Those weren't puzzles, those were interactive versions of pressing X in front of a jacket or closet in the old games. Why do people still think these small segments are puzzles?

@Aura, you're too kind *blushes*

That's actually right. Doesn't help it though.

Right. Let's be fair here, the actual puzzles are the Gumball Machine, the Bridge Lowering, the Astronomy and Art rooms, the Gift Card Shop, etc. If you consider those, it's not that the puzzles are easier, they're clearly up to par if you honestly think about it; they're just sparser, and don't have you running around for keys, which is ultimately just distracting and forcing you to needlessly backtrack and see shit you've already seen.



Damn right. I still want that fucking cookie, Michelle.


The true horror of Silent Hill D:



It's not so much that he didn't like the game so much as it is that he was completely unfair to it and obviously decided he was going to hate it before he even hated the game. That review didn't read like a review done by someone who gave the game an honest chance.

Even if the first 4 silent hills didn't scare you I think its easy to tell which ones are more disturbing. I mean slurpers>rawshocks Babies in the wall>echoes
just sayin

....unless you're afraid of actual things that exist in the real world, and not just boogeymen and googly monsters

yeah cuz rawshocks and echoes exist in the real world

......the rawshocks and echoes didn't even exist in the video game's plot.

Just, y'know. Think about it.

It could be argued that the monsters in sh2 and 3 don't exist in either...

Ironically, I've been making this argument for a while now for people who were whining about another SH game... >.>

Enemies that are finally a threat are good.

I'll say my piece again (stated in a different thread). SH:SM was a decent game. It wasn't bad. If not for the cheapened feel (to me) that was using the characters that were already there and reinventing them as opposed to giving us a new story with new characters, I'd love it even more. The game wasn't scary to me. Raw Shocks seemed to be rather generic in nature no matter how I acted... They changed some, but generally they were all the same (a variety of Raw Shocks at a given time would have gone a LONG way in this game for me. Lumbering hulks who are slower, but stronger, speedsters, spiders, flying raw shocks.. These are all very real fears for a lot of people).

I generally liked SM. I'll play it again. But overall, it wasn't a good SH game to me, nor was it a good use of the characters or potentials they had. The game lost me about 1/2 way through with the "we-have-the-same-names-but-aren't-the-same-people-so-find-out-what's-next-lol" plot. Good stuff, but made less because the story lacked the ability to help me identify with the characters on their own, but rather depended on my preconceived notions of who these people were. That in and of itself is my biggest complaint of the game. Not that they warped characters we love, but that they felt they had to try to do so to sell a game.

Excellent way to say you missed the pj's point entirely.


It's funny to think that actually the only character we really get to know is Cheryl. Hell, every character is just a way to know more about Cheryl >.>

So I also don't understand why people complain about the lack of symbolism. I'd say it's the Silent Hill with most symbolism of the series.

And no, you don't need a wheelchair in the middel of a hall to make symbolism.

We actually get to know a lot about Harry by proxy. Cheryl lives this memory as a way of remembering who her father really was. While he's busy learning about Cheryl, we're busy learning about him (us), as evidenced by the different tapes. Harry is actually the one we see in the ending tape, and through our behavior, we make him who he is which, depending on which ending you want to accept (doesn't really matter in the long run which you like) that is who Cheryl discovers her father to be.

The only purely concrete information we get about Harry is the last 20 seconds of the tape we see at the end of our individual play throughs.

Kauffman says it at the end: "You never knew him, and you never will." Cheryl can't remember who her father was because she never got a chance to really know him, and thus its impossible for us to learn about him from her memories.

Escapist's point was that everything we learn about every real character in the game, including the real Harry and Dahlia, is seen through the prism of Cheryl's memories and her own personal perspective. Since the plot revolves around the fallacy of memory, and Cheryl's memories are proven to be unreliable, everything we experience in the game ends up telling us more about Cheryl than it does any of the other characters.

How?

Because SH2's and SH3's monsters do possess and existence, for starters.

SH2 monsters were manifestations for james, and in SH3 its argued that the monsters are really order members. But regardless whether they exist or not in the games plot it doesn't change which ones look and sound more disturbing.

What one finds disturbing is subjective.

And you're still missing the point of pj's post. He wasn't talking about the rawshocks, he was talking about the real situations presented in the game that could actually happen in real life, like the death of a loved one and subsequent denial. These things are more frightening than evil undead babies because they can, and do, actually happen.

Or at least that's what I took from it; perhaps I'm off the mark. Either way I stand by that viewpoint.

I see what your sayin Catch, but for me thats not really disturbing because its everyday stuff that happen to regular people, the kind of stuff i can hear about on the news. I think something has a better chance of being disturbing when its unknown.

You make a good point. The unknown has always been disturbing to most people. Humans are inherently frightened of novel entities, and even more so when those entities pose a threat. And what you don't see is always more frightening than what you do see. That's why I found the off-camera creature in the prison in SH2 so disturbing; it was the one in that small hallway of cells. It would groan, and James would stare in its direction as he walked by. That, more than any other creature in that game, fucked with my head.

But I think that losing someone you love can be incredibly traumatic. There's a difference between hearing it on the news and having it happen to you. Rarely have I been effected by such loss, knock on wood, but one has to think about which would be more psychologically destructive--seeing a deformed and dangerous creature, or losing the one you care about most. However... whether this translates in the game is another story, and you have every right to say that it didn't effect or disturb you. That's the game's fault and not yours, of course.

^well said I definitely agree losing a loved one would mess me up alot more than seeing something horribly disturbing( but seeing something extremely disturbing could probably mess me up a little also) And i also agree about the monster in SH2 I remember feeling really uncomfortable and uneasy in that part of the prison...

I'm the opposite. Shattered Memories is the only game that scared me at all. I guess the other games are unscary pieces of drek by this reasoning.