‘Silent Hill: Shattered Memories’ Review – Flashlight In The Pan!

Posted 56 minutes ago by Adam Rosenberg in Reviews, Wii

Silent Hill Shattered Memories

The original “Silent Hill” is a bona fide classic. It isn’t the first example of a survival horror game, but it’s one of the best. And it spawned a series that still continues to today, right up to Konami’s recently released “Silent Hill: Shattered Memories.” A return to the first game’s story, “Shattered Memories” allows players to relive the initial trip to that creepy town with new, Wii-powered visuals and a fresh approach to the gameplay.

The Basics

“Silent Hill: Shattered Memories” is essentially a rehash of the first game. The setup is at least: Harry Mason and his daughter Cheryl are knocked out in a car crash at the opening. When Harry comes to, Cheryl is gone and his memory is fuzzy, confused. From there, the story veers sharply off course as players investigate the town of Silent Hill in their search for the missing child.

The Highs

And Now For Something Completely Different…
“Shattered Memories” takes a completely new approach to the series’ gameplay, which has traditionally been cut from the survival horror mold. There’s no health bar, no inventory to manage, no combat at all in fact. Encounters with the town’s horrific beasties occur at specific moments, sections of play which require that players escape to safety with minimal monster contact.

Pretty Scary
“Shattered Memories” looks great, especially for a Wii game. Harry is constantly wielding a flashlight, controlled with the Wii remote, and the lighting effects are impressive. The surroundings are similarly solid, if a bit bland at times.

Good Use Of Tech
Throughout the game, players will find locations of interest that trigger cell phone calls and voicemails. To listen to this, you basically have to hold the Wii remote’s speaker up to your ear as if it were a phone. This relatively simple element serves to up the creepiness factor considerably.

Psychoanalyzing Your Play
At key points in the story, the action jumps ahead in time to a shrink’s office. Players observe from a first-person perspective as the doctor asks a variety of probing questions. How these questions are answered influences how the subsequent section of game plays out. It’s a cool feature, and one whose influence becomes more apparent after multiple playthroughs.

Same Setup, New Story
The story is more a reboot than a straight remake, complete with a fairly shocking twist at the end of the game.

The Lows

Trial and Error
The exploration bits are great fun, with lots of tactile environmental interactions (compliments of the ever-adaptable Wii remote), but the escape sections bring things to a crashing halt. Constant (and constantly creepy) forward momentum is replaced with a mad dash through confusingly laid out environments, requiring players to play and replay the same parts over and over again until the proper path has been figured out. The exploration bits, guided as they are, work so well that it would almost have been preferable to see the action sequences presented a bit better as no-lose propositions. “Shattered Memories” isn’t rewarding for being challenging; it is rewarding for allowing players to participate in an engrossing, frightening story.

The Verdict

“Silent Hill: Shattered Memories” isn’t perfect by any stretch, but fans of “Silent Hill” and horror in general will love having the opportunity to experience the events of the first game in a whole new light.

Review: Silent Hill: Shattered Memories

It’s time for another trip back to everybody’s favorite sleepy little hamlet with Silent Hill: Shattered Memories for the Nintendo Wii. But while you won’t need to worry about packing extra bullets for your gun, you should make sure to bring a nice, warm coat, because this game will chill you to the bone!

How does this “re-imagining” of the original Silent Hill stack up against the rest of the series? I’ve got a full review after the jump, spoiler-free, I promise!

While Shattered Memories is being called a “re-imagining” of the original Silent Hill, it really only uses some characters and locations from the PlayStation classic. Aside from some familiar elements, the adventure is all-new. You will once again step into the shoes of desperate father Harry Mason as he searches Silent Hill for his missing daughter, Cheryl. But instead of fog, this town has been brought to a standstill by a massive blizzard, and instead of transforming into a hellish vision of blood and metal, ice will coat everything in sight, leaving you no choice but to run for your life from hordes of relentless creatures.

In a departure for the series, there are no weapons in Shattered Memories, and the only “combat” is pushing the monsters off when they latch onto you. The game alternates between three types of scenes. The bulk of the game is typical exploration as you use the Nunchuck to wander the streets of Silent Hill, and the Wiimote becomes your flashlight. It works well enough, but during extended play sessions, my wrist started getting sore holding the Wiimote up for that long. And unfortunately, there are little hovering triangle icons above everything you can use, which takes away some of the fun of investigation. Also, while there are many items that you use the Wiimote to interact with, it basically boils down to simple pushing, twisting and pulling. And when every puzzle’s solution is in that same room, it takes away much of the challenge.

