Review: Silent Hill: Shattered Memories
Review by Sean Taylor on December 18th, 2009

I never got a chance to play the original Silent Hill for the PS1; I just never picked up the console. So I’ve always felt that I missed out on one of the great takes on survival horror videogames. I managed to play a couple of the subsequent sequels, but there’s always that gap. Pop culture being the thing it is, I’ve managed to acquaint myself with the characters and general backstory from the first game. Silent Hill: Shattered Memories from Climax Studios and Konami promises to be a ‘re-imagining’ of the original Silent Hill, but from what I know of the first game, this version is more of a reboot than a do-over.

The Story

Almost everything that you might remember from the original Silent Hill’s complex storyline has been removed in favour of a new timeline. A couple of the characters from the original are still here, but this version starts everything back at square one.

You play as Harry Mason, a writer who has crashed his car and lost his daughter Cheryl in the town of Silent Hill, a sleepy Massachusetts town under a blizzard warning. The story progression takes you through a few of the town’s different areas like the high school, mall, apartment complex and nearby lake and lighthouse. Your quest to find your daughter will link you up with some NPC characters, including Cybil the cop (or bartender depending on your story, more on that latter), but you won’t interact with more people than you can count on one hand. The town feels empty and desolate, immersing you in the isolation and hopelessness of trying to find a needle in a haystack.

Cheryl? Cherrryllll?

The game flashes a warning to you every time you start it that states ‘this game psychologically profiles you as you play’ and ‘the game plays you as much as you play it’… and that’s no joke. Interspersed between chapter breaks during the story are interactions with a psychologist who administers abstract tests like ‘put your favourite high school classes in order’ or assessing pictures of people that could be sleeping or dead. These little interactions have a huge amount of influence on the story that unfolds in front you: during my first playthrough I answered the high school class test favouring drama and creative writing then had to solve a puzzle in an art room. During the second game, I answered differently and was presented with a completely different puzzle to solve in a planetarium instead. You will run into completely different characters, cinematics, enemy types and situations depending on how you answer these seemingly benign questions. It does a lot for the replay value and feels more like a straight-up ‘choose your own adventure’ game than the survival horror of previous titles.

The story is fairly mature in its subject matter, dealing with themes of marriage, alcoholism, divorce, sexuality, infidelity, parenting, guilt and loss. While the overall themes are drop-dead dramatic, the story itself seems to limp along and doesn’t really suck you in, as much as it tries. This was my experience, but others may find it a tale well told. I simply can’t identify with a main character who doesn’t ask himself (even in the mirror) what the hell is going on in this batshit town.

You’ll meet a handful of characters in Silent Hill: SM… just don’t get too attached to them

The Gameplay

Gameplay is divided between two extremes: exploring the town of Silent Hill and Nightmares. Exploration involves you searching around the environments for mementos, phone numbers to punch into your trusty smartphone, and ghosts to capture on your phone-camera. It moves along as fast as you want to progress but is devoid of any tension or combat. The other part is the Nightmare, when the entire town frosts over and you are plunged into a parallel dimension and hunted by screeching skin-demons. Each of these nightmare sequences involves you finding your way to the end of a maze (composed of areas in the town) while running from leathery monsters with no weapons except for the rare flare that keeps them at bay for a couple seconds.

In fact, there is absolutely no combat whatsoever in this game. Where the other titles allowed you some underpowered melee weapons to try and survive the enemies, the nightmare situations task you with trying to find the exit as quickly as possible with no defence from the monsters save for the ability to shrug them off using the motion controls once they latch onto you. Yeah, there’s hiding spots that you can use (under a bed, closet, etc) but the bad guys will mill around your position if you stop for more than a dozen seconds. Eventually they will rip you from your hiding spot and dog-pile you, with four or five of them all ganging up on you at once. Your best bet is finding the exit and getting the hell out of there.

Hiding spots don’t last too long with these guys around

The Nightmare sequences tend to get annoying and frustrating quickly. You’re given a vague direction to go from your phone’s GPS, but it’s completely up you to memorize the path through any given maze and try to get further through each time until you find the end. There’s no progression until you solve each maze, so thank God there’s only 8 or 9 of them in the whole game. If you don’t learn, you’ll be banging your head against the wall trying to figure out each one.

