An obsessive review of Shattered Memories.

[Brionf]

Well, as a Silent Hill fan, I have a lot to say about this game. So, this post is going to be ridiculously long and analytical, sorry about that in advance. This is my review of the game, and although I don't have a lot of positive things to say, I do have a lot of suggestions about how to make the next game better.

When I first read about this game, I was excited. They were doing exactly what I wanted, taking risks! Usually I tend to be a little overly skeptical of American game designers, but based on the interviews I read it just felt like Climax was on the right track. I was so confident, I ran out and bought the game immedietly when it was released.

Unfortunetly, SM turned out to be a huge dissapointment. However, there are some aspects to it that I liked, some positive steps in a new direction, and first I want to talk about those first.


The Positive

The Flashlight. Shattered Memories tried to update the series in a lot of ways. I feel that the best of these, without question, is the flashlight. It's very simple idea, but using the wiimote as a flashlight works really well, it's very immersive and adds nicely to the atmosphere. It's easy to forget, but the original Silent Hill was a pioneer in this area; I believe it was the very first game to give you a flashlight in a lot of dark areas. It was one of the things besides the radio that made the first Silent Hill so innovative, fresh, and damn scary. SM on the Wii takes this concept a step further. It makes me want all horror games to be on the Wii from now on.

The Cellphone. It's a great update of an old mechanic; it streamlines games mechanics and adds new functions, with a touch of modern realism. I like that it's basically a replacement for the old radio concept; if there is any concept that defines Silent Hill, it is the radio, and I'm glad this concept is preserved in a new form (even if it isn't very useful in this game.) The new functions are all really cool, too. Voicemail is a great idea. It's also a nice bit of realism to be able to walk on talk on your phone, rather than be forced into a menu screen.

Psych Profiling. The "hook" of the game, it's what people are talking about. The game too goes out of it's way to advertise it, which is smart because let's face it... the idea of a game profiling you is creepy. However, just to be clear: this concept is a shallow gimmick. Although a game can "profile" someone, it can't really do anything intelligent with that profile. This is pretty obvious because SM's attempts to tailor a horror experience to the individual by "evolving" the monsters is laughably crude and inaccurate. And even if it were refined further, it's never going to work. You can't find someone's inner fear by asking a bunch of questions, it doesn't work that way. People don't have "patterns" that can be easily defined.

Having said that, just because it's gimmicky doesn't mean I don't like it. The little therapy sessions are nice stroke of creativity, with some of the best puzzles of the game. They may not be puzzles in the traditional sense, since they don't obstruct your progress, but they are the most interesting things to use your brain on. Also, the way in which the therapy sessions tie in with the ending is very clever. I just hope that Climax realizes that this concept is a gimmick, and should only be used for *ONE* game. If they try to keep using this gimmick, it's going to get old fast.

Setpieces. I wish there were a few more, but there are a couple of nice ones like the sinking car scene and all the scenes in nowhere. I also like scenes where you walk and talk with other characters in the town, although the conversations tend to be a little bland.

Graphics / Music. As has been often stated, the graphics are good for the Wii. Putting aside technical merits, the town design is good in general. It vaguely feels like the original Silent Hill, but it also feels fresh and more modern, which is interesting. The music design, coming from Akira, is of course strong. It's a bit understated in some parts, and a bit too familiar in others, but there were some BGM that stood out and gave the game it's own character. Music is a hugely important part of any horror experience, and you can always count on Akira, even when he's not at his best.

The Story. The story is decent. It starts strong, has a strong ending, with high quality voice acting throughout. I don't personally like the ending much, but I give it credit for being the kind of thing that people tend to eat up. People love twist endings. The story is also by far the most coherent of the Silent Hills, which I'm not sure is a positive thing, but is good in some ways.


The Negative

To me, a huge Silent Hill fan, there is almost nothing sacred about Silent Hill which must be preserved from game to game. I'm even willing to part with the radio if they can compensate adequately with another good device. I don't mind if they ditch health drinks or canon or the cult or whatever. Only one thing has mattered from the very beginning: that the games are scary. To me, that's what Silent Hill has always been about... getting underneath the player's skin.

