Silent Hill: Shattered Memories

[pariah]

Admittedly, I’m a bit of a Silent Hill fanatic. I live for its twisted world of macabre creatures and bizarre plots. I currently own all the Silent Hill games despite its recent shortcomings in the recent installments in the series. Each time I pick up a Silent Hill game, I’m always striving to find that same dread I got when I wandered the streets of snowy-foggy Silent Hill and heard the radio spring to life with white noise for the first time. When I played Silent Hill 1-3, I was so freaked out by the imagery, I developed complicated system of turning the lights on and off when I made a mad dash for the safety of my bed and blankets. But, after Silent Hill 3, I haven’t quite found the Silent Hill that has the same terrorizing effect on me. Sadly, even Silent Hill: Shattered Memories has not recaptured the horror I desperately want back in the series.


Silent Hill: Shattered Memories is a retelling of the original Silent Hill plot as first seen on the Playstation. Harry Mason stars in Shattered Memories, awaking from a car accident to find his young daughter, Cheryl, missing from the wreck. Harry begins his search for her in the strange town of Silent Hill. In Shattered Memories, the basic plot structure of the original Silent Hill is still there. The town itself, however, does not hold the same amount of occult horror as it did in the first game. Silent Hill is much like a modern mid-western town during a large snowfall. Everything is caked in snow and the streets are full of vacant cars and void of people. However, during his trek in the snow, Harry is sucked into a nightmarish winter hell where strange creatures relentlessly pursue him. Throughout his exploration of Silent Hill and search of Cheryl, Harry is plagued by doubt and confusions about his life and his daughter.


The game is split up into three parts: Silent Hill, Frozen Nightmare World, and The Worst Psychologist Ever. In Silent Hill, Harry travels through a snowy town interacting with residents and solving puzzles that ultimately brings him closer to Cheryl. The areas have a soft quietness to them, which is both calming and strangely creepy because the locations have a strikingly real quality to them. These qualities are what make the town of Silent Hill such an interesting place to explore.


The Nightmare Mode throws Harry into a frozen landscape filled with humanoid monsters that he cannot kill and all he can do is run in terror. In this world, everything is encased in ice except Harry and his enemies. While the areas are visually chilling, it’s incredibly hard to take in when all Harry can do is flee and hide from enemies. So, the effect is completely lost in the frantic blur of the chase. During these chases, Harry must complete inane tasks in order to move forward. Harry does have the option to hide in certain areas (much like Haunting Ground and Clock Tower), but this option is so ineffective that it feels pointless to ever do it. In this mode, players can look forward to getting lost and dying frequently if they tend to have a bad sense of direction or memory (Yo).


Lastly, we have Dr. Kaufman’s office where he asks the player a number of psychological questions. This is part of the game where it “starts to play you”. By answering these questions and completing tests with the doctor, it changes the world of Silent Hill to build situations based on what the player answered. However, Dr. Kaufman is terrible psychologist. He talks at length about your faults, criticizes everything about your character, and during my playthrough focused WAY too much on sexuality. I understand the concept of putting sex in a game to be edgy or taboo, but after about the fifteenth time talking about the character’s sexuality it becomes mundane and ridiculous.


Where I was excited to see this world of Silent Hill re-visioned, it is loaded with disappointment. Shattered Memories doesn’t hold the chilling fear that the other Silent Hill’s have some grasp on. The monsters are uninspired geometrically shaped meat-puppets that shriek and blindly chase Harry. The Nightmare Mode does offer some interesting effects with the ice, but with the monsters always snapping at Harry’s heels, it’s impossible to take it in unsettling nature of the surroundings (like a car being suspended in a huge block of ice).


Despite the game lacking the certain Silent Hill scary bite, it does bring interesting characters, game mechanics, and plot. Digging into Harry’s past and discovering his true identity is a compelling point to trudge through the tedious Nightmare Mode. Fans may be happy to see some familiar names and faces pop up throughout the game as new characters (I know I was).


The game mechanics are exactly how a survival horror game should be on the Wii. With the wii-mote, the player has control over Harry’s flashlight. It’s a small detail, but it really adds a fun element to the game that really draws in and makes the player feel like they are a part of Silent Hill. Along with the flashlight, the majority of Harry’s actions revolve around his phone. From it, he receives and makes calls and text messages of the bizarre and disturbing kind, take pictures, and access maps. With the wii-mote, the player can choose to have the sound from the phone come through the wii-mote speaker like it were a really clunky cell phone. Another interesting feature is interacting with the monsters in the Nightmare Mode. In order to fling off the monsters that cling to Harry, the player has to throw the wii-mote and the nunchuk to whatever side the monster is on Harry. A bit of a warning to those who are frantic in horror games, you may run the risk of smacking yourself in the face (I’m not admitting to anything).


Silent Hill: Shattered Memories is a game that is loaded with great ideas and incredible failings. The new take on the horror of Silent Hill is an interesting one, but it still is not the Silent Hill that everyone (including myself) is looking for. Perhaps the next re-visioning or the next game in the series will have what it takes to put the horror back in Silent Hill. Until then, I can walk to my bed with the lights off without the trepidation of some grotesque creature trailing behind me.



das blog

[Shalashaska]

The idea of updates grates on nails on a chalkboard for me, where you're told that you can experience it all over again, for the first time... again! It's like trying to imagine the first time you ever tried a very specific type of soda and it caught you off-guard. Forever more you're going to be aware of the taste of what you like and the more you chase it the more dull and tasteless it becomes. Like heroin, coke, LSD and for you, Silent Hill.

I was maybe half-of-a-half interested in this, but then you said Wii and I lost all hope.

[pariah]

For everything the game does right, it does a number of things horribly wrong. I really did want to give this game a fair trail (unlike I did for Homecoming), but it just kept letting me down.

[Joss]

Just because you suck at the combat mechanics of Homecoming does not make it a bad game.

[pariah]

I didn't say it was a bad game. :P I'm not bad at the combat system either. Silent Hill 5 focused on the part of Silent Hill I didn't care for. I'm fairly sure I'm waiting for a game that is never going to be released. Shattered Memories didn't give me what I wanted anyway. The running away mechanic would be fun, but it's too frantic. If it took a cue from Haunting Ground, it may have been more suspenseful and ... scary.