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General Category => Entertainment and Media => Topic started by: jamie on February 12, 2010, 10:22:08 pm

Title: silent hill: shattered memories
Post by: jamie on February 12, 2010, 10:22:08 pm
I'm playing this just now. I am only up to the mall at the moment and I don't really want to be spoiled about the story cos I am pretty interested in the outcome!

Anyway this game is pretty cool. If you don't know anything about it, it is a silent hill adventure game with a few chase sections in it that make up the action. There is no combat and it feels like an adventure game, with you investigating a bunch of crap, solving basic puzzles and talking to people. It's silent hill so it still tries to be VERY SCARY but it isn't really scary at all. Actually, the stupid toy bears and ghost crap is probably the most embarassing part of the game because it is pretty hacknyed by now and really it should just be left out because the story is creepy enough on it's own.

I haven't played much of the original Silent Hill (which this is a 're-imagining' of) but I heard it involved a demon cult and things like that which always sounded really boring to me. I'm not that interested in supernatural horror, because I've never really seen anything in that genre which says anything interesting and it just becomes a bore not to be able to relate to it because I'm not scared of huge worms that are summoned by an old lady in a black robe because none of that is real and I'm not worried about it. You've got to mix in the real with the nightmare stuff or it's just boring. This game is alot more based in reality than I thought it would be! Apart from the ghost rubbish, but it isn't really involved in the story and you can ignore it (ghosts are just collectibles in this game).

The way this game works is the same way david lynch films sometimes do, and i know the silent hill people love dave lynch and copy him (there are alot of obvious stolen parts in the game from his stuff). I think david lynch films are pretty good and this game is like if david lynch was less imaginative, more blunt, and less intelligent, and he made a game. Silent Hill 2 is kind of similar to this game, too. If you like things like twin peaks, blue velvet and lost highway, you will probably like the story of this game. Actually I am pretty sure you can construct the entire plot of this game by patching together elements of those three things.

The main character is a guy called Harry Mason and, from what I can tell, you can morph his personality and backstory at least a little bit by choices you make in the game, which I'll explain in a second. At the beginning of the game, he's lost his daughter and there is this cool and unexpected thing at this stage where if you press the A button on your wii controller he just shouts out 'cheryl' and 'where are you, honey?' etc. There is sad music playing over this section of the game and it actually made me feel bad for him and set the mood for the game really well. As you go around the town looking for your daughter, you meet a variety of sexy women who harry flirts with. There is a cop lady who I was please was not overly sexualized! Although apparently she can be, if you make a certain choice. All of the characters I have encountered so far (all women except a guy on the phone) have been written and acted much better than you would expect from a video game, and a video game like this. It's not brilliant stuff - there is an especially dumb part where someone says 'don't you remember sid and nancy?' and harry says 'no, who are they? and then she says 'my tits. you named them'.

Yeah, I think the game is probably pretty sleazy as a product of the designers being a bit sleazy but it also kind of works because as you play more, you realise that this Harry you are playing as is maybe not to the perfect dad, wooden stump character that you might expect. I suppose I won't go ahead and spoil actual things that happen but I think the story is actually interesting and, so far at least, handled with some skill! Like I have ideas of what all this is about, but I am not certain. Add to the uncertainty that I actually have an influence on the way the game progresses and presents it's story, and things are pretty interesting.

The game is framed with this session in a psychiatrist's office. At the beginning of the game, the psychitrist asks you some questions, you do a couple of mind games, he talks a bit and drinks a scotch and makes sarcastic comments at you. He is a bit of a cheesey character, too, but I am pretty much on board with this idea! The first few questions he asks are things like 'do you like to drink in order to relax?' and 'have you ever enjoyed the idea of role play during sex?'. Some of the questions have obvious effects in game, others I am not sure what they done. I'm looking forward to playing through one more time to see what happens if I decide to act like a different kind of person. These psychiatry segments recur as you play through the game - the game itself is positioned as a memory or a recounting of a story in the narrative - and everytime they do I get pretty excited because I am curious to see what changes after I answer the questions. Also, I am being narcissistic and I think that is kind of the point.

The psychiatrist talks some shit, but he says some interesting things. I am pretty sure all these little segments will add up to something at the end of this game, too.

Oh, yeah. The chase sections are pretty exciting at first but I have just been irritated by them for a while because they get difficult and I have had to follow a guide just to get through them. I just kept getting lost and overrun with monsters. They break the game up, I guess, but I wish they were a little more well designed because there would be times where I would simply get stuck behind a monster and then attacked because of that glitch, and also the controls for this game don't work well for situations where you have to react fast and make complicated movements.

It seems like a pretty sad and disturbing story is unfolding in this game. It isn't bullshit satan stuff, I think this is just the story of a bad dad who feels really guilty. I could be wrong, but I don't think so. I wonder how it is going to end!


Has anyone else played this? if you've got a wii maybe you should download it
Title: silent hill: shattered memories
Post by: Jester on February 12, 2010, 10:29:22 pm
Oh okay so it's a Wiiware title? I didn't have any idea this existed until just now and I had to read all that to find out what it was released for x_x.