And that is why SM is ultimately a failure. It about as scary as any The Ring knockoff movie, which is to say not very. Apparently I'm not alone on this... some of the positive reviews I have read have said things like "sure it's not as scary as the older games, but it has a good story!" Well, to me, that doesn't cut it. There's a lot of reasons why this game isn't effective as a horror game, and I want to try my best to break them down in detail:

1. SM is Formulaic. Obviously, a huge concern about this game was that the exploration scenes wouldn't be scary because there are no monsters in them. The answer that Climax gave was that "you'd be scared because the Nightmare could come at any time." From this, I gathered that the nightmare sequences must happen somewhat randomly or haphazardly. If you truly never knew when a nightmare could come, then indeed the game could indeed still be scary.

Unfortunately, the opposite is true. This game is disappointingly formulaic. So formulaic, that even if you go into it without any knowledge, you're going to quickly figure out that monsters only come in nightmares, which only come at specific times. A pattern is established very early and is never broken: you explore an area of the town, and when you have nearly finished there will be a cutscene introducing nightmare mode. Nightmare mode is like side B of an area, where the objective is to race for the exit. For all intents and purposes, SM may as well call these "levels."

2. No Threat in Exploration. Okay, so you know you're safe in exploration mode. Some people say that atmosphere is enough to keep the game scary. While atmosphere does go a long way, it's just not enough by itself. It needs to be combined with an element of danger. Without a real, tangible threat to the player, any "fear" they might feel is going to be nerfed by the fact that the player knows they are safe.

So what exploration scenes are left with are simply jump scares, the equivalent of dogs jumping out at you in Resident Evil. Only, these dogs have no teeth.

3. Too Much Threat in Nightmares. This is counter-intuitive, but Nightmare suffers from the opposite problem... it's too easy to die. This is a problem because it's not character death which is the real threat to the player... it's the *consequences* of death. Think of this example: suppose when a monster killed you, you respawn in exactly that spot and can try again. Would you be scared of dying? Perhaps a little bit, if the visceral sight of seeing yourself die scares you, but without consequences you will soon feel invincible. Monsters at that point become a slight annoyance, like flies. Even worse, the more you see yourself die, the more conditioned you are to handle it.

To a lesser extreme, this is much the problem with nightmare mode. It's very easy to die, but consequences are low because you never lose much progress. Therefore, death becomes a minor annoyance. This means that the monsters themselves lose a lot of their power to scare you, and instead are treated by the player as irritations rather than objects of fear.

The reason it's like this way is just because of poor game design on Climax's part. They must have figured that by making these segments "hard" they would make the game scarier. In reality, nightmares would be much scarier if the monsters were slower and easier to dodge, but a careless mistake could mean you'd lose 15-20 minutes of progress.

4. No Suspense. In general, suspense requires a slow pace. This is just due to human nature, the faster something happens, the less time you have to be scared. That's why quick shocks are often considered the lowest form of horror. Still, the quick shocks can also serve an important purpose if used correctly. For example, consider the dogs jumping through the windows in Resident Evil 1. The real scary part is not the dogs jumping through the windows... it's the psychological effect that this creates later on, the next time you are walking past some more windows. Now, imagine if Resident Evil were a game in which dogs jumped through windows in every room. Would this be scary? That's how nightmares play out in SM: all shock and no suspense.

Again, this is due to bad game design. The player is basically encouraged to rush through nightmares and find the exit as fast as possible. It's too hard to not die, so you just keep running and hope you find the exit, if not try again. Through trial and error you eventually find the right path. It's not really possible to explore slowly and "metal gear" your way through these sections because monsters are too good at spotting and following you. Hiding and throwing down barriers are ineffective strategies. The result of all this is that nightmares feel more like an action / arcade game than a horror game. There's even an invincibility item.

Of course, exploration mode has the opposite problem. It's like playing Resident Evil in which the dogs jump through the windows, but never hurt you. There can't be suspense without an element of danger.

5. Monsters are Too Fast. This goes back to the slow zombies vs fast zombies debate. Some people argue that slower zombies are just inherently scarier. While it's true that in terms of creating suspense, slower is always better, it also depends on how a movie uses the zombies and there are other ways to create suspense. But in a video game, slower monsters have added benefits:

A. They allow the designers to have a threat with low challenge. This is important for game balance.
B. Just because of how suspense works, the more time you have to think, the more fear resonates.
C. Slower monsters allow the game designer to give the player more choices, like being able to run away and conserve ammo or fight to make the area safe for exploration.

