Personal Reflections on BoM?

Come here to talk about the Book of Memories.

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What do you think about Book of Memories?

It looks amazing! I can't wait to buy it!
2
4%
It seems pretty cool. Might pick it up if I feel like it.
13
29%
It's... different. Maaaaaaybe...
7
16%
/neutral/
6
13%
Meh. I don't hate it, but it's not, like, the best thing ever, either.
7
16%
I dislike it. I don't like where this is going, and it's gonna suck.
6
13%
KILL IT WITH FIRE! FIRE AND HOLY WATER!!!
4
9%
 
Total votes: 45

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WelcomeToNowhere
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Re: Personal Reflections on BoM?

Post by WelcomeToNowhere »

Typographenia wrote:
WelcomeToNowhere wrote:@Typographenia: Why, thank you! I wanted to make my feelings on the matter rather clear from the get-go; after all, there's no real reason to beat around the bush, and as the apathy in this thread shows, no-one really disagrees with me, either. Not even you. :)
I'm not opposed to the game at all. I'm glad they didn't repeat the same approach they did last time with a portable. I don't think the silent hill format lends itself well to a portable system. I would much rather they try something completely different than force the console formula on a handheld.

I'm just not a big handheld person, but I will be picking it up at some point.
I never said you or anyone else were opposed to it, I specifically used the word apathy to apply to the thread. That is because just about everybody (except NanayaShiki, whom as always has to be the odd duck) here feels apathetic toward Book of Crap; that is to say, they feel a whole bag full of nothing. :mrgreen:
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Tillerman
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Re: Personal Reflections on BoM?

Post by Tillerman »

I'm interested in it, but I won't have the money for a Vita for awhile, so I won't have the chance to play it. And even if I did have a Vita, there are other games I'd want to get first, like Persona 4 The Golden. So I probably won't be buying it, but then again I am quite interested in how the game will turn out, so I'll be at least checking out some videos or something. I also like the developer who is making the game, Wayforward, they seem like the absolute best western developer when it comes to making 2D games.
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Yuki
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Re: Personal Reflections on BoM?

Post by Yuki »

WelcomeToNowhere wrote: @Yuki: The whole point of Silent Hill is that the power of the town reaches inside you and changes the world to suit your own personal demons. If it doesn't take place in Silent Hill, and the powers that be of Silent Hill aren't involved, then it doesn't really need the SH moniker. May as well be "Clive Barker's Book of Memories" or something, since Silent Hill won't really have anything to do with it, you know? That's just my personal reflection, though.
Haven't they already mentioned that it does indeed delve a little into the town's past? Plus it has, at the very least, an SH skin to it. What do you think of Shattered Memories?
PRIME_BBCODE_SPOILER_SHOW PRIME_BBCODE_SPOILER:
It had nothing to do with the canon town of Silent Hill. Should it not have been a Silent Hill game, either?
The fact is that it's a spinoff. Just as Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles was for the FF series, or The Arcade for Silent Hill, or The Umbrella Chronicles for Resident Evil... it has different gameplay while still using the Silent Hill mythos. I don't understand the vitriol.
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WelcomeToNowhere
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Re: Personal Reflections on BoM?

Post by WelcomeToNowhere »

^No, the way i've always thought of SHSM was as an alternative sequel to SH1, where instead of following the canon of the Good or Good+ ending, in which
PRIME_BBCODE_SPOILER_SHOW PRIME_BBCODE_SPOILER:
Harry escapes Silent Hill with baby Heather and raises her up again,
it follows the Bad/Bad+ endings, where
PRIME_BBCODE_SPOILER_SHOW PRIME_BBCODE_SPOILER:
Harry dies and Cheryl goes crazy with her magic powers and imagines him with the help of the town.
In my line of thought, it isn't so much a discanonical game as much as a big "what if...?"
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Re: Personal Reflections on BoM?

Post by KageReneko »

i'm thinking about getting a Vita in the future because I really loved my PSP, anyway, i must be sincere and say that I haven't played too many PSP games because just a few of them arrived to my country (The few of them are OVERpriced)... I mainly was tempted about getting the PSP for SH0, but the thing that made my mind was the option of emulating older consoles and it has helpes me to finish LOTS of Genesis, NES, GBA, SNES, GB, SegaCD and PSX games... Anyway, some of the PSP games that I have purchased have ended being good...