Then there are the chase sequences, where Silent Hill ices over and monstrous creatures chase after you. Your only option here is to run for your life, and it becomes a matter of finding the right path through the maze, hoping you can locate the exit before too many of the monsters can gang up on you. When you are overcome, you start right back at the beginning, but this can get frustrating, especially during a couple of the longer mazes. And forget about using your map, because it takes too many button presses to bring it up and put it away again. And those… things are always hot on your heels. Last, but certainly not least, periodically throughout the game, acting as interstitials, you’ll encounter the third style, which is a first-person perspective of a psychiatric session where you are badgered by a shrink who has to complete some very interesting tests. (Actually, I found myself looking forward to these scenes because I kind of thought the doc was a little bit hot…)

The psychological aspect of Shattered Memories is what’s most intriguing about the game. The way you play, as well as your answers to the psychiatrist’s questions, will affect both the world you explore and the characters you encounter. And upon completion, the game will offer up a psychiatric evaluation. Mine was a little off, because the way I play games isn’t the way I behave in reality, but it was still a fascinating touch. It says the game adapts to scare you with what you truly fear, but I never really felt it was getting that specific. Sure, it’s still scary, but that’s just because it’s a Silent Hill game. The chase scenes have a certain amount of tension, but that quickly can become frustration as you keep making wrong turns. But exploring the empty town, with its shadows and creepy music, is still goosebump-inducing, even without the constant threat of attack.

I hate to use this popular phrase, but the graphics are pretty good… for the Wii. There’s no denying that it would look much prettier on a 360 or PS3, but then you wouldn’t be able to have the immersiveness of the Wii controls. The character models animate kind of stiffly, but overall, they look good, especially during the cutscenes. And the lighting is fantastic, with the shadows cast from your flashlight sometimes scaring you more than the ghosts if they move just right! The music, from Akira Yamaoka, is suitably moody (although in my opinion not as strong as the other entries in the series) and the voice acting is uniformly solid.

The implementation of a cell phone acts as a means of communication with other characters, a map, a camera, and a way to save your game. In certain areas, there are shadowy figures that can be photographed, revealing some additional backstory about Silent Hill’s denizens, but they’re difficult to spot, and I only found a handful. The paths through the streets and buildings are mostly linear, so a map isn’t really necessary for the most part. And as I mentioned, when you really need it during the chase sequences, it’s too unwieldy to use while on the run. I do have to say that I loved the way the voices from the phone come out of the Wiimote speaker, forcing you to hold the Wiimote up to your head like a receiver. It’s a nice touch.

I’m deliberately avoiding discussing too much of the story, because it’s there that Silent Hill: Shattered Memories really shines. It’s dark, moody, surprising, and emotional. Towards the end of the game, there was a moment that I feel ranks up there with one of the most affecting moments I’ve ever experienced in a game. I didn’t cry, but it hit me in the gut. The nightmare chase sequences can get frustrating, and the puzzles are far too simple, but as a whole, the storyline more than makes up for any gameplay flaws. After the disappointing Silent Hill: Homecoming, it’s nice to see that Shattered Memories has the venerable horror series back on the right track. The other major issue I had with it was that it’s surprisingly short, but I believe that is to inspire you to play through it again to make different choices and affect the gameworld differently. Plus, there’s five different endings to see and plenty of secrets and items to find. I wasn’t crazy about the downbeat ending I got, so I’ll have to see if I can do better next time.

8 out of 10

Review
Hill hath frozen over
USA Thu, 17 Dec 2009 by Jonathan Wahlgren

Harry Mason is not having a good day. After crashing his car in a freak snowstorm, he wakes up to find his daughter missing with nary a trace. Determined to find her, Harry sets out into the night with a flashlight to explore the town of Silent Hill in this reimagining of the series’ original entry.

Yes, reimagining, not remake. Silent Hill: Shattered Memories is not the same game as its 1999 PlayStation source. It retains signature elements of that game, sure: you’re Harry Mason, you’re looking for your daughter Cheryl in the town of Silent Hill, many of the original characters are included, etc. But Shattered Memories distinguishes itself by spinning a different yarn, stripping combat, trading rust for ice and tossing in some good ol’ psychology into the mix.

