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Re: Downpour Cons ლ(ಠ益ಠლ)

Posted: 12 Jun 2012
by KiramidHead
I'm not really seeing a great deal of difference between the Screamer concept and the final project.

My Cons

-I could have done with more of the Otherworld. Although I liked the Void chases, I would have liked to have a little more exploration as well, kind of like in the St. Maria's Otherworld. But most of all, there should have been an Otherworld streets level. That would have kicked ass. :)

-The Prisoner minion: For the most part, I liked the design of it's face and head, but the rest of it was just meh, including the noises it made. They just sort of weakly grunted at you.

-I wanted to learn a little more about Howard. I find him to be a fascinating character in Past Life, and was looking forward to a little more insight into his purpose.

Re: Downpour Cons ლ(ಠ益ಠლ)

Posted: 22 Jun 2012
by Silent_Storm
Edit: This looks a lot but I am really enjoying the game (only half way through) and think it is really fun.


I disliked how many easter eggs they were it made the game feel a bit gimmicky.

The music was terrible most the scenes had nothing going on and was very one dimensional felt too much like a TV show soundtrack where all the emphasis is based on the opening titles and credits.
I think I could of done better :|

The monsters were boring.

The lag when I got a trophy.

The map for the town really could of done with more than just '?' to mark interesting things.

Murphy is very slow even when he isn't injured.

The otherworld didn't make sense how came the lay out of the buildings changed so much.

The whole of the Devils Pit area it seemed so pointless in hindsight.

Flashbacks.

Pointless characters.

The method of sticking all the memo's in the journal and the difficulty of reading them was annoying.

The amount of weapons was ridiculous what sort of town is Silent Hill a spooky town or a weapons development fallout center.

The town didn't feel abandoned or spooky it felt still inhabited just a bit weather beaten.

Very hard to see the weapons without using the item highlighting option.

NOT SCARY.....I am honestly not even getting the slightest feeling of fear.

Re: Downpour Cons ლ(ಠ益ಠლ)

Posted: 23 Jun 2012
by djtanng
Almost everything was off. There was nothing about Downpour that became stuck in my head forever like other SH's. (Example: SH2: letter from dead wife, Pyramid Head. SH4: locked in your own home, and many other things from other SH games including the music and the hot nurses.)

It's obvious that Konomi is falling off, creative-wise at least. They weren't smart enough or couldn't afford to stop Akira from leaving, and they even ruined Castlevania of all things.

I'd hate to say this, and most people will disagree me but, the only way to save Silent Hill is to give ME the rights to Silent Hill with an unlimited budget and I will not only buy back Akira, but I will track down and hire every single key player that was ever involved with Silent Hill earlier on, when the art, fear style, and story telling was at it's best.

Re: Downpour Cons ლ(ಠ益ಠლ)

Posted: 23 Jun 2012
by alone in the town
I'd hate to say this, and most people will disagree me but, the only way to save Silent Hill is to give ME the rights to Silent Hill
Shit. Someone call Konami right now.

Re: Downpour Cons ლ(ಠ益ಠლ)

Posted: 01 Jul 2012
by PoemOfTheLastMoment
Ryantology wrote:
I'd hate to say this, and most people will disagree me but, the only way to save Silent Hill is to give ME the rights to Silent Hill
Shit. Someone call Konami right now.
Silent Hill is back baby! Now we can have the best Silent hilll of all time thanks to the efforts of this enlightened forum member!

And now, an interesting rant on downpour,,,


Re: Downpour Cons ლ(ಠ益ಠლ)

Posted: 01 Jul 2012
by thy_butcher
I'm just a few minutes in, but I wouldn't call this rant "interesting."
"interesting" would be a well constructed review of these games that he didn't like rather than recording himself spewing the same cloned statements of hatred that I've heard from many purists over the past few years.

EDIT: I must say, the video didn't get any better. His points are all misconstrued... it's a really irritating watch.

Re: Downpour Cons ლ(ಠ益ಠლ)

Posted: 01 Jul 2012
by PoemOfTheLastMoment
thy_butcher wrote:I'm just a few minutes in, but I wouldn't call this rant "interesting."
"interesting" would be a well constructed review of these games that he didn't like rather than recording himself spewing the same cloned statements of hatred that I've heard from many purists over the past few years.
Well the video is called a 'Rant' and there are 2 parts.

My brother summed up modern day silent hill real nicely.

"Silent hill is like the famous musician you loved when you were growing up because of his catchy and original tunes but somewhere along the line he let the music industry get the best of him and it became less about originality and more about the money and so now 10 years on that guy is nothing but a fat drunken loser who nobody cares about that you see in an A list party because he used to be famous."

Re: Downpour Cons ლ(ಠ益ಠლ)

Posted: 01 Jul 2012
by thy_butcher
I REALLY LIKE the newer games. They were a blast for me.
I'm looking forward to playing both SM & BoM.
Your analogy obviously doesn't hold true for me.

Re: Downpour Cons ლ(ಠ益ಠლ)

Posted: 01 Jul 2012
by PoemOfTheLastMoment

Re: Downpour Cons ლ(ಠ益ಠლ)

Posted: 01 Jul 2012
by Nightmareish Waltzer
Vosk21 reminds me of another YouTube user circa 2006/2007 that did walkthroughs for Silent Hill 2 and 3 and decided outright that he was going to denounce Silent Hill: Homecoming before he even played it and sparked a bunch "RE: About Silent Hill Homecoming" responses from people who either agreed with him or were asking him to "give it a chance". Basically, their the kind of jaded fandom participants that tend to make me want to avoid the Silent Hill fandom in general. The only thing I'd agree with him is the use of atmosphere and jump scares in Downpour. He just tends to contradicts himself about fear after stating that "fear is subjective", though.

And he really shoots himself in the foot by generalizing that everyone who enjoyed Downpour were new to the franchise itself.

Re: Downpour Cons ლ(ಠ益ಠლ)

Posted: 07 Jul 2012
by Skele
Eh, Vosk makes some good points, especially about the series being dead. I also don't agree with his statement regarding anyone that enjoyed Downpour must be new to the franchise. While i certainly don't like Downpour, there were plenty of other longtime fans (at least on this site) that were crazy about this game.

Re: Downpour Cons ლ(ಠ益ಠლ)

Posted: 07 Jul 2012
by clips
Can't see the Vid since my job has youtubed blocked, but the cons for me are...

*Creature design- Very weak creature designs that wasn't terrifying or disturbing at all..and they attacked too much like normal humans(dodging/punching and blocking?) behavior and mannerisms coding would've helped the weak design.

*Side Missions pacing- While i did enjoy the side missions....some of them were on other parts of the map that included alot of backtracking between the maps, which can create a disconnection from the main storyline. Streaming side missions in a manner in which you can solve them in the immeditate area while also unlocking parts of the main storyline would've worked better.

Finding clues for side missions all over the map just became redundant and going back and forth between maps with respawning monsters became a tad annoying. I appreciated them, but they needed to be streamlined better.

*Otherworld sections- I wasn't a fan of the chase sequences...even tho they were crafted better than SM, i didn't really hear anybody scream that they loved the chase sequences in SM, so i was puzzled why they made a re-appearance here. Nontheless i did like some of the designs of the otherworld sections, it was just a shame that you had to run thru the majority of them.

Re: Downpour Cons ლ(ಠ益ಠლ)

Posted: 13 Jul 2012
by Claudia_Wolf
fudgestix wrote:
Mephisto wrote:The slowdowns. Definitely the damn lags.
I'm so glad I was lucky with this, I hardly had any problems. Strange how it affects some more than others.

Anyway!

I think my one main gripe about Downpour was Murphy's lack of interaction with his environment. Sometimes he'd just walked past a wtf moment, like it was something he saw everyday
PRIME_BBCODE_SPOILER_SHOW PRIME_BBCODE_SPOILER:
dead dog?!
, but he'd have a field day talking about a kettle? I would have been happy if it was simply a text interaction, but to say nothing really felt off.

Also, there is one puzzle that uses the dualshock. While it is very doable without, the mini tutorial makes it sound like it isn't, and I thought I was fucked. Scariest bit of the game lol.
You have to agree, that it was REALLY better than the other games. It comes to my y mind SH3:
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Dead man dropping blood? "let's just take a sample of it with a plastic blood that i found in a garbage can!" Danny comes suddenly in front of me? "lets just hear the narrator while examining the corpse with an oblivious expression!" "Ceiling with spikes on it is dropping and it is going to crush me? "let's just walk straight to the exit without even scaring myself!" "man is stabbed by a crazy zealot that thinks im her best friend? "lets just see how he slowly dies while talking to the witch!" Giant swimming deformed man comes in front of me? "is every person here a mental case?" Anyway, after all of this, you may not believe me, but SH3 is still my favorite SH game of all time!!
I liked the fact that Murphy runs differently when encountering a monster, but, as everyone has said, despite all of them having really original attacks, they appearance kills the good part of them. If they were like the past games' monsters in appearance, they would have been a strong point of the game combined with their abilities.

Re: Downpour Cons ლ(ಠ益ಠლ)

Posted: 18 Jul 2012
by Patrick Bateman
clips wrote:*Side Missions pacing- While i did enjoy the side missions....some of them were on other parts of the map that included alot of backtracking between the maps, which can create a disconnection from the main storyline. Streaming side missions in a manner in which you can solve them in the immeditate area while also unlocking parts of the main storyline would've worked better.

Finding clues for side missions all over the map just became redundant and going back and forth between maps with respawning monsters became a tad annoying. I appreciated them, but they needed to be streamlined better.
This irritated me as well. I liked the idea of the side missions, but the backtracking and respawns really took away from the experience. Also, I often found myself working on a side quest, only to encounter clues for another one...then another one, and the next thing I know I'm working on three different side quests without much direction for any. I ended up avoiding many of them and just went with the story but I'll try to tackle them on the second go around.

Re: Downpour Cons ლ(ಠ益ಠლ)

Posted: 12 Aug 2012
by Falconv1.0
The lag which was ridiculous seeing how muddy and bland the textures and shaders were, the combat was fairly repetitive and got boring, the enemies were really uninspired and boring, glitches fucked up parts of the game really hard, and of course, Monocle Man. The graphics really fucked with me, I don't expect top tier stuff from a new developer but I swear some parts/designs looked worse than shit out of 2006, which is just not acceptable. If the team can't do the job well they shouldn't be doing it period.

Also some sidequests were either too vague or moving around town with that kinda crappy map trying to find stuff while getting attacked got too annoying for me to want to finish them all. What was funny to me is how the little stories they told were more compelling in the end than a lot of the plot points and levels in the main game. That bit where you
PRIME_BBCODE_SPOILER_SHOW PRIME_BBCODE_SPOILER:
get that dude's heart and hell just starts screaming at you
actually made me jump a bit.

I was constantly unsure if I could finish a side mission or not due to not knowing how much more progress I needed to make in the main game so I could move more freely around town and whatnot.

The Otherworld was mainly either chase sequences which aren't actually scary to me and really shouldn't scare anybody or puzzles that were fairly linear. The stuff near the end got pretty abstract in, imo, a bad way, like it didn't scare me at all because it felt so silly. What I loved about the otherworld in past games was how it was a really creepy dark version of the area you had explored or some kind of illusion your head was making up, etc, while this just felt like a new level that you go through where everything is loud and fast.
PRIME_BBCODE_SPOILER_SHOW PRIME_BBCODE_SPOILER:
Putting this in spoilers cuz not sure if the fact that there's a prison level really counts as a spoiler, but w/e.

Finally, that prison level just sucked ass. Prison monster is dumb, most of the level felt really uninspired, everything got really action driven and over the top, it really left me feeling unsatisfied.

Re: Downpour Cons ლ(ಠ益ಠლ)

Posted: 12 Aug 2012
by thy_butcher
I agree wholeheartedly about the last level. It was a letdown.

Re: Downpour Cons ლ(ಠ益ಠლ)

Posted: 15 Aug 2012
by PoemOfTheLastMoment
So i finally got around to finishing the game this week...and boy was i disappointed!

I dont know what made me dislike this game so much...maybe it was the cheesy way the silent hill downpour logo flashed at my face or the weird b-movie music that played before the bus crashed. Or maybe it was the fact that the opening bus crash scene was a scene for scene copy of 'The fugitive'...right down to the hispanic character that sits next to you.An homage cant be a scene for scene copy of its source material. it has to be distorted so that the player pays attention and then realizes where its inspiration comes from. Imagine if these guys did the 'James in the closet/ Pyramid head rape scene' in SH2. Instead of Pyramid head, we'd have Dennis Hopper from ' Blue Velvet' shoving a blue cloth up a mannequin's butt cheeks! On the technical side of things, the game is horrendous. I cant believe the game froze on me for 3 seconds just because i looked right that one time. for a game that thrives on immersion, it sure was hellbent on creating the opppsite effect. the save system was even worse. I couldnt tell whether the game was saving or loading or even reaching a checkpoint. the monsters were perhaps the worst offenders of bad desgin in this game. they just looked awful. the story was uneventful and the map was just useless as it never came in handy during side quests. the puzzles were fundamentally flawed especially the lockers as there no logical hints to help the player, instead focusing only on chance.
The thing that bothered me the most about this game was the endings. the fact that each ending contradicts the other is an unforgivable fallacy. it renders the symbolism of the events prior to the game as pointless and ruins whatever emotional impact the game had because the story radically changes according to your 'faux' choices. The moral choice aspect is a fundamentally flawed desgin mechanic that should never be repeated in a Silent hill game again. By giving players the choice to shape the story from the beginning , you've already allowed them to decide the ending from the start and that in itself ruins the sense of mystery that is already so lacking in the game. and finally, when i play a 20+ hour game..i expect there to be a satisfying ending that justifies why i played the game to begin with. not some one minute ending (execution,full circle) that had my jaw hit the floor in shock and disappointment. The ending system in itself is broken! i was able to get three different endings on my last save on my first playthrough...regardless of my actions prior to the ending. the ENDING system is shit...utter shit.... i might have hated the IGN review in the beginning, but now i realize that they werent so biased after all.the game did have promise with its open world exploration, but fundamental flaws like the ones above kept me from enjoying the game one bit. all in all, a mediocre experience.

Final score : 5.5 /10 (assuming that i'd definitely give prior western games a score below 5)

Re: Downpour Cons ლ(ಠ益ಠლ)

Posted: 17 Aug 2012
by Severeth
The controls are REALLY clunky. It's like SH4 clunky. I don't like the way Murphy is handled and his attacks are so limited. You can't even move much while attacking so often, I end up hitting the air instead of the target...

Picking up stuff... Kind of irritating. I don't want to drop my weapon everytime there's something new to pick up... sometimes, I can't even see what I go to pick up, sometimes ending up with a brick and being unable to find the weapon I had before...

Monsters. Designs were a little... eh. Not terrible, but there wasn't much diversity here and I kind of miss the old style enemies of the past games.

Also, no hospital. I know everybody gets all uppity about there being too many hospitals but I kind of missed it in Downpour.

Re: Downpour Cons ლ(ಠ益ಠლ)

Posted: 17 Aug 2012
by gostoneph17
The frame-rate issues and some monsters' designs (exceptions: The Boogeyman, the final boss and the doll monster, those were great in my opinion). Also, there could have been more music, it was very good, but Daniel should have composed more tracks. Finally, Downpour could have been a little scarier.

Re: Downpour Cons ლ(ಠ益ಠლ)

Posted: 07 Sep 2012
by CandyLander
PoemOfTheLastMoment wrote: puzzles were fundamentally flawed especially the lockers as there no logical hints to help the player, instead focusing only on chance.
there was no puzzle where the game wouldn't give you the code for the locker. unless you're talking about the lockers that give you weapons for those codes that you get by buying the game in specific places.