I hope Vita get a decent game library and I hope be able to purchase several of them here; anyway, I am also am looking forward to have even better emulators on it; I've been dreaming with the PS2 emulation (Silent Hill and Project Zero games) since I heard about Vita because I really loved the portable experience that I had with 0rigins... Anyway, after getting Vita i may get BoM if it reaches my counrty with a good price, I really had fun with Resident Evil Gaiden so I have learned to taste stuff before expressing my hate
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Re: Personal Reflections on BoM?

Post by globalwolf »

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Last edited by globalwolf on 11 Oct 2012, edited 2 times in total.
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WelcomeToNowhere
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Re: Personal Reflections on BoM?

Post by WelcomeToNowhere »

^You mean a "moot point"? :P

I definitely understand what you mean--you're supposed to feel trapped, helpless and isolated when you play a horror game, but that's not really very possible when you're playing it on a crowded commuter train, or outside in the bright sunshine. That's one thing.

My other thing is, there is this whole "create a character" idea they have. It's cool that you can insert yourself into Silent Hill and everything, yeah, but it really cuts down on how much the character can be developed, and how it doesn't really seem like it'd feel like a real person.
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Re: Personal Reflections on BoM?

Post by PyramidFace »

Personal reflections, huh?

Well, The team worked really hard to create a new gameplay experience that was still firmly rooted in Silent Hill. I wrote a complex story told in a very unconventional way, in that it creates a kind of puzzle the player will be thinking about constantly as she explores the Otherworlds. Since the gameplay all takes place in various Otherworlds, the music has a lot of breadth and variety. WayForward created really great gameplay with a variety of systems that work in concert so that players will be working a long time to "master" it and discover how everything links together. It's increasingly disappointing how impossible it is for gamers to think outside the box.
Anybody with a Vita who doesn't hate horror / RPGs would be making a mistake to pass it up.

(and the story is written by the guy who localized Shin Megami Tensei before coming to Konami, remember?)
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Re: Personal Reflections on BoM?

Post by NanayaShiki »

PyramidFace wrote:It's increasingly disappointing how impossible it is for gamers to think outside the box.
There are plenty of people who can think outside the box. Not everybody is refusing to try this game because it's different, you are just dealing with a vocal minority. But even here, there are plenty of people willing to think outside the box.
Anybody with a Vita who doesn't hate horror / RPGs would be making a mistake to pass it up.
I'll be getting a Vita eventually and I'm sure it'll be one of the first games I pick up when I do.
(and the story is written by the guy who localized Shin Megami Tensei before coming to Konami, remember?)
I've still never been able to find exactly what games you worked on and what positions you had for them. Shin Megami Tensei is pretty much tied with Silent Hill for the title of "my favorite video game series ever", and I love the localization of them.


But, yeah, I'm mostly excited for Book of Memories for the story.
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Re: Personal Reflections on BoM?

Post by PyramidFace »

Give or take, but basically:

Games I Produced/Localized at Atlus:
Trauma Center UtK
Trauma Center SO
Steambot Chronicles
Contact

Games I Localized at Atlus:
Robopon 2
River City Ransom EX
Phantom Brave
Digital Devil Saga (1 and 2)
Devil Summoner KRvsSA
Stella Deus

Games I Localized parts of at Atlus:
Super Robot Taisen
Metal Saga
Persona 3 (including ~half the Social Links)

Game I helped get released by Atlus:
Rule of Rose
(I figured it was as close as I'd get to working on Silent Hill)
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Re: Personal Reflections on BoM?

Post by NanayaShiki »

Awesome! Thanks for the list.
PyramidFace wrote: Trauma Center UtK
Trauma Center SO
Digital Devil Saga (1 and 2)
Devil Summoner KRvsSA
Love these games so much.
Persona 3 (including ~half the Social Links)
Oooh, I'm curious which Social Links, but that was probably too long ago to recall perfectly, so I'll just take this info and be happy. haha
Game I helped get released by Atlus:
Rule of Rose
(I figured it was as close as I'd get to working on Silent Hill)
Hah. Yeah, I bought that, thinking to myself "survival horror published by Atlus? Well, maybe it'll be like an Atlus Silent Hill."
It's pretty interesting to see that similar sentiments were on the other side of the fence as well!
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Re: Personal Reflections on BoM?

Post by PyramidFace »

Which Social Links?
If I played through the game I could tell you exactly which ones, but I know I did these for sure:

* The online RPG chick
* The little girl
* The sickly guy
* The angry fat kid
* The rival athlete
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Re: Personal Reflections on BoM?

