Silent Hill: Shattered Memories sux - VINDICATION!

[Adol]

[ g4tv.com/videos/43131/Silent-Hill-Shattered-Memories-Review/ Did I not call that shit? ]

As an avid fan of the Silent Hill series, it sucks to watch it get passed around like a drunken cheerleader at a frat house party to every two bit game studio who thinks they can 'do it better' than the established traditions of the franchise; especially when that entails entirely re-writing the first installment of the series to fit their own niche opinions of what a horror game should be.

I'm sure this won't be the only thing to complain about when all is said and done, but I'll point out the two main deal breakers from my perspective.

Combat has been ENTIRELY removed from the game. Alright, look. I have seen Friday the 13th. I have seen The Ring. I have seen The Grudge. I am plenty fucking familiar with the conventions of a bunch of squealing helpless dipshits running up stairs instead of out of the front door to escape the boogie man or slutty ghost bitch. I play horror games for an experience that doesn't involve a bunch of fucking lemmings who are too stupid and too squirrely to bust a cap to save their own lives.

Besides, it's not like the complete inability to defend yourself will make the experience scarier. First of all, that takes the responsibility for the characters safety out of your hands. Without the ability to fight back, you aren't burdened with the balancing of health, ammo, or the conflict of whether or not to risk your ass to stomp out some slithering abomination in the dark or try to sulk past it.

Secondly, figuring out how to run past any given monster in a hallway without getting your foot bitten off by trial and error becomes exponentially frustrating and therefore LESS SCARY. It's really hard to be scared and immersed in a game experience when you feel like snapping your controller in half and devouring it's broken contents. This has been my experience with EVERY SINGLE non combat survival segment of EVERY SURVIVAL HORROR GAME I have ever played. The idea of putting up with that bullshit through the entire game is mind boggling.

The 'scary' in Silent Hill has never been diminished by the fact that you have the ability to fight back against the monsters. The 'scary' is in the implications of the circumstances your character finds themselves in. It's about a struggle against an enemy which is not understood and operates by a logic which is incomprehensible to you, even six games into the series. The struggle (or 'combat' if you prefer) is an integral part of the horror. When you're creeping down pitch black a hallway armed with a metal pipe and you can hear the bubbling, oozing, and crackling sounds of creatures with broken spinal columns who can anomalously move anyway, seething in the dark, with your radio shrieking, and knowing that the only way you're getting out is through them, you will find the horror in Silent Hill.

The familiar radio has been replaced with a motherfucking Black Berry. Honestly, I think this shit really speaks for itself. Anyone who has played a Silent Hill game knows that the very presence of the spooky shit causes any and ALL electronics to malfunction completely. As a matter of fact, the whole reason the radio even works as a warning device is because of this fact. The presence of the monsters causes the radio to whine and squeal to a terrifying effect, which scares the shit out of you, but you wouldn't dare turn it off, because then you'd have no idea when some phallus shaped nightmare is gonna pop up and subject you to some prison shit.

So how will this experience of isolated abject horror be improved by the presence of a Black Berry? I quote, "Harry is equipped with a cell phone, which can check the map with a GPS interface, receive text- and audio-messages, take pictures, and call numbers. The player can also use it to zoom in on the environment. Checking scattered diary pages and the like have also been removed; now the player may search the environment by looking at it and utilize the above-mentioned handheld device for zooming in on small text and objects." Well, that's just fucking brilliant. I don't even know what to say. I honestly don't think I need to explain why this is the stupidest fucking idea ever.

At any rate, it wouldn't be so bad if this was just some random stupid ass tangent that they were on with some remote corner of the series, but they've been given the rights to re-interpret the original game that sets off the canon storyline and replace it with this heap of steaming of bullshit.

So for any fellow fans of the series, let me put this in perspective. If it's 2010 when Harry first enters Silent Hill and runs around taking pictures on his fucking Black Berry instead of killing things, that means it will be 2027 before Heather has her first run in with it, meaning she'll probably be an unstoppable cyborg that can run up buildings and fire high energy magnetic slugs from hidden railguns installed in each arm. Except it probably won't involve combat either, so I guess you'll just skate around Silent Hill on your hoverboard and snap pictures of things with the camera installed in your eyeball while telepathically chatting up your buddies on your neural friends network. I guess shit will be scarier that way.

