Silent Hill: Shattered Memories Review:
Harry Mason is going back to Silent Hill, but do we want to go with him?
by Eric Frederiksen

Kombo’s Review Policy: Our reviews are written for you. Our goal is to write honest, to-the-point reviews that don’t waste your time. This is why we’ve split our reviews into four sections: What the Game’s About, What’s Hot, What’s Not and Final Word, so that you can easily find the information you want from our reviews.

What It’s About

As with just about everything else in popular culture the last few years, publisher Konami and developer Climax looked at the Silent Hill franchise and decided it was time for a reboot. We return to the deserted lakeside town and to the first game’s protagonist, Harry Mason. Following a car crash, Harry has lost track of his 7-year-old daughter, Cheryl, and must venture into the town to find her.

That’s right about where the similarities to the original game end. This is hardly a mere graphical upgrade to the original Silent Hill. It’s a reimagining of the original story, turning what was once a simple search for a child and encounter with the occult into a complicated psychological tale of loss and memories.

What’s Hot

Really, nothing about Silent Hill is hot, but that’s not a bad thing. Gone are the rust and blood of earlier games, replaced with a never-ending snowstorm and unimaginably thick ice. In fact, a lot of things have changed, but the story at the core is a return to form for the series. The original Silent Hill game and its direct sequel, Silent Hill 3, told more of a Lovecraft-style story of a regular person unwittingly discovering the machinations of cults and resurrection of old gods. Silent Hill 2, on the other hand, was more about the power of perception and memory and the feelings we hide even from ourselves.

Silent Hill: Shattered Memories brings us back to this idea of how different the world can look in one person’s eyes and, as the title suggests, it questions the truth of memory. Every aspect of the game, from the people Harry meets to the lack of combat plays into the themes of the game. Probably the most touted new aspect of the game is the psychological profiling it does as you play. The most obvious parts are the interludes in Dr. Kaufman’s office. From the first-person view you answer questions and take different tests to give him a peek into your personality. In the game itself, your play style matters as well. If you give sexually charged answers to the shrink and then walk around oogling all the sexual imagery in the game, you may find that some of the characters dress and interact differently.

It also changes which routes are open to you and what parts of the story you see. That’s not to say that you’re left with half a story and forced to play through multiple times. Instead, each play through is a unique perspective on the story, and multiple playthroughs are warranted to see just how much things can change.

With the move to the Wii system comes a change to the controls. The old, clunky Silent Hill controls are gone, replaced with the Wii remote and nunchuck. The flashlight is no longer a fixed object attached to your jacket; instead Harry holds the flashlight, and you control it by pointing the Wii remote. The flashlight is your primary mode of interaction with the town and it mostly works well and augments the immersion of the story.

Also gone is the static-emitting radio of the older titles. Instead you find in your pocket a very modern touch-screen cellphone that incorporates the radio function, map, the save-anywhere function, and story log into one handy device. The phone’s camera also comes into play as a method for exploring, and you can dial any of the phone numbers you find in the game for solving puzzles, adding to the story, or hearing bizarre, funny interludes.

What’s Not

Unfortunately, the new control scheme creates as many problems as it solves. I like the idea of removing combat from the game and it works well for the most part, both in the way it incorporates into the themes and the game. However, I found that when I was getting especially passionate about throwing enemies off, I would end up with the pointer off the screen and watch Harry spin in a circle while more creepy monsters surrounded him.

Part of what made the older Silent Hill games so scary was the fear of what kind of disgusting monster would appear around the next corner. Instead of letting the monsters overlap into the regular Silent Hill landscape, though, they’re separated off into the nightmare sections. The entire world freezes over and turns into a frantic chase sequence. The chase sequences usually work, but they can become frustrating when you die because monsters trapped you in a small space with no opportunity to escape. While you can pick up flares or hide from the monsters, I found the chase sequences to be a bit too monotonous to keep them interesting.

The other result of this is that while the nightmare sequences are frantic and intense, your time in Silent Hill proper is purely exploration with no danger to you at all. I hate to say it, but these sequences are almost relaxing, and Silent Hill should never be relaxing.

As much as I like the new flashlight, it isn’t free of problems either. I noticed a substantial frame rate increase when I would turn off the light, and keeping the light on would occasionally result in some lag or stuttering. It wasn’t game killing, but it was irritating.

Finally, the puzzles are insultingly simple. A locked door’s key was never more than a few seconds walk away, and none of the other puzzles required any real brain racking to solve.

The Final Word

A mature, unique story populated with interesting characters and locations make Silent Hill: Shattered Memories an easy recommendation for anyone looking for a title that earns its rating without decapitations and nudity. The controls, however, are an incredibly mixed bag of unique ideas and frustrating execution. Again, they were never enough to make me turn my nunchuck into a throwing star, but I won’t say I didn’t let a few curse words go, either.

Review Score Guide


source: Silent Hill: Shattered Memories | 12/18/2009