Post by NanayaShiki »

PyramidFace wrote:
Which Social Links?
If I played through the game I could tell you exactly which ones, but I know I did these for sure:

* The online RPG chick
* The little girl
* The sickly guy
* The angry fat kid
* The rival athlete
Awesome! Thanks so much. Those first three you mentioned are like my three favorite ones in the whole game, especially the sickly guy and the online RPG. I'm off to share this information with my friend now, who should find it quite interesting!

This is getting way off-topic, though, and I apologize for that.

Book of Memories looks interesting and it has me intrigued, and in the end, that's all I need a game to do before it comes out.
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VIVIsect
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Re: Personal Reflections on BoM?

Post by VIVIsect »

PyramidFace wrote:It's increasingly disappointing how impossible it is for gamers to think outside the box.
I think it's increasingly disappointing that developers are thinking so far outside the box; essentially producing games that barely have any resemblance at all to the games that people originally became fans of, then accusing fans of being close-minded for having the gall to reject those games.
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Re: Personal Reflections on BoM?

Post by NanayaShiki »

VIVIsect wrote:
PyramidFace wrote:It's increasingly disappointing how impossible it is for gamers to think outside the box.
I think it's increasingly disappointing that developers are thinking so far outside the box; essentially producing games that barely have any resemblance at all to the games that people originally became fans of, then accusing fans of being close-minded for having the gall to reject those games.
This is literally the first game to drastically change things like that. And it's only from a gameplay perspective at this point because we don't know enough about the story, mythos, and all those other things, to say that they have no resemblance to the older games.
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Yuki
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Re: Personal Reflections on BoM?

Post by Yuki »

VIVIsect wrote:
PyramidFace wrote:It's increasingly disappointing how impossible it is for gamers to think outside the box.
I think it's increasingly disappointing that developers are thinking so far outside the box; essentially producing games that barely have any resemblance at all to the games that people originally became fans of, then accusing fans of being close-minded for having the gall to reject those games.
I think it's increasingly disappointing how people become furious over a spinoff that is not pretending to be anything other than what it is, and how people go so overboard complaining, changing from "I dislike this because of [reasons]" to calling for firing someone, to claiming the entire series is retroactively ruined, and the like.

Off-topic: I loved loved loved the MMO Social Link in Persona 3. Also, how was Rule of Rose? I've not played it.
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Re: Personal Reflections on BoM?

Post by Kenji »

I've been beating my brains, trying to remember if I ever got the American version of Rule of Rose or not.

I bought the Japanese version, shortly after it came out, 'cuz I was fairly convinced it'd never come here. I know I procrastinated on getting the American version 'cuz I technically already owned the game (and played my small role in no Siren 2, oh irony). But I could've just as easily bought it off Amazon one night or another, just 'cuz.

And now I kinda hope I did, 'cuz it's over $100 new.

To answer your question, Yuki, it's clunky as all hell... but it does have a unique mood. Very melancholy. If you want it, get it for that and nothing else.
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Re: Personal Reflections on BoM?

Post by Calamity »

Well I'm just going to sneak on in and thank you for helping to get Rule of Rose localized Tomm. It made me incredibly happy to see that Atlus was bringing it over it seems I have you to thank for that. I'd been following that beauty since the Japanese trailer in 2005, so when news came out of it being localized I was all over it. ♥
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Re: Personal Reflections on BoM?

Post by Kenji »

... wait!!

The Japanese version had a mirror front to the DVD with painted butterflies. I remember this because I burnt a fucking ring into it with the PS2's power/eject ribbon, while testing out my fliptop mod. Because of this game, I cut up an index card and taped it under the case to protect the power strip.

Thanks, Rule of Rose. :)

However, the American version has a dark beige-ish backing with painted blue butterflies.

I think I did buy this game, one night, over Amazon!

(okay, I'm done now)
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VIVIsect
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Re: Personal Reflections on BoM?

Post by VIVIsect »

Yuki wrote:I think it's increasingly disappointing how people become furious over a spinoff that is not pretending to be anything other than what it is, and how people go so overboard complaining, changing from "I dislike this because of [reasons]" to calling for firing someone, to claiming the entire series is retroactively ruined, and the like.
I agree. Fortunately, no one here is really flying off the handle. No one here is proclaiming Book of Memories to be an abhorrent blasphemy, shat fourth from Satan himself to murder our beloved and cherished memories of Silent Hill 2. People here have actually been fairly reserved. And yet those of us here who aren't interested in this particular title, for whatever reason, are accused of simply being close-minded and incapable of "thinking outside the box". I don't know. That comment just irks me. But, whatev.

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