Of course, having all the monsters be slow creates it's own problems, if the game is too easy then it mitigates fear. But in general I think slow monsters are just scarier than fast monsters.

6. No Monster Variety. When it comes to monster design in a horror game, the highest priority should be monster variety. You need to constantly stay one step ahead of the player; the minute the player feels like he is used to a situation, it is no longer scary. I particularly feel this is important because it is the one area of the original games in which there is the most room for improvement. The earlier SH games, particularly 2 with all it's damn spitters and legs, could really have benefited from more monster variation. Climax had an excellent opportunity to improve the series here.

But no... there is only one monster. It's appearance changes based on a gimmicky and ineffective profile system, but it's behavior stays exactly the same. What a wasted opportunity, Climax. In this particular area, you took the series backwards for a gimmick.

"Evolving" monsters based on the player's fear is never going to work, not until we've invented an amazing A.I. at least. Until then, you need to stick with what works: monsters that are designed by their nature to scare people, and having a variety of monster designs and behaviors to keep the player on their toes. In particular, variety in monster behavior is something that other SH games haven't really touched on, and could make a huge difference. The same monster doesn't always have to act the same, and having some monsters behave erratically at seemingly random would be a fantastic step forward for the series.

7. Setting Variety. For the same reasons as above. I like that Climax was thinking out of the box, and decided to put ice environments into the game. But they weren't creative enough about it... just because ice is a theme doesn't mean every nightmare should look the same. Frankly though, I don't think that a heavy focus on "themed nightmares" is a good idea. None of the other SH's necessarily have a strong theme that connects all of the otherworlds. People say "rust, grating," and while it's true that a lot of otherworld design shares similar elements, each one for each area looks unique. For example, all 4 of the original games have a hospital, and in each game the hospital has it's own look.

8. Not Twisted Enough. Part of what makes Silent Hill creepy is the twistedness of it's characters and design. The original SM drew inspiration from Jacob's Ladder and Twin Peaks. What does SM draw inspiration from? SH2, I guess?

The earlier Silent Hills are mostly populated with strange and twisted characters, which makes the player feel uneasy. In SM, the characters are almost painfully normal... well, except maybe for Dahlia. You have a cellphone, yet you never recieve any strange or scary phonecalls. The voicemails are surprisingly tame, too. I realize Climax were going for a more "mature" game, but maturity does not rule out twistedness, for example: David Cronenberg. There are a lot of wasted opportunities there. SM could pretty easily pass for a PG-13 movie.

I believe in the Climax interview, they said something like "Silent Hill is a place where bad things happen, so bad they need to be frozen." Sorry, but I can turn on the local news and see worse things. You call that *bad?*

9. Not Surreal Enough. Another element that was really important in the earlier games was just the element of Surreallism. SM has a little bit of this, particularly in the nowhere areas, and those would've been my favorite in the game were it not for the complete annoyance of navigating those areas. But aside from that, the vast bulk of this town is just way too straightforward. Compare the town barrier device that they use in SM, snow banks, to the one from the original Silent Hill, sheer cliffs in the road. Sheer cliffs for no reason are surreal and creepy... snowbanks are just bland and arbitrary.

It seems like there was a conscious design choice to make the town in exploration mode pretty much a normal town, inhabited by normal people. I don't like that design choice. But even if we accept that, there are ways of adding more surrealism and creepiness to this town. It's a shame that nightmare sequences are mostly just used as acrade style chase sequences, because if you could really explore them it would've given the design team a lot more chances to be creative and surreal with the town. My suggestion to the design team is to next time make design choices that give you more freedom to just be wierd and surreal. It's an additional way to make the player feel uneasy besides the normal suspense techniques.


Okay, that about sums up my major complaint with this game, the fact that it's just not scary enough. Here are the rest of my criticisms that are unrelated to that point:

Exploration Feels Empty. This is another serious problem with exploration mode, besides the fact that it isn't scary. I don't mind the fact that they removed health drinks, weapons, ammo, or memos. Each of those decisions are fine by themselves, but when combined they created a serious unintended consequence: there is now no practical reason to explore. Keys are almost always in the same room as the doors they unlock, and mementos serve no practical purpose.

