-Don't take that as a bad thing though, i ploughed through this, being a massive fan of the series. In honesty the psychological horror, riddled with multiple levels of subtext and meaning all wrapped in an iconic setting and a glorious soundtrack puts the silent hill franchise a peg above romeros work in terms of "fuck yes, lets sit through this again!".
Clocking in at around 8 to 9 hours This game is NOT silent hill. The characters names are the same, its in a town called silent hill. EVERYTHING else is different.
-And different person to person too.
During the course of the game, which is told as a flashback during your psychiatrist therapy session you take part in interviews and tests with your psychiatrist ,"dr kaufman", as you progress this effects everything in the game.
Spend time oggling at mannequins in the lingerie store?, posters of cheerleaders in the high school? then when you meet cybil she might be a buxom, bleach blonded woman in a very small shirt and leather biker pants. the enemies "raw shocks" with devlop breasts, there hips will bell out as they turn into nurses.
Personally i met cybil as a brown haired generic mountain cop, green jacket and trousers, gun in one hand, torch in the other. and my raw shocks were floating segments of cross sectioned meat with heads i can only describe as akin to totem poles or something from a lovecraft fever dream.
Its just one of the fascinating neat touches that was added to this game. Which seems impossible compared to most wii titles on the system.
The motion control is mostly to control the torch which is seamless in real time and casts real time shadows across the town based on what objects are in the way. a woman cuts bits from a cake with a fork as she eats it, a man pours some scotch from into a glass and the liquid flows form the bottle and fills the glass. and this is all done in the in game engine, theres no FMV's where everything gets high res, and your very rarely out of control in cutscenes. your eyes can wander and you can effect the outcome depending on what you do.
For example i met lisa and helped her get home, she is changing out of her nurse scrubs in the next room as i sit and watch tv, in the corner of the screen i see movement, flick towards it and see her semi nude reflection in the mirror. she freaks and calls me a peeping tom and makes me leave. All because of a scripted event i had no definitive control over.
The story is, without spoilers absolutely different from its namesake, every ending is different. why cheryl is missing is different. everything. Dahlia is a teenage punk rock looking chick, harry no longer looks like jin from lost dipped in tea and there are even characters and subplots introduced that di not exist before.
Honestly its best to sum it up like this: in the age it was made silent hills resonating idea was a creeping sense of loneliness and foreboding against an unknown horror. In shattered memories its all about people and connections they make. very rarely is harry truly alone. It is as though the first game was a david lynch horror film, and this was something done by the cohen brothers.
As i move onto gameplay i should note a big game mechanic that effects how harry stays in contact with people is his smartphone.
Now the original silent hill is set in... either 1985 or 1991, but the correct date escapes me. either way harrys only contact was a damaged radio that whined and snapped when one of the nightmares drew close.
For SM universe harry it is 200X, and everyone has a high tech cell phone.
As you play you use your phone for everything. receiving calls from ghosts or shades. from real people, how you can even call back for more story. you can take pictures of "echoes" left behind by tragic events in the vein of fatal frame and it has a "tom-tom" map system and even replaces documents with ghostly white noise voicemails.
Aside from that the game is divided into two halves.
1: The safe period, there is no true "other world", in which the town is caught in the blizzard of the century and very few people are still in town. there is NOTHING to harm you, monsters do not exist here. only shadows and nonviolent ghosts.
You explore, find keys, treasure, documents for back story and progress in the ever intriguing plot till the shearing noise starts-
2: But its not radio static its the ear wrenching sound of sheer ice creeping up and covering everything. water cooler tanks freeze and explode into a crystal. streets are blocked by walls of ice and metal structures buckle and break under the stress.
Then the raw shocks appear.
A play on the psychiatry idea of "rorschach tests" the raw shocks are what the player makes of them. but regardless of how they pysichally alter they have one goal 'grab you and pin you down under a pile'. Harry has no weapons, all you can do is run through a frozen hell till you outrun them.
This utilies the hide and seek method of evasion from the Siren series and to be honest i rarely needed to use it, just bolt, clock tower style, away from them and enjoy exploring more of the snowy town.
Aside from that its the basic wii style "hold a+b to grab the wallet, flip it open, shake it to reveal a hidden key and pull it out to gain it yourself". Its not bad and never to in your face and brings a nice change to silent hills past 'move this arrow to select something from a menu" but could have used some more ingenuity.
Soundtrack wise its, well, its Akira Yamoaka, the mans second in gaming musicians to Nobou Uematsu and noone else. This game was his final one for the franchise and its a nice change of pace. Gone is the now overstayed industrial banging and gentle acoustic and piano beats feed the idea that this town is shut down due to the ungodly storm. But theres also a flair of something new and inventive. He reunites with Mary mcglynn for 4 new vocal tracks including a haunting dark, slightly techno, cover of Evlis presley's "you are always on my mind" that are some of there best.
It takes you through the game with only mild repetition and is a fitting farewell from Yamaoka to the series.
Honestly i could ramble for a while but im incredibly surprised this well made, incredibly satisfying game was made by the same people who made that absolutely terrible silent hill origins. This was a supremely enjoyable ride that surprised me at the end and didnt try to leave it open for a sequel, or use the cliche "but the evils not over" it ends with a subtle and all the more successful wimper than a Michael bay style bang and overall this was £30 very well spent.
Honest i would say its one of the best survival horrors in recent years. i had lost a lot of hope for the genre, with games like dead space and resi 5 i thought the original idea of surviving a horrific ordeal was forever replaced by a cheap run and gun action game and i am very pleased to see it revitalized in this game.
It's not up there in my holy trinity of 2's, silent hill 2, resident evil 2 and fatal frame 2: crimson butterfly. But its the closest any survival horror games come since there generation.
Basically its on wii, psp, ps2 and possibly pc so theres a good chance you own a system that can play it, if so i can hearilty recommend playing this. the first true "survival" horror game of this period of the current gameing generation. and prepare to play something that, isnt amazing in terms of controls or combat- or lack thereof, but something that delivers a great retelling of a story that, lets face it needed a bit fo a rejigger, with great characters, memorable locale's and a bitchin' soundtrack.
Basically, get ready to enjoy the first proper silent hill game in a long, LONG time.
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