The story touches on themes of regret, loss and sexuality through direct gameplay as well as through phone messages and images found in the world. It’s intriguing and Climax does a good job of baiting you with details so you’ll want to continue on just a smidgen more. Even if you know the original story inside-out by now, Shattered Memories goes down a different path so series vets won’t feel like they’re retreading old ground. We’d love to go into more detail but it would be a great disservice to those who plan on setting foot in Silent Hill.

Shattered Memories tries to get into your head in a way no other game really has since Silicon Knight’s Eternal Darkness on GameCube. The much-publicised psychological test in the beginning of the game is personal and probing, wanting to know things like whether you make friends easily, need a drink to relax or even if you’ve ever been unfaithful to a partner. While your answers won’t significantly change how the story plays out, they do have a noticeable change on the world around you: for instance, police officer Cybil will look slightly different and be either receptive and helpful or untrusting and hostile depending on your answers. It sounds like a small change, but it does impact your perception of the supporting cast’s motives and can lead to mistrust and tension when someone appears. Similarly, enemy appearance will alter but not cause any behavioural changes. Periodically you’ll find yourself back with the psychologist, who will test you through moral dilemmas and image interpretation. Based on all this, by the end of the game you’re treated to one of five alternate endings and given a (surprisingly close) psychological evaluation.

A significant addition to the Silent Hill formula is Harry’s cell phone, used to make and receive calls (you can dial any number found in the game with actual, albeit mostly brief, results), receive messages that advance the plot, take photos and access a GPS map. You can draw on the GPS screen to plot a route, which comes in handy when exploring outside of the dangerous ice world (also known as the Nightmare sequences). The phone feels very well integrated and is an indispensable tool for Harry.

Climax’s decision to nix combat seemed questionable at first but ultimately proved to be a very wise choice for creating suspense; when the world ices over and the static amplifies, you don’t have the sense of empowerment that fighting gives, which causes you to feel more vulnerable and tense when enemies start running at you. You can throw enemies off if you’re grabbed, flares will keep them at bay, hiding in or under things will throw them off your trail and knocking over cabinets and lockers will impede them, but you can’t directly harm or stop them until the world thaws again – it can get pretty intense trying to reach the end of the Nightmares with creepies on your heel.

The Nightmare sequences are ultimately the game’s biggest flaw. While well-implemented and spooky in their own right, monsters, and thus danger, only appear when the world is frosted over. With just the one enemy type – as mentioned, the monsters can change their appearance but not their behavior – they can feel a little repetitive and far from the iconic design of past Silent Hill creatures. Another gripe is using the map in these sequences: oftentimes you have no idea how to reach the set waypoint when you’ve got baddies chasing you down, and slowing down for a quick check is often a bad idea. Escaping the Nightmares also tends to rely heavily on trial and error so you’ll find yourself retreading the same areas many times as you attempt to flee.

On the upside, Shattered Memories nails its atmosphere; the graphics are moody and realistic, some of the best on Wii in fact, and the use of sound to heighten tension is excellent. The constant falling snow strengthens the sense of cold isolation; those who usually get scared by horror games will likely meet similar results here. Harry’s flashlight casts accurate shadows over the game world and is probably one of the best implementations of a flashlight in any game.

The flashlight is a shining example of Climax’s decision to build Shattered Memories from the ground up to take full advantage of the Wii’s unique feature set, even with PlayStation 2 and PSP ports in the pipeline. The game is among the notable few Wii releases to feature intelligent motion controls without resorting to tacked-on waggle. Object manipulation is done through pinching (A) and (B) on the Remote and twisting, turning and shaking. Throwing off an enemy or knocking down an obstacle is done by quickly moving the controllers to the side; on paper this may sound like dumb waggle but it makes perfect sense in context and feels natural. Phone calls come through the Remote speaker a la No More Heroes as well as the series’ trademark warning static. Even smaller touches, like the battery indicator on Harry’s cell phone matching the charge of the Remote, go a long way to sucking you into the mysterious town of Silent Hill.

The adventure isn’t overly long – about five or six hours on your first playthrough – but with multiple endings there’s decent enough incentive to hop back in. You can always change your psych test answers or explore the world differently and see where that takes you.

Conclusion

Whether you buy into the psychology bits or not, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories is still a great horror game on a console starved for them, yet is more remarkable for being a distinctly Wii game through-and-through. Play it for the atmosphere, play it for the suspense, play it for the story; we don’t care, just don’t miss out on one of the best Wii games this year.