Of course, you may still want to find the momentos for fun, and to be fair there are tons of cool details on the walls and such to look at, so I suppose you could say that exploration is rewarded in another way. But not every player is going to be interested in looking just for the sake of looking, or even if they are they may at some point just feel like moving the game along. Without items to find, exploration is in essence proceeding through a set of empty rooms broken up by the occasional puzzle.

Perhaps that's why everyone complains how short this game is. It's not really that much shorter than other Silent Hills, but if you consider that there is little motivation for the player to actually explore, rooms are going to pass by a lot more quickly. There are many ways they could have addressed this issue without having health drinks everywhere... they could have at least better hidden keys or allowed the player to collect other items for puzzle solving... but it seems like they were completely ignorant of this design flaw.

Rips-off Fatal Frame. Having a game mechanic that directly rips off Fatal Frame is just a bad idea. There's nothing wrong with having puzzles in which the camera plays some part, but at the very least put your own spin on it, do something a little different then taking pictures of ghosts. This just feels out of place.

Story Criticisms. Now here's the part where I have to criticize the story, which generally is being praised. Admittedly this is just personal taste, but I found the writing quality in this game to be a bit below average. Characters other than Dahlia are bland, they didn't do anything particularly interesting with the new Lisa, the new prom queen what's-her-name character is unmemorable, and Cybil just seems unlikable. (Perhaps I got the bad Cybil.) There were certain scenes where the painfully cliche dialogue made me cringe, like the exchange between what's-her-name and her boyfriend. Even Dahlia has some horrible dialogue on the boat when she is trying to seduce you, it literally sounds like they got a high school girl to write it. Harry is decently well written though.

Then there's the ending, which a lot of people like. It's not what I would call a good plot twist. Generally, I feel that good plot twists are ones that add new meaning to the rest of the story, in that they force you to see it in a new light, like Fight Club or The Sixth Sense. Bad plot twists take away meaning from the rest of the story, in that they invalidate what you have
seen. They make you feel like the rest of the story was a pointless exercise. For example: Ocean's 12, High Tension. Generally, I feel like the ending to SM is closer to the bad kind than the good. It depends on how you look at it, but it seems to me that what the ending is saying as that everything that happened up until that point was all in Cheryl's mind. If that is the case, then every single thing that happened in the game is meaningless. The characters you met don't exist, those interactions between you and them never happened. The other way of looking at it is that Harry was some kind of phantom created by Cheryl, but I don't think the game is suggesting that, which is why I don't love the ending.

No "Climax." This is another problem with the ending, though not with the story. As a game, the ending feels anti-climactic to me. Think back to SH2... the major revelation in that game comes *near* the end, but is not the actual ending. Why? Because if it was, it would feel
anticlimactic, not so much for story reasons but just due to the nature of a game. Just like a story, with a game you also want to sort of build up to a climax, which is why a lot of games tend to have things like final bosses. (Not that bosses are the only way to do this.) In SH2, after the big reveal, you still have to confront Pyramid Head and Mary/Maria. Even though story doesn't necessitate this, it's better for game progression.

Ironically, Climax's game is missing a climax. If you forget about the story and just think about the progression of the game, the final sequence of the game is swimming toward a lighthouse. Kind of an underwhelming climax. It wouldn't be hard to think of something better... just off the top of my head, it could be something like all the raw shocks combine into one giant raw shock that chases you, or perhaps there could be some chase sequence up that lighthouse. Perhaps the game continues past the therapy scene only now you are slowly dissapearing. There's a lot of things you could do. This is Silent Hill, so it doesn't have to make perfect sense, it just has to feel like the climax of a game.

Of course, the story's plot twist does heavily obscure this fact, so it's not really that important at the end of the day.


Conclusion

Again, I just want to stress the fact that I'm glad the design team took risks. It's better to try new things and fail then to play it safe and only moderately succeed. Having said that, taking risks is dangerous precisely because you can fail, and this game is a failure. An interesting failure but a failure none the less.

Before Climax makes another Silent Hill game, they desperately need to go back to horror school. My suggestion: stop trying to make another SH2. Instead, have a marathon of David Cronenberg movies, and then draw inspiration from that. Get back to the basics. Stop trying so hard to make a good Silent Hill game, and just focus on making a good horror game.

[lesboctopus]

You have covered just about every bad aspect about the game. And looking at all of it laid out like that, it definitely does seem quite inferior to the originals. But I disagree with you at one point, where you talk about the ending and the effect it has on the rest of the game.

