Silent Hill: Shattered Memories Review
Written By nGen on December 27th, 2009

I’m really not the biggest horror fan. I love a good scary movie, but most of them now-a-days are just torture porn. Honestly, who thinks it’s entertaining to go and watch someone get pulverized for an hour and half? I sure as hell don’t. I’m also not a huge fan of things that just jump right out at you for a quick scare. It’s cheap, it’s easy and really only goes for the immediate reaction instead of a steady unnerving…which is the kind of horror I do like. The kind of scary that gets into your head and stays there, making it quite difficult to actually sit through a movie. The Exorcist, The Descent, The Thing, Rec, The Shining; all great examples of how to do real horror. Movies like Saw just can’t compare.

My disdain for easy scares has kept me away from most horror video games. I’ve played nearly everyone of the Resident Evil games, but being such a coward when it comes to giant hairy spiders, I rarely finish them. The first one I ever beat was Resident Evil 4, but mostly because that game wasn’t scary in the least bit. My experience with this game lead me to try out some of the more recent horror games out there. What I have found so far is that none of them are that scary. Cursed Mountain does a great job of setting a mood, but not in actual scares (or voice acting for that matter). Resident Evil 5 was about as scary as an episode of Spongebob Squarepants and while RE: Darkside Chronicles does have it’s moments, they are mostly short and mostly revolve around giant hairy spiders. I think it was my draw, my need for an actual scary game that drove me to purchase Silent Hill: Shattered Memories. When it comes to the series, I am a virgin (having never owned a PS2), so going into this “re-imagining” of the first Silent Hill I was working with a blank slate.

When I first popped in the disk and started the game up, the game told me that this was going to be a psychological experience, and that the game would play me as much as I played it.

Cool!

Now whether or not that would remain true had yet to be seen, but I was totally ready for this game to get into my head. After all the developers get their credits in, your greeted with a frighteningly well produced start menu, one that sets the stage for the kind of graphics you’ll see throughout this game. Make no mistake, aside from a few hiccups now and then, this is the best looking game on the Wii. Climax studios was smart not to go for a “stylized” look to the game, instead producing characters, scenery and lighting effects that the guys at High Voltage can only dream about. The team did a similar, though not nearly as successful, job on the vastly overlooked Overlord: Dark Legend earlier this year. Just sitting though the first sequence of the game, your first psychological profile, was enough to drop my jaw and thankfully, the graphics never cease to amaze throughout the game.

In SH:SM you play as Harry Mason as he searches for his daughter Cheryl after a car crash. You’ll stumble your way through the dark, snowy town going through doors and hopping over fences while the Wiimote speaker plays tricks on you and directs you towards memories throughout the town. You control Harry with the joystick and direct where he’s going with the Wiimote, which also acts as your flashlight and camera phone. Simply put, the flashlight is just fun to play with. Some of the shadows it produces do get kind of out of whack, but you it never detracts from the experience. The camera phone is a wonderful addition and taking pictures of the people who used to be there is incredible and, surprisingly, realistic looking.


Still shots do nothing to show you how good this game really looks.

The town of Silent Hill is incredible. Everything looks very real, and with the exception of the massive piles of snow everywhere, the town is very accessible. Climax did a lot to bring this world to life, including phone numbers that work in the game, signs you can read and comment on and just enough details to make this feel like an actual town. Though the game may be linear, there are moments in the game where you can get lost, where you can find an open space to explore and discover. What you’ll discover will probably scare you. I seem to remember a very real instance where you are walking through the woods and me being on edge for the entire thing. Just you and your flashlight in the middle of a snowy, barren woods; absolutely frightening. So frightening that I actually didn’t go a few places I could have just because I didn’t want to know what was right around the corner. For a game that sets out to scare the player, the town and environment does a great job of doing that just by itself.

When not scaring you by itself, the town beckons to be explored. You don’t know what memories you’ll find, what phantom phone calls you’ll receive or just what secrets you’ll uncover. There are plenty of things to collect in the game, plenty of things to uncover, and as you play the more memories you find, the more the backstory to the game, the characters and the town will reveal itself to you. Though you may be afraid to do so, you’re encouraged to go into the darkness to maybe find the light.


60% of the time the nightmare sequences scare you every time.

One of the big selling points of the game are the nightmare sequences. These force Harry to run away from the demons that haunt him. In them you have to run from your current location to the end, where the story will continue. It’s easy to lose your way, but the GPS on your phone can help you, but really only if you map it out right at the beginning. I never really used this feature, nor did I hide too much. I just ran. If any of the demons catch you, you have to throw them off using a gesture. Thankfully, these worked a majority of the time, though not so much that they make the sequences a piece of cake. If too many catch you and your succumb to them, you have to start the sequence over again. The nightmare sequences are, I’m sad to say, a mixed bag. The first one you play really gets your heart going and the second one you’ll feel completely lost and hopeless in (in a good way). But there are two in the game that go from being scary to just tedious because they’ll have tasks to accompany them. This immediately rids one of “I got to get away from these monsters” feeling, instead replacing it with a “I gotta go do a fetch quest” feeling. Fetch quests aren’t fun, and these two nightmare sequences drag the game down. They are by no means hard, but still, tedious. Thankfully, the very next nightmare sequence is a complete mind-f*ck that got me right back to that heart racing feeling. It generally helps end the game on a foreboding note, instead of a tiring one.

It’s in these nightmare sequences that you’ll find probably the biggest problem with the graphics. When bursting though a door, sometimes the frame rate can’t keep up and you’ll see a jump. It doesn’t ruin the game, but you’ll definitely notice it. There’s also a weird frame rate issue with the flashlight. Now, the game runs perfectly when using it, however, when you turn it off, the game actually seems to move more smoothly. I would have liked for this kind of smooth to be there throughout the game, but really it’s the only small problem when it comes to the games presentation.


I actually don’t remember this particular dress, but there are some doors I didn’t go through.

I’ve already said that the game is successful in it’s ability to keep the player on edge and uneasy, but (unfortunately) this feeling doesn’t exist throughout the entire game. First there are the two nightmare sequences already mentioned that become irksome quests, but there is also the other characters in the game. When SH:SM isn’t messing with your head, it’s compelling players to get to the know the other characters in the game. I’ve been told that they change depending on how you do your psychological exams (which are the best NPC interactions in the game), but doing only one play through limits my knowledge on just how much this is true. When it comes to story, these characters do a great job of telling you more about Harry and Cheryl, as well as the rest of backstory. What they don’t do is scare you, and they last long enough to let your heart rate normalize. While I love the fact they have other characters in the game, talking with the cop for the fourth time just doesn’t compare to shadow children jumping out at you.

Everything about Silent Hill: Shattered Memories comes across as professional. The voice acting is superb, the script is one of the best of the year, the characters are believable, the puzzles are challenging, the sound is sensational and the game actually succeeds in getting inside your head. Everything this game attempts to do it does successfully, from integrating the Wiimote speaker to presenting an honest to god city. I would have liked to have seen the horror in the game be a bit more complete instead of broken up like it is, but it’s a great experiment in a game messing with the player. If you can really buy into this game (with all the lights out in your house), then you just may find the scariest experience to come across the Wii…ever.

4.5/5 Stars


source: Silent Hill: Shattered Memories Review | 12/27/2009