December 15th, 2009 by MaxGamer101
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Also available on: PSP
Welcome to Silent Hill…

Both films and video games have their own definitive hallmarks in the horror genre. For Hollywood, there have been the masterworks from Alfred Hitchcock, Psycho, and John Carpenter, Halloween. Both films have left a lasting, iconic impression on the film industry. For games, we’ve had Resident Evil, F.E.A.R, and of course, the series based on the foggy, deserted and lifeless town of Silent Hill.

There are a number of reasons as to why Silent Hill broke the boundaries in gaming. One reason could be the game’s perfect execution of a horror atmosphere. The foggy, deserted town really terrified yet completely absorbed the player. The town was dead and had barely any life, just ominous noises filling the air. Nothing was clear. Everything in the town was shrouded by one fog after another. The game completely sucked you into this dead town and nailed executing a simple yet incredibly effective horror atmosphere.

Another reason could be its main characters and the story’s heavy focus on psychological horror. You really feel your character’s fright and pain in the series, and you can really believe that they are characters with real flesh and blood emotion. It is possibly these reasons in particular that to the series’ strong legacy.

Silent Hill: Shattered memories, the latest in the series, developed by Complex Studios and published by Konami, is a re-iteration of the original game. No, not a remake, a re-iteration, as the developers at Konami is consistently telling the fans. Whilst the game borrows a lot of the same qualities the initial game had, there have been quite a few twists, changes and turns added in to the experience.

Whilst a lot has been added, the already rich, deeply scary atmosphere the Silent Hill PSONE classic has been enhanced greatly. After all, the atmosphere has been one of the series’ strongest pedigrees. The execution in this game is already looking rather complete, and Shattered memories seems to experiment with a lot of different ideas rather effectively for the game play.

Where’s my daughter?

The game kicks off just like the original did. Your main protagonist, Harry Mason, has suffered a terrible car crash due to being blurred and steered off course by snow covering his view. Harry then finds himself alone and lost in this forgotten town. His quest, just like the original did too, involves you tracking down his lost daughter: Cheryl, but little does Mason know what horrors await him in Silent Hill.

The most noticeable change to the core game play is Harry’s inventory. He now has a wide variety of gadgets and materials at his disposal. Mason has a flashlight with him and a cool iPhone-esque phone that he will occasionally use and may even receive some in-game clues on via text messages. A small map with him highlights specific areas that he is either in or he may need to get to. However, these are the only items in the game that you can use. Yeah, seriously. Only those three. No other weapons for combat, nothing. No joke.

However, considering combat has always been the series’ weak point, it’s actually a blessing that it has been removed here. The game instead solely relies on you solving as many puzzles as you can and collecting as many clues as you can retrieve. There is a potential to be getting mauled by monsters, of course there is. But instead, the player needs to run as fast as he can to a safety point, or ANYTHING that can help you escape.

The puzzles in the game are shown by in-game clues either carved on a wall, or found out of discarded rubbish. You may actually need to use your phone’s camera device to zoom in to look for other clues, but they may come back as distorted images that you need to identify. It may be considered one big puzzler of sorts, but nothing could be further than the truth. The game’s puzzles actually look pretty clever, and more importantly, challenging.

Shattered memories also focuses heavily on the players’ consequence, how it affects your progression and even on the state of environment around you. If Harry completes a task in a heroic way, fewer changes in the game will happen. If he does not, more horrors will come your way, such as the unexpected character changing. The environment may also change in general, and will be done more subtly. For example, more subtle changes may be the change in mood and colour of the environment that Harry may be in. For instance, a section may turn into a reddish colour in a certain room to alert potential danger crossing your way.

Another change in the game are character personality switches. A policewoman that first appears early on in the game may change from a stern authority figure to a much wilder, sexier figure. Also, some characters that Harry has received help from can suddenly have a change of heart and bring him harm next time they meet.

Silent Hill effortlessly makes the player feel like a vital, fundamental part to the town’s atmosphere. There is an impressive diversity in the game’s mission structure and all of the missions affect how the story plays out. Nothing in this game feels half-baked. All of it has a reason, for truly horrifying purposes.

Creating the intended atmosphere

The series’ veteran composer: Akira Yamamoka once again provides an all-new soundtrack for the game. The game’s music is already as eerie and spooky as ever, blending the use of old chimes and instruments with a foreboding orchestral sound. The original’s fogginess and darkness is consistent in the overall surroundings. You’ll rarely have a clear view and the town of Silent Hill still feels just as dead as it did the first time around.