In my experience, the ending had a HUGE effect on how I viewed the rest of the game's progression. My second playthrough was a lot more fun than my first for this reason. Maybe I was just being a bit emptyheaded when going through my first time, but most of the echos I recieved, I was oblivious to the fact that so many of them could have been about Cheryl. But once I experienced the twist, and went through the game again, I was so excited to speculate on how all of the message, mementos and even the characters them selves could have been reflected onto Cheryl's messed up life.

[simeonalo]

Post your thoughts here.

And this review mainly puts out the negative things on SM. You're insulting the developers if you just point out all the bad things and only some of the good things.

Too Much Threat in Nightmares.

Monsters are Too Fast.

Not Twisted Enough

Though they are true imho, those are also opinions.

[cascade88]

Post your thoughts here.

And this review only puts out the negative things on SM. And that doesn't even make it a review. You're insulting the developers (while you can't even make a game) if you just point out all the bad things.

First of all, this was review was so long, and detailed, it quite possibly needed its own thread. I can't be sure. Either way, a few others have made their own individual review threads without anyone seeming to mind.

Secondly, what? The poster started out by saying all of the positive things he enjoyed about the game, and even while listing the things he found less than favorable, it's not as if he bashed the game or anything, it's just his opinion. I think it was a good thing to do, to elaborate why he wasn't fully happy with the game, rather than just putting "it sucks!!1" or something.

[simeonalo]

^ Sorry! I edited most of it right when you posted this. You can look at it now.

[cascade88]

Too Much Threat in Nightmares.

Monsters are Too Fast.

Not Twisted Enough

Though they are true imho, those are also opinions.

Okay... I read the edited post and it seems to say that he isn't allowed to state his opinion? Am I missing something?

[simeonalo]

By 'opinion', I mean that some parts rely too heavily on the opinion, as much as I agree with them (as i stated).

[Ryoshockwave]

It's very simple idea, but using the wiimote as a flashlight works really well, it's very immersive and adds nicely to the atmosphere.

Using the wiimote to control the flashlight was nice, but I feel that the light effects were pulled off poorly compared to the older games. Shadow effects were often stiff, and the lighting appeared flat. I expect more from a Silent Hill game, and a next gen in general.

Psych Profiling. The "hook" of the game, it's what people are talking about. The game too goes out of it's way to advertise it, which is smart because let's face it... the idea of a game profiling you is creepy. However, just to be clear: this concept is a shallow gimmick. Although a game can "profile" someone, it can't really do anything intelligent with that profile. This is pretty obvious because SM's attempts to tailor a horror experience to the individual by "evolving" the monsters is laughably crude and inaccurate. And even if it were refined further, it's never going to work. You can't find someone's inner fear by asking a bunch of questions, it doesn't work that way. People don't have "patterns" that can be easily defined.

I agree for the most part. Yes, the "psych" profiling is a shallow gimmick. Even when you get past the fact that it's a game, and it's just for fun, it still seems like a let down in many ways. Basically, all personality types are going to boil down to a handful of basic ideas. Harry pretty much acts the same no matter how you answer, though it's easy to see that the characters around you change a lot. Locations and cut scene changes are a nice touch, but things like that could be used in any game. I don't feel that this concept could "never work", though, but it would really need to be developed further.

3. Too Much Threat in Nightmares. This is counter-intuitive, but Nightmare suffers from the opposite problem... it's too easy to die. This is a problem because it's not character death which is the real threat to the player... it's the *consequences* of death. Think of this example: suppose when a monster killed you, you respawn in exactly that spot and can try again. Would you be scared of dying? Perhaps a little bit, if the visceral sight of seeing yourself die scares you, but without consequences you will soon feel invincible. Monsters at that point become a slight annoyance, like flies.

I definitely felt this way about the chase sequences. They aren't even close to being scary for me, and the monsters are simply an annoyance. Monsters seeming threatening is important to Silent Hill. Heck, it's important to any any survival horror game, as well as other genres.

6. No Monster Variety.

Another big letdown, indeed. The monsters "evolving" is a cool concept, but it really falls flat in this game. I'm sorry, but pink, children-shaped "monsters" that look like unfinished polygon models and scream like monkeys don't scare me.