I'm gonna go look this up, but I probably won't play it. Wii games, bleh.
Title: silent hill: shattered memories
Post by: Buttkiller on February 12, 2010, 10:30:41 pm
he just wrote this massive thing about how it's good and you should get it and you're dismissing it just because of the platform it's on?
Title: silent hill: shattered memories
Post by: jamie on February 12, 2010, 10:31:10 pm
it's not wii ware i'm just not recommending paying £30 or whatever for this. i think it's a cool game but if i was gonna actually buy it i'd wait for a few months till it cost like £10 or less. games are crazily expensive.
Title: silent hill: shattered memories
Post by: Jester on February 12, 2010, 10:39:07 pm
Quote from: Buttkiller on February 12, 2010, 10:30:41 pm
he just wrote this massive thing about how it's good and you should get it and you're dismissing it just because of the platform it's on?
Huh? Uh, yeah, I guess? I really don't enjoy any Wii games except little minigames. Wario Ware was okay, but adventure games control terribly on the Wii.

No offense to Jamie!! I am sorry I am not immediately getting this Jamie!!

Also he didn't even seem that impressed with the game, nor has he gotten very far?? So p. much fuck off dom thanks.
Title: silent hill: shattered memories
Post by: jamie on February 12, 2010, 10:43:04 pm
i didn't mean to come off as not being impressed with the game. there are alot of things in this i wish there was more of in games, but there is alot of things i think were lazy or stupid, too. dietcoke said it: understanding what you don't like about something is part of liking it.

also there is something compelling about this kind of stuff to me. small towns, creepy people, empty streets, the quiet, mysteries lying in the past, people not admitting things to themselves, and fear coming more from things that go on in your head than an actual threat.
Title: silent hill: shattered memories
Post by: Kezay on February 13, 2010, 03:55:09 am
Got this game as a christmas gift, it's definitely a reimagining of Silent Hill but Climax did a crazy good job of it.  I beat the game about four times (got four different endings) before I finally put it off for some of the other titles I got.  The end sequence was done really well, a lot of WTF-ish moments before everything finally comes together and you realize the main character's purpose in the game.

The psychiatrist bit was a nice touch though, though I kind of wish that most of the effects of the answers you give him were a bit more than cosmetic changes.

I do agree that the chase sequences were a bit awkward but that's mainly because the game doesn't do a great enough job explaining how to toss the monsters off if they latch on to you so I died because of that a few times.  Otherwise playing smart and utilizing hiding spots and dropping obstacles usually allowed you enough breathing room to figure out where to go.  The Mall is a bit funky though because of a mid-chase puzzle that will screw you over if you don't have a very good photographic memory.

The game isn't incredibly long if you just blow through it.  I took my time my first time through and ended up with a gameplay time of just over 13 hours, but I got the best ending my first time out.  Second time about nine hours and the last two hovering just around 6 to 7 hours.  Great game though and hopefully Climax handles the next Silent Hill if Konami decides to put out another title.
Title: silent hill: shattered memories
Post by: bonzi_buddy on February 13, 2010, 10:13:47 am
this sounds really good jamie. a silent hill game that is not a dumb 'scarer'...! i will put it on my list of to get - games.
Title: silent hill: shattered memories
Post by: cocaine on February 13, 2010, 10:17:08 am
only games that have ever scared me are dead space and f.e.a.r.

fear only because i played it on shrooms
Title: silent hill: shattered memories
Post by: Drule on February 13, 2010, 12:11:08 pm
I really like the Silent Hill series, but it feels like every time it's developed by a non-japanese group it completely fails at retaining the haunting ambiguity and backstory that is typical to Silent Hill. The japanese versions seem to focus a lot on Silent Hill as a historical location while western versions seem to be more straight-up character-based action-adventure games that completely ignore the horror and obscurity that is Silent Hill's trademark.

I think what a lot of people like about the series is that you constantly have these surreal and ambiguous hints, trails and story elements throughout the game that ties in with the history and backstory of the town and its past events, and half of the fun is deciphering all the weird shit you come across. If you remove that, all you'll have is a generic horror game where you follow some dude on a quest to retrieve X family member in a dark town with Silent Hill music. This is what Silent Hill: Homecoming was and it's also what this game seems to be, and I think that's kind of disappointing!

I haven't had a chance to play Shattered Memories though so I'm basing this on what I've read and seen. Maybe it's a good game!
Title: silent hill: shattered memories
Post by: cocaine on February 13, 2010, 12:12:28 pm
silent hill 2 is and always will be the best sh game

the room is second
Title: silent hill: shattered memories
Post by: Eltee on February 13, 2010, 07:43:53 pm
I beat this with my friend last night after renting it (took maybe 5 hours top)

It's really, really good and really, really fucked up and the psychology side is very well done

but it's really as far from being similiar to other Silent Hill games as it can be, though I'm not entirely sure if this is good or bad

I wouldn't recommend anyone buy this though because of how terribly short it is, even though you can replay it a few times and get various different interesting things, or just outright change the outcome of some parts (psychology..)

Title: silent hill: shattered memories
Post by: jamie on February 15, 2010, 12:55:08 am
I completed it.

I don't know if I was satisfied with the ending. Actually my ambivalence probably means I was not. The story turned out to be alot less dark than I thought it was, and it kind of killed the strangeness of things.  Well, i still had alot of fun with it and I think I will play through it again differently to see what I can get to change. Maybe I will post more later.