The specific areas the player explores are rather linear in nature, yet where you are is a question mark throughout most of the game. Your playable hero is utterly terrified and, of course, worried whether he will ever find his beloved daughter. As such, it is easy to relate to his predicament and not knowing where you are only adds to the sense of distress. Of course there is plenty to be distressed about. Your monstrous enemies are faceless, genderless creatures that will come after you whenever they spot you. They carry a sharp bite and will damage you severely when they attack you.

The clues and your interaction with other characters in the town are unpredictable. No matter what action you take, you rarely know what the outcome will be.

Be afraid, be very afraid…

The game does not impress graphically and it also has a few minor problems with the responsiveness of the controls. But those two issues are the only negative remarks I can make about the game.

Silent Hill: Shattered memories is an incredibly absorbing game, both in its atmosphere, and everything that you may encounter. Konami certainly have not forgotten at all of why the series is so frightening to us in the first place. This game is scary in all the best ways.

Graphics 7.9
Sound 9.0
Interface 8.1
Replay 8.0
Gameplay 8.3
Stability 8.0

How hooked?
8.0
(not an average)

Silent Hill: Shattered Memories
Category: Wii, Posted: 12/15/2009 at 11:41PM EST by Matthew Erazo, Staff Writer

The Silent Hill franchise has always been the highbrow entry in the survival horror genre. Eschewing jump scares and blatant gore for psychological terror and creepy atmosphere, Silent Hill has always presented dark examinations of its main protagonists psyches, interwoven with religious themes of cults and witchcraft.

The series has fallen on dark times itself though, prompting Konami to reboot the series with Climax at the helm, developers of the portable Silent Hill: Origins. The end result is Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, a “reimagining” of the first game in the series, which sees Harry Mason waking up after crashing his car in Silent Hill and finding his daughter missing. But to call it a reimagining is a bit of a misnomer. This game bares little resemblence to its prior brethern and instead takes a new and fresh look at the series, restructuring and revamping the mythos and characters.

Silent Hill: SM starts off by introducing you to Dr. K, a psychiatrist who has you take a personality test before your “sessions.” The test asks you questions such as your ability to make friends or your sexual preferences. Once you complete this, the game sets forth to showcase its biggest feature. The game changes itself depending on your answers to this test and future tests you’ll be taking between the game’s chapters. Characters’ attitudes and appearance may change or the environment will take on a different appearance. One early example is when Dr. K asks you to color in a picture of a house. After completing this, you’re taken back into the game and when Harry reaches the family home, it is the color you choose in the test. More frightening changes are to the game’s monsters, the Raw Shocks (a play on the Rorschach test), which morph depending on your psyche evaluation. I answered the questions with a sexual intent and the creatures became phallus-like and it was uncomfortable and terrifying at times, a feeling I rarely get while playing horror games. This approach to modifying terror based on the player is a step in the right direction for these types of games, guaranteeing someone will be frightened by something different with each playthrough, and is the game’s biggest strength.

Not that the game doesn’t excel in other areas as well. Silent Hill: SM is a Wii game in every sense of the term. It takes advantage of all the Wii’s unique features and is one of the most visually impressive games on the platform as well, along with a member of its rival franchise, Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles. The Wii Remote acts as your flashlight and cell phone in the perpetually dark Silent Hill. The lighting effects are very impressive, with realistic shadows of illuminated objects and the illusion of light bouncing off of mirrors and other aspects of the environment. It helps build the creepy atmosphere and keeps you planted squarely in the game. I was pretty creeped out during a particular sequence in the woods where the light would illuminate jagged trees and make ominous shapes as I walked through. The cell phone is also as helpful and creepy as the flashlight. The cell phone acts as an all-in-one tool during the game. You can make and receive calls and texts, and take photos with it. It also serves as your map and eminates the series’ signature static when monsters or items of importance are near. All of this is communicated through the Wii Remote or through on-screen prompts. Calls and static come through the remote speaker, prompting you to hold the Wii Remote to your ear to hear the call. There are also phone numbers around the town that you can call to grab information or are used to get clues to puzzles. I love when a game uses the Wii Remote speaker and Silent Hill: SM uses it in an immersive and clever way, whether it’s having you listen to a uