development with the main characters that as being fans, are highly interested in. Given that this was the only opportunity for us to have that chance, it was very disappointing.

One thing I love and most people hate is how a character like Lisa was essentially defiled in a way. I don't know why people put her on some sort of angelic pedestal. The way she was portrayed in Origins was more or less how I imagined her to be.

I'm going to avoid further babblings as to not straight up write a review, but it was VERY worth playing to me.

The PS2 port however, is the biggest piece of shit in the series. Lack of music loops and such make it unplayable and makes for a very frustrated and angry Tabris.
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leftshoe18
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Re: Do you think Silent Hill Origins was worth playing?

Post by leftshoe18 »

This was one of my least favorite in the series but was still enjoyable. They created a great horror atmosphere for the most part. I loved the sanitarium level. Travis was a somewhat interesting character and his story was decently told. The whole "origins" aspect seemed tacked-on and unnecessary.

Overall, I'd say it was worth playing.
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Doctor Eggnog
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Origins

Post by Doctor Eggnog »

Yes it was worth playing! In fact it was worth replaying the four times I have done so!

I would give the game an 8,2/10, and would say that my favorite thing about it might actually be the Sanitarium, which to me wasn't too long, but rather just right. If a level is that big, it'd BETTER be that long! The Mall in SH3 should've been that long. Also, the PS2 version wasn't quite as good as the PSP version due to brightness issues, but the PSP version was almost as glitchy, and the PS2 version isn't that much worse.
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Re: Do you think Silent Hill Origins was worth playing?

Post by Mephisto »

The gameplay and the atmosphere were really well done but they failed by giving this game another Alessa/Cult boring story (SH4 has the best cult-related story imo).

If 0rigins was meant to be Travis story and nothing else the game would be much better.

It was worth playing but not if you dislike certain levels. Like the Sanitarium. . .
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Re: Do you think Silent Hill Origins was worth playing?

Post by EmilietheStrange »

I liked the game. I have the PS2 version, and I don't think it's that bad. The characters were kind of flat, and I didn't like how the game recycled lying figures and bobblehead nurses, but it didn't have a huge negative impact on me. I really enjoyed some of the levels such as the theater and the motel, and I liked the bosses (except the final boss, it looked like something you might see in World of Warcraft). Others may disagree with me here, but I also liked the throwable weapons and the option to punch monsters. I wouldn't mind seeing that element return in future installments.
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Tabris
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Re: Do you think Silent Hill Origins was worth playing?

Post by Tabris »

I think I just had real shit luck with the PS2 version of Origins. I did buy two copies. The second copy was a bit less glitchy but still had the major problems with music loops and such. The ambiance and music is too damn important to me to put up with it.

Though I hear so many people never had any problems. I kind of question if the people with PS2 copies played the PSP version though? The PSP was miles above the PS2 in my experience.

It boggles my mind how something so fundamental to the series is so glitchy.
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Re: Do you think Silent Hill Origins was worth playing?

Post by Ravager »

While it's my least favorite SH game I think it's still worth playing and it's not that bad. Being able to manually switch between the nightmare world and "normal" world was very interesting. It did take away the scaryness of entering the nightmare world, though.
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Re: Do you think Silent Hill Origins was worth playing?

Post by Soulless-Shadow »

Yes, I believe 0rigins is worth playing. Even if one didn't enjoy it, I still think it's worth playing. If you don't try, then how do you know if you like it or not?
Sure, there were some parts that could have been better, such as the long and boring sanitarium, and the unlimited breakable weapons (seriously, I had an entire collection of the damned things by the end of the game), however, I still think it was a good game.

Also, while I'm thinking about it, I don't get the hate the non-Team Silent games get. Sure, Homecoming needed improvement, but it was still a good game. I've attempted to play a hell of a lot worse. I have enjoyed all SH games to date, and I anticipate I'll enjoy most of the future releases.
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Re: Do you think Silent Hill Origins was worth playing?

Post by Typographenia »

I went 50/50.

This was my least favorite silent hill title, and the one I won't likely be replaying. I actually just said "forget it" on getting the alternate ending and watched it on youtube. The gameplay just didn't feel refined enough, the levels were tedious, the story was a disaster, and the protagonist utterly forgettable. The music was still nice, though, and some of the monster designs actually were pretty memorable.

Still, it was a decent venture, and it's cheap enough now that I would suggest it to anyone that liked other games in the silent hill series.
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Re: Do you think Silent Hill Origins was worth playing?

Post by Twoback »

Origins is my 2nd favorite entry in the series and is woefully under appreciated by the Silent Hill community.

Climax did a remarkable job in recreating the atmosphere of the first game,Travis is an appealing protagonist and all of the locations are a joy to explore.I only wish Konami had greater faith in the studio and had handed them a true next gen title to work on.
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Re: Do you think Silent Hill Origins was worth playing?

Post by AdjectiveRyan »

l think it's worth a go through or 2. the breakable weapons don't kill the game as there are plenty of weapons to pick up. l did like the effect of the weapon breaking because l felt that l was kicking some monsters ass so hard l broke my plank over it. travis is a decent character with a decent story to tell. flipping back and forth through normal and hell world was a nice switch.
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Re: Do you think Silent Hill Origins was worth playing?

Post by stopped_clock »

^I was quite fond of the mirror dynamic too. I like the fact that whilst you can technically choose whether or not to enter the otherside, it's something that you have to do to progress, it's basically hobson's choice and I like that. It felt like an extension of SH2's hole jumping shenanigans to me, in that you have the choice offered, but it's not really a choice at all.
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Re: Do you think Silent Hill Origins was worth playing?

Post by KageReneko »

I loved how the mirrors showed you the opposite world; like interdimensional windows...
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Re: Do you think Silent Hill Origins was worth playing?

Post by Doctor Eggnog »

I liked the mirrors from a gameplay standpoint, having to switch worlds in various mirrors to get different items and stuff, that was cool. The game felt much more like survival horror to me than SH4 or Homecoming. One, because it had the get this to do this to get that to do that sort of gameplay that I actually like (with the mirrors twisting it a little to good effect). Two, because I found it more scary.
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Re: Do you think Silent Hill Origins was worth playing?

Post by alone in the town »

Silent Hill: Origins was a critically-flawed game in pretty much every way, but in spite of all that, I did play through three times. Mostly because each playthrough allowed me to utilize secret weapons and take my frustrations out on a combat system which was pretty wretched with breaking weapons and its protagonist's ridiculously poor state of physical fitness.

The story itself is two intertwining threads of total failure. You have two ostensibly concurrent plot threads going on at once, and neither of them are even sort of interesting. Both are, in fact, inconsequential. Worst of all, they have absolutely nothing to do with one another. The Alessa thread does nothing at all to actually build upon that series arc. Everything we see indicates things we already knew from playing the first Silent Hill: Alessa was toasted like a Subway sandwich, Dahlia was a bad parent and extra crazy religious, Kaufmann was a immoral sleazeball opportunist, and Lisa was a drug-addled slutbag.

Travis's storyline is actually a fair (if plain and melodramatic) tale that is reminiscent of Silent Hill 2's tales of personal darkness. Where Silent Hill 2 succeeds and Silent Hill: Origins fails is that nothing of what we learn about Travis gives us the slightest insight into his character. Really, when you examine Travis, as a person, he is every bit as bare-bones as Henry. With Henry, this is forgivable because Silent Hill 4 is not about him, and little of his past or present life is ever revealed. The majority of Silent Hill: Origins is about Travis' past, as stated, a clear effort to mimic the flavor of Silent Hill 2. The reason it doesn't work here is because even though we come to know that Travis had the childhood from hell, we know so little about him as an adult that we're left wondering why we should care. We know almost nothing about Travis' life except his occupation, and the fact that he's lonely. We're told that he's a "messed-up son of a bitch', but this never actually manifests in a way we can see. Silent Hill 2 never tells us that James is messed-up. It shows us, immediately, that he is a desperate and lonely man and his desperate loneliness is making him seek a goal that a normal man would dismiss as impossible. Travis comes across to the player as, well, not really unusual or abnormal in the slightest. The game whiffs on the classic maxim of "show, don't tell", by telling us that Travis's past affects his life in the present but showing us absolutely no evidence of this in his character, mannerisms, or interactions with others.
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Doctor Eggnog
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Re: Do you think Silent Hill Origins was worth playing?

Post by Doctor Eggnog »

One of my main problems with the cult story was that people playing it who hadn't played 1 or 3 wouldn't understand what the hell is going on. A prequel should make the most sense!

I admit I definetly liked Travis' story better than Travis himself. The reason we didn't learn anything about him as an adult is that the scenes were too short and didn't really go deep enough into any of the characters. Even with the first game's bad voice acting they did much better with characters and plot in their scenes. However, I do think they were trying to show Travis as messed up in the scene where he was yelling at Alessa (though you'd have to be drugged not to by that point).
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Re: Do you think Silent Hill Origins was worth playing?

Post by demon child 7 »

Was Origins worth playing?
Yes! This game is one of the best in the series. Definitely in my top three. I have the PS2 version I noticed no unusual glitch. Sound design is not something I pay attention to. My favorite part is the quick time events. For me that added a lot to the tension of the game. I didn't mind the throwable weapons there were many of them and monsters usually fell when hit. I didn't like the breakable weapons. I loved that I could punch enemies and by that addition Travis is one bad MOFO. I played through all endings all hail the UFO gun everything dies by it's light.
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Re: Do you think Silent Hill Origins was worth playing?

Post by Sajun »

My first impressions: (10 minutes into Origins)

So I read that people were really disappointed with this game and so I was hesitant to play it. Seems like the most common complaint is that Travis has no motivation to stay in Silent Hill like the characters in previous games. But I don't understand how that can be. Granted as I'm typing this I've just arrived at the point where Travis wakes up in Silent Hill and he is heading to the hospital to see if the girl is okay.

So at the beginning he was just driving along, then mystery person A falls down in the road so he slams on the brakes. Then as he gets out of his truck mystery person A is gone, but mystery person B he notices creeping towards him in the mirror of his truck (I guess it's a ghost or something), so he backs away. Then he notices mystery person C, a little girl, and so he chases her, because by now he's wondering what the [insert questionable word here] is going on so he wants to find out, which is understandable. Also he probably is wondering why a little girl is out and about alone at this time of night when strange things are happening.

So I'm assuming most people would enter a burning house to rescue someone if they heard a child/girl screaming. So I'm assuming that the burned girl was maybe the little girl he chased after but I can't be sure. Silent Hill has a way of making sense, then making no sense at all, then making some sense, and then telling you that you have no idea what's going on so don't bother trying to make sense of it. So he rescues the burned girl, then passes out, then wakes up already in Silent Hill (which I'm guessing he probably can't just walk out of even if he tried) and decides to head to the hospital to see if she's okay.

So it sounds like Travis has just as much motivation as Harry, James, and Heather, even if it's not as personal as theirs was.

So far aside from the continued departure from classic Silent Hill controls (which makes the game much more fun and challenging imo) and the fact that it wasn't made by Team Silent, I see no real problem with the game just yet.

Edit: I have spotted a few problems though after another 30 seconds of playing:

1) The camera is set too low. It's wierd.
2) The center camera jerks it towards Travis so violently that it's kind of hard to focus on the actual game.
3) Travis can't run but for like 12 seconds, in a series of games where you spend the majority of your time running up and down streets, which gets boring but never felt TOO boring till now.

Edit: NOOOOOOO! The creepy red save thingy is a triangle now! What....

Another Edit: Okay.... the first encounter with a nurse scared the piss out of me. The combat system is a bit retarded I'll admit, and I'm not sure yet about the like grappling where you have to fight them off. I'm still on the fence about that. Gotta go change pants now.
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Re: Do you think Silent Hill Origins was worth playing?

Post by AuraTwilight »

So it sounds like Travis has just as much motivation as Harry, James, and Heather, even if it's not as personal as theirs was.
Except after meeting Kauffman, he's told that they never received Alessa at the hospital, implying that she is dead. Considering she is a total stranger he has no reason to pursue her to such extent that he'll go through hell for her and collect evil-looking pyramids while she keeps acting like a horror movie ghost. And for all he knows she is dead as a doorknob.

Also, all three mystery people are the same person, and are Alessa. This is something players are just supposed to know; it's not really a standalone game.
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