All the little guy wants is a hug

The Controls
Silent Hill: Shattered Memories makes great use of your Wii’s motion controls. Your Wiimote acts as a free-roaming flashlight, lighting up the dark as you explore the town and surrounding area. It’s really well done and completely organic feeling. You will also interact with lots of different situations that take advantage of the Wiimote; open the gym-locker by pinching the A and B buttons over the handle then slide the door open to see what’s inside, twist the knob of a radio dial to the proper frequency. Each situation feels individual and special.

Your other tool in the hunt for your daughter is your smartphone. Equipped with GPS and map of the town, camera and the ability to dial out, it makes it a great tool. Scattered throughout the town, you’ll find posters and billboards with phone numbers on them that you can call. Most of the time, you’ll get a recording (because of the blizzard), but once in while you’ll talk to an actual person if you’re trying to solve a puzzle.

Harry’s flashlight runs on tears and pooped-pantses

The only defense against attacking ghouls is to throw them off you by jerking the Wiimote and nunchuk to the side, front or back as if you were really trying to shrug off a grappling enemy. Running with the analog stick and shining the flashlight is great, although left-handed players will find some disconnect between their actions and the character on screen (he’s a righty).

The Graphics

Kind of a mixed bag. While the majority of gameplay has an out of focus, grainy filter applied to it (and you’re in the middle of a snowstorm), cinematics look really good. Some textures are horrible to look at, while other ones (like posters and billboards that you’re supposed to read) look fantastic and crisp even from far away. The flashlight casts shadows that look eerily realistic against the background.

Facial animations and body motion looks great, and not just ‘for a Wii game’. For a game that depends on character interaction close-ups, Climax has done a good job bringing personality to non-player character body language.

Environments, on the other hand, could use some polish. The outside of a building is supposed to be concrete, but here it could pass for an oversized shoebox. Snow drifts that block your progress are generic white blobs. It’s a neat effect when the town freezes over into the nightmare, but ice effects are just boxes around objects after the transformation.

It hard to say it doesn’t look great when you read a poster, wave your flashlight or talk to someone, but the other bland, generic textures and jagged backgrounds drag down the goodness.

Some enviro’s look good… others are pure meh

The Audio

Background audio is your generic tinkling piano (or what have you) typical to the brooding semi-horror genre. Wind howls outside as you approach building exits, demon screeching raises your hackles and all character dialogue is well voiced. The one super-cool standout is phone-call audio. Anytime you use the phone all audio comes from the speaker embedded in the Wiimote and really sounds like you were listening to the phone, tinny as it is. While it may be low-tech, it definitely adds a ton of realism to have to hold the speaker up to your ear (as the character is doing the same onscreen) to hear a 911 operator ask you what your emergency is. It’s fairly accurate to say that that there’s as much audio coming from the controller as from the TV screen, and it’s nice to see someone using some of the Wii’s features to their fullest.

The Bottom Line

Silent Hill: Shattered Memories is kind of a dilemma. This is a reboot of a franchise that is known for its grotesque enemy design and true horror storyline, but there is none of that here. The watered-down plot and vanilla characters don’t inspire much pathos but somehow inspire you to continue your search for your daughter. There is a nice Hitchcock twist at the end which we won’t spoil that almost makes it all worth it, but that’s a big almost. Fans of original Silent Hill games should know that they can play this one in the dark and not have anything to worry about. Nothing’s going to jump out at you.

On the other hand, the main mechanics of the game, from the flashlight to the cell phone to the manipulation of objects in the environment are extremely well done. There’s nothing like shining your flashlight behind you as some freaky hell-beast chases you down in the Nightmare. Wiimote audio is a cool addition and makes you look hard for those phone numbers around town.

Overall, this is definitely more an adventure game than anything approximating scary. The addition of the ‘psychological profiling’ is a nice way to change the story the second and third time around, so there’s plenty of incentive to replay a game that will take you around 6 hours to finish. It’s the Wiimote controls that save this from being any other mediocre game. The Silent Hill pedigree could have been replaced with anything else and you wouldn’t have noticed at all. There are no extra modes or anything in the way of bonus content, but if you like playing with the Wii flashlight, you’ll find lots of dark corners to shine it on.

The Good

Excellent Wiimote implementation, really draws you into the game
Contextual situations that make you think in 3D
Well done animations and voice work
Different story every time

The Bad

Some beautiful, some messy graphics
Light story but tackles some heavy themes
Nightmare sequences can be frustrating and annoying
Not what fans of the series will expect from a new Silent Hill game

The Ugly

What’s with the title menu ‘rock’ video?

Score: 7.0 / 10

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