Reviews
A triumphant port that still doesn’t fix a flawed game.
By Justin Haywald 01/15/2010
It’s been a little over a month since Silent Hill: Shattered Memories came out for the Wii, but Konami has soon followed it up with ports to the PSP and PlayStation 2. While that’s given me the opportunity to mull over the game and play through a few more times, my basic opinions haven’t changed: There weren’t any major changes to the game itself, so I still have the same gripes as before. However, that doesn’t mean these aren’t excellent, carefully-crafted ports. As a rendition of the game on much less powerful pieces of hardware, it’s a technical triumph.

For one, they retain the same wonderful voice acting. The scaled-down graphics, while nowhere near as good as on the Wii, still look stupendous. And even without the excellent, intuitive Wii controls, getting around the world is easy whether you’re using the PS2’s dual sticks or the PSP’s one. I still enjoy the narrative-heavy idea of the game, and exploring the Silent Hill in Harry’s mind, even if it’s not a particularly scary place.

But Shattered Memories also suffers from the same problems as on the Wii. The “run away from danger” mechanic sounds terrifying: a game that leaves you powerless and vulnerable against relentless, dark creatures. However, it becomes a rote series of trial-and-error missteps to find the path the game wants you to take through icy, samey labyrinths. Throwing off your oppressors is easier with a controller (you just tap the button corresponding to the direction they attack you from), but you still take damage quickly no matter how quickly you toss your enemies aside. And using the map in these situations is just as clunky and useless as before: You’re given an endpoint, and that’s it — it’s up to you to locate the dead ends and navigate the circuitous road to safety. That’s not frightening or stressful; it’s annoying, and that’s still the feeling that sticks with me every time I play the game.

While the emphasis in Shattered Memories seems to be more on the game’s often sexual story than on survival action, I don’t feel any more impressed now than I did after my first playthrough. I’ve finished the game a total of five times across all these iterations, but it’s just disappointing that I don’t get anything different or deeper out of those trips. Sure, the game itself changes, and your psychological profiles affect how characters react to you, but I personally don’t want a different story each time I play. In a game like this, on my second or third playthrough, I want to understand things more deeply. Instead, you just reset at the beginning each time.

Regardless, Shattered Memories gives you something to think about, even if you don’t feel like you have direct control over how events transpire — a result of the game’s non-binary, open-ended decisions, both in how you play the game and in the “psychological profiles” you undergo. That’s not bad, but it makes it difficult to understand how exactly your actions change the story’s progession. It’s not the worst Silent Hill game by a long shot, but the unavoidable action sequences still sour this excursion to Silent Hill for me.