In closing, I've prepared the following skit to express my feelings about Silent Hill: Shattered Memories.

harry: hi
jEsSiExXXxxX: hi wut u up 2??
harry: slient hill lol
jEsSiExXXxxX: rly lol?? that sux :(
harry: ya
harry: so watu doin later????
jEsSiExXXxxX: iduno u??
harry: shti hlodon monster
jEsSiExXXxxX: u ok??
harry: lol ya
jEsSiExXXxxX: wat happend?
harry: ran away lol
jEsSiExXXxxX: y
harry: its scerierllol
jEsSiExXXxxX: o ok

[01]

It doesn't look as bad as Origins. Though you would think Konami would take better care of a franchise that was/is this popular.

[jeffx]

I'm buying it either way.

[SkyeWelse]

I kinda feel the same way as Jeff here. I'm a die hard fan of the series and I've enjoyed most of the games so far, aside from Homecoming and Origins which I haven't quite finished. I've only played a little of Homecoming as well, but so far I think Double Helix did a much better job gameplay-wise than Climax Group did with Origins and they are the ones behind Shattered Memories, so...

At first I was absolutely against the idea of there being no combat since it is just as Adol said, Silent Hill is a struggle, both an inner and outer struggle and the monsters that appear in Silent Hill are to reflect the inner psychology of the person fighting them. And when that particular person takes some time out to bash in the enemy for a long period of time with a steel pipe, to me it reads as though they are bashing their own sins, or refusing to accept things that are wrong with their lives or decisions made in the past. It is more than just killing a monster.

Also, the fact that Silent Hill is now a ICY place, kind of detracts from the reds, oranges, browns and black of an crowded, corroded, rusty hell that I've come to enjoy.

Still, it is interesting that they are trying to take a new direction with the series, I only wish it wasn't a realization of a personal remake of the first game from a studio that didn't create the first game. It's kind of like saying, "Hey! Loved your game, but if you don't mind I think I'd like to redesign the experience and the story the way I'd prefer to design it because I think it'll be better that way." It almost reads as an elitist type of attitude to me, but maybe I'll change my mind later after I play it.

The cell phone thing does kind of bug me, but I can get over that pretty quick considering that most of the game's HUD interface will be used within that little cell phone display screen.

It does feel like they want to make a game that makes you feel as though you, the player are running through Silent Hill with your left arm and right arm holding a cell phone. The one real flaw I think is going to be a major bad thing about the game is that the monsters don't really look all that well defined and most look like glowing ghosts to me and they seem to move around too fast constantly jumping at the player's back, who has to immediately shrug them off. The video I saw showed someone trying to open a door and in the span of time of trying to open that door, the same enemy that was chasing him jumped on his back three times! If that is how the gameplay will be I can imagine that to be very frustrating and not all that much fun. But then again, that seems to be Climax Group's style.... In Origins, it was better to run from monsters any chance you get, because if you spent the long about of time to kill them, chances are they'd come right back after a period of time had elapsed. I found that and the weapon-breaking/abundance of weapons system particularly annoying.

So we'll see. It might be good it might be bad, but it will offer something new to people who are craving more stories from Silent Hill. And that's something I've always loved about the setting of Silent Hill and the premise. The stories one can come up with are infinite!

Btw, I just did a search for it and someone finally got around to translating the actual image scans from a Silent Hill 3 guide that had a reversed side that doubles as the Silent Hill: The Lost Memories Book which explains so very much about the series and especially that of the events of Silent Hill 3. Please check it out if you've never read through it before, there's some amazing content in there! I own the real book so if you ever need any bigger scans of certain pages, I'd be happy to share those with you all.

www.silenthillmemories.net/guides/lm/info_en.htm

-Thomas

[AllenSmithee]

I think it is really a true remake. They are actually making the game again, this time in a new vision.

Just take it as its own and I'm sure there will be something to enjoy

[Justin]

No Smithee, its a reimagining according to the Retronauts interview What a load of crap that was. I won't be picking it up unless I hear some positive feedback from series fans.

[AllenSmithee]

Ack, I think I meant to say "remake" considering a remake in a new vision IS a reimagining.

Dammit, I need new headphones, so that Retronauts will be better to listen to. Hearing it on one side alone is balls.

[Justin]

Oh no no, I'm not correcting you dude. I'm making fun of the retards at Konami that are trying to spin some new trendy way to call their remake, a remake.

[AllenSmithee]

Yeah, I get you now.

Dammit, what Konami REALLY needs to do is stop outsourcing! That shit is the definition of hit or miss.

[Justin]

Konami needs to get Kojima off Metal Gear, give him millions of dollars in budget cash, and pump out a Zone of the Enders game on PS3. If I was president, that would be my first order of business.