And I really feel that there are just too many of them, which is probably what makes them so irritating. If you find yourself needing to turn around because you went the wrong way, you will most likely get surrounded. Once you are surrounded, it's easier to just give up and try again than try fight your way out. I think they would have been better off sticking with one genuinely creepy monster that comes out during the nightmares to chase you, and evolves over time. Perhaps said monster could have better symbolism as I didn't really see anything interesting or redeeming in the Raw Shocks themselves.

9. Not Surreal Enough. Another element that was really important in the earlier games was just the element of Surreallism. SM has a little bit of this, particularly in the nowhere areas, and those would've been my favorite in the game were it not for the complete annoyance of navigating those areas. But aside from that, the vast bulk of this town is just way too straightforward. Compare the town barrier device that they use in SM, snow banks, to the one from the original Silent Hill, sheer cliffs in the road. Sheer cliffs for no reason are surreal and creepy... snowbanks are just bland and arbitrary.

Never heard anyone compare the cliffs to the snowbanks, but I am fond of those huge gaps in the road. And yes, they are more surreal, a greater force is physically trapping you in the town. When you first start the game and have no idea what's going on, those cliffs are actually pretty creepy.

Perhaps that's why everyone complains how short this game is. It's not really that much shorter than other Silent Hills, but if you consider that there is little motivation for the player to actually explore, rooms are going to pass by a lot more quickly.

This may be true. The first time I played through the other SH titles, especially the older ones, it would take me 8+ hours. SM took me about 5 or less. The game really flies by for some reason.

Rips-off Fatal Frame. Having a game mechanic that directly rips off Fatal Frame is just a bad idea. There's nothing wrong with having puzzles in which the camera plays some part, but at the very least put your own spin on it, do something a little different then taking pictures of ghosts. This just feels out of place.

Luckily, it was such a small part of the gameplay, so it wasn't that big of a deal. It reminded me of Fatal Frame, as well, but it was a fleeting thought. For some reason the no combat/running/hiding elements remind me of Haunting Ground.

Story Criticisms. Now here's the part where I have to criticize the story, which generally is being praised. Admittedly this is just personal taste, but I found the writing quality in this game to be a bit below average. Characters other than Dahlia are bland, they didn't do anything particularly interesting with the new Lisa, the new prom queen what's-her-name character is unmemorable, and Cybil just seems unlikable. (Perhaps I got the bad Cybil.) There were certain scenes where the painfully cliche dialogue made me cringe, like the exchange between what's-her-name and her boyfriend. Even Dahlia has some horrible dialogue on the boat when she is trying to seduce you, it literally sounds like they got a high school girl to write it. Harry is decently well written though.

I definitely agree with all of that, except I didn't think Harry was that great. I'm not going as far to say that SM ruined Harry for me, but I didn't feel he had that much of an attachment to Cheryl. This is probably meant to seem like that, since it's basically Cheryl who is the one with the deep attachment this time, but it really takes a number on Harry as a character. I definitely never thought of him as a drunk or a sleazeball, that's for sure. His overall personality in this game was pretty unlikable for me.

[Brionf]

lesboctopus: That's a very good point, and I agree that all of the connections to Cheryl are interesting. I guess I'm just still troubled by the fact that there's a lot of character interaction between you (Harry) and other characters, and the ending seems to render all of that moot. The ending isn't really my major complaint about the game. Actually I liked it at first, it wasn't until later when I thought about it that it bothered me. I think in the future, if they want to have twist endings, they should try to steer clear of ones that invalidate all the story before it. That's all.

simeonalo: Yeah, those particular things you mentioned are a bit more subjective than some of my other points. Though I think my reasoning about how the lack of consequences can hinder the suspense in a game are pretty solid. That goes for more types of games than just horror games, as well.

I don't necessarily think that fast zombies are always better than slow zombies. A slow creeping threat is more suspenseful, a fast threat is more shocking, I think that's pretty universally accepted and most horror movies mix both. I personally think if Climax had to pick between slow or fast monsters, slow ones would be more effective, but then again a better choice is always to mix both types, so perhaps I should have just combined this point with my next one about monster variety.

And yes, it's tough to measure the "twistedness" of a story, but I don't think I'm alone in accusing SM of being tame. Sure, there are Elektra complexes, and while interesting, I don't find that to be particularly creepy. The game, in it's efforts to be "mature," just has too much restraint in general. If your opinion differs, well that's cool, but I don't really understand it.