[AllenSmithee]

Definitely! With the right marketting I bet it could sell better than MGS4!

Okay, that'd be hard, but nonetheless.

ZOE 3 would be to DIE for. Damn, I need ZOE 2 though, first. And a copy of 1 (I used to play our border's copy)

[fireinthehole]

ZOE 1 was nothing to write home about (I assume most people bought it for the MGS 2 demo), but then came ZOE 2, which totally blew me away. There's also that Fist of Mars game for GBA but that was only moderately fun. Yeah, I want ZOE 3.

[Justin]

ZoE 1 was very much worth writing home about. The VA sucked, as did the cutscenes, but the music was far better than the second game. It was also the best and most fluid Mech game on the market, which has been surpassed by the Another Century Episode series, and ZoE 2. Plus, it tied up Viola's story, and set the events up for the 2nd game. I'm not really following you about why you didn't like the first game. I will admit, I did pick it up for the MGS 2 demo, but I was pleasantly surprised to find a good game in the package.

[fireinthehole]

Aug 13, 2009 22:04:29 GMT -5 Justin said:

ZoE 1 was very much worth writing home about. The VA sucked, as did the cutscenes, but the music was far better than the second game. It was also the best and most fluid Mech game on the market, which has been surpassed by the Another Century Episode series, and ZoE 2. Plus, it tied up Viola's story, and set the events up for the 2nd game. I'm not really following you about why you didn't like the first game. I will admit, I did pick it up for the MGS 2 demo, but I was pleasantly surprised to find a good game in the package.

For music, yes, ZOE 1 was better. I also agree that it was the best and most fluid Mech game on the market until ACE and ZOE 2, but it still wassn't good enough to stand on its own and I felt there were lots of room for improvement. It probably didn't help that I hated Mech games until ZOE 1 came along and showed that Mech game could actually be fun. I didn't find Viola's in-game story touching until I watched an hour long movie (which came about almost at the same time as the game) that explained lots of things. So I mostly give credits for that part to the movie, not the game. Also, I really hated the cliffhanger ending of the first game since it didn't make the game feel complete on its own. Thankfully, ZOE 2 resolved all these issues. So yeah, ZOE 1 was a good game and was interesting enough for me to watch out for the sequel but it didn't realize all its potential and ultimately failed to be remarkable on its own.

[Justin]

Oh totally, on its own its not good enough to stand up as a viable title. I can respect where you're coming from. ZoE is one of those Meta-Series, where its somewhat imperative that you watch and play within the correct time line. I also felt that ZoE 1 should have been a few hours longer, and some bonus missions where you play as Anubis would have been sweet. I don't think Konami was up to giving Kojima that kind of freedom though, and like you mentioned, I don't think the game would have sold all that well had the MGS 2 demo not been included.

As for the movie, its the best place to start in the series:

Idolo
ZoE 1
Doloris i 1 - 14
ZoE: Fists of Mars
ZoE 2
Doloris i 15 - 26


If you play through the entire series like that, everything makes a whole lot more sense.

[AllenSmithee]

Well, ZOE was one of the first games I really played. Like, I had played games before, but it was after ZOE that i became a gamer. Okay, sure, my life had mostly revolved around video games before then, but it was like a big realization from ZOE.

So I love the game. To bits and pieces. Plus, being 11, Leo wasn't as bad for me as he is for others.

[fireinthehole]

Aug 14, 2009 13:23:36 GMT -5 Justin said:

As for the movie, its the best place to start in the series:

Idolo
ZoE 1
Doloris i 1 - 14
ZoE: Fists of Mars
ZoE 2
Doloris i 15 - 26


If you play through the entire series like that, everything makes a whole lot more sense.

I am pretty sure ZoE 2 occurs after the end of Dolores, i (including epsidoes 15-26). ZoE 2 tidies up all the loose ends with BAHRAM's destruction.

[Justin]

You may be right, but I can only remember Anubis making an appearance very early in the series.

I goofed with the wrong game, as I know one of the games falls in the middle of Doloris i. Its ZoE one, which means the timeline goes:

Idolo
Doloris 1 - 12
ZoE 1
Doloris 13 - 26
Fist of Mars
ZoE 2

www.zoneoftheenders.org/series/

[AllenSmithee]

I can download the anime, I just got ZOE 1 and I already have Fist of Mars.

So all I need now is ZoE 2. This'll be a bit harder.

[Adol]

g4tv.com/videos/43131/Silent-Hill-Shattered-Memories-Review/ Vindicated.