Aside from those three points you mentioned, pretty much every word of my review is subjective opinion. But, that's why I tried to back it up with as much explanation as possible. You don't have to agree with me, but hopefully you understand where I'm coming from.

[Brionf]

Using the wiimote to control the flashlight was nice, but I feel that the light effects were pulled off poorly compared to the older games. Shadow effects were often stiff, and the lighting appeared flat. I expect more from a Silent Hill game, and a next gen in general.

Well, I haven't been playing many videogames lately, and I don't have a PS3 or an Xbox, so I'm kind of out of touch with the latest technology. It looked fine to me, but my standards are probably lower than yours.

I agree for the most part. Yes, the "psych" profiling is a shallow gimmick. Even when you get past the fact that it's a game, and it's just for fun, it still seems like a let down in many ways. Basically, all personality types are going to boil down to a handful of basic ideas. Harry pretty much acts the same no matter how you answer, though it's easy to see that the characters around you change a lot. Locations and cut scene changes are a nice touch, but things like that could be used in any game. I don't feel that this concept could "never work", though, but it would really need to be developed further.

It depends on what they want to do with it. You can use profiling to make the player feel like he has some control over the game, and perhaps tailor it in general ways. But I am skeptical as to whether it's even possible to make a game scarier for an individual based on a profiling system. This isn't just because of the lack of an A.I., I don't even think a human being profiling someone would be able to do that.

For example, my girlfriend has an irrational fear of small children. I find it impossible to believe that there is any kind of "test" she could take from which you could find out this fact, without asking her directly. So even if they take the system in SM and refine it to the Nth degree, with thousands of potential raw shocks, it won't make it more accurate, just more random. That's what I think, anyway.

[Ryoshockwave]

For future reference, double posting isn't allowed.

Using the wiimote to control the flashlight was nice, but I feel that the light effects were pulled off poorly compared to the older games. Shadow effects were often stiff, and the lighting appeared flat. I expect more from a Silent Hill game, and a next gen in general.

Well, I haven't been playing many videogames lately, and I don't have a PS3 or an Xbox, so I'm kind of out of touch with the latest technology. It looked fine to me, but my standards are probably lower than yours.

Nah, the lighting effects were even better in the PS2 titles. The Wii should be more than capable of pulling of something just as good, or better.

I agree for the most part. Yes, the "psych" profiling is a shallow gimmick. Even when you get past the fact that it's a game, and it's just for fun, it still seems like a let down in many ways. Basically, all personality types are going to boil down to a handful of basic ideas. Harry pretty much acts the same no matter how you answer, though it's easy to see that the characters around you change a lot. Locations and cut scene changes are a nice touch, but things like that could be used in any game. I don't feel that this concept could "never work", though, but it would really need to be developed further.

It depends on what they want to do with it. You can use profiling to make the player feel like he has some control over the game, and perhaps tailor it in general ways. But I am skeptical as to whether it's even possible to make a game scarier for an individual based on a profiling system. This isn't just because of the lack of an A.I., I don't even think a human being profiling someone would be able to do that.

For example, my girlfriend has an irrational fear of small children. I find it impossible to believe that there is any kind of "test" she could take from which you could find out this fact, without asking her directly. So even if they take the system in SM and refine it to the Nth degree, with thousands of potential raw shocks, it won't make it more accurate, just more random. That's what I think, anyway.

Yeah, you are probably right. But they even failed on making the Raw Shocks look scary at all... (what's so scary about adding breasts)? I wasn't particularly talking about the monsters changing, though, I was just hoping that the game would somehow be able to figure out what would scare you by the way you played the game, and then use those fears against you. Now that I think about it, though, I have no idea what exactly they would make the game do in that case.

[Evilwhiteranger]

This is a reviewer who is clearly a fan of the series! Much respect with the old and the new. Nice review! I very much agree with it all except I thought the twist and the overall story was great.


Not all fans are fan boys. Not all fan boys are fans.
A random thought.

[paladin181]

The Wii isn't considered a true next gen system because it lacks the hardware to pull off the next gen processes. So it's not a next gen game, where as Homecoming was. The lighting in that was beyond awful though.

This review sums up a LOT of points I've made before, particularly the "This game is not scary in the slightest" idea, as well as some mechanics falling hard on their faces.I definitely prefer scarier games (Like Siren or Condemned) to gimmicked stories.. Maybe it's time to lay Silent Hill to rest..

[Brionf]

Sorry about the double posting, it's just that someone posted while I was in the middle of posting myself. I'll edit myself if that happens in the future.

Yeah, a lot of people seem to like the story and the ending, so I'm in the minority on that. To be fair, it's not that they were bad, and the ending deserves credit for being clever, certainly... I just feel that when an American company makes a game, they have no language barrier excuse, so I hold them to a higher standard when it comes to storytelling. And based on that, the writing in this game disappointed me. But that's just me.

Yeah, I am a pretty huge fan of the series, despite the fact that I have never played Homecoming, I have only watched play-throughs of it on the internet. I love all 4 of the Team Silent games, including The Room which I feel is a bit underrated. Things have been shaky after that, but I truly think an American developer has the potential to make Silent Hill games that are as creepy as the originals, and maybe that developer is even Climax. But they're going to have to learn from their mistakes, and it's going to be really tough without Akira if he truly is quitting the series. I don't know how they'll ever be able to replace him.

And I like the Personality Profile gimmick. I thought it worked, but only for this *one* game. Twice would be too much. It's not an effective fear device, like the radio is... the radio is truly effective, and is strongly linked to Silent Hill (in the same way that photography is linked to Fatal Frame) so by all means they should use and abuse that until the cows come home. That's why I think updating the radio to a cell phone was smart... it's one of the things Climax got right.

[Leviathanapsu]

Glad you took the time to think this out and put it to pen (so to speak). I have been considering doing a review of the game, both as a stand alone and in relation to the other games of the series and your review hit a number of points that I really felt were important ones to address without failing to note some of the positive aspects as well. I like that it was written in a manner that allows those who disagree to still feel like you are being thoughtful rather than just complaining and it speaks well of the time you put into the review itself.

[Dogg Thang]

Your 4, 5 and 6 are really all one point.

On the psyche profiling, personally, I see it as far more than a gimmick. In fact, given the ending, it's integral to the entire game. It's right there in the core. And it's what had me play the game five times in a row.

I didn't do that with even my Silent Hill favourites in the past.

I do think it could be taken much further but I think it worked great and, as you said (though you unfairly buried it in a negative), there is tons to see in this game. More little details than perhaps any other SH game (can't speak for Homecoming - haven't played it). The fact that many of those details change just adds so much more to the experience.

And as for their being no climax, well, I simply disagree. The boat scene and then through the water worked beautifully for me to lead to that last revelation. And it's clear from the reactions that the ending caught people by surprise and got them thinking. It didn't nullify the rest of the game. If it had, you wouldn't see the discussions going on here that there are.

[Ryoshockwave]

But they're going to have to learn from their mistakes

I'm not sure if they will. They seem to think they made a great game, and it was well-received by a lot of Silent Hill fans.

[nur_ein_tier]

Yeah, agreed on the formula aspect. Once you've played through once, you know exactly where the nightmare sequences start, which means you feel safe everywhere else.

I don't agree on monster variety, but only because of the way the game is set up. There are no bosses, so I don't know that it would benefit from having ten kinds of monsters chasing you in the nightmare parts.

Disagree about being surreal.

While I liked the "realistic" aspect of not having to press a certain button to read things, and being able to read posters by zooming in, I liked the comments characters made about things in previous games, and having memos show up on the screen.

My biggest complaint is actually some of the "puzzles," when keys are hidden in plain view. What's the point of that?

But they even failed on making the Raw Shocks look scary at all... (what's so scary about adding breasts)? I wasn't particularly talking about the monsters changing, though, I was just hoping that the game would somehow be able to figure out what would scare you by the way you played the game, and then use those fears against you. Now that I think about it, though, I have no idea what exactly they would make the game do in that case.

My other big complaint, yeah. Previews and things had everything thinking it would somehow be scary to the player. It was not. No idea how they'd do that, either, I just know they didn't accomplish it.

[Ryoshockwave]

^Yeah, the psyche profiling isn't related to making the game scarier, which is the impression I got, too.

[paladin181]

To be fair, Climax's UK division developed Shattered Memories, and finished and cleaned up the botch job that Climax USA did on Ørigins. So if Climax is the American developer to march the series forward, then great. But so far their American division has only shown incompetence to the point of having a project reassigned to someone else since they proved incapable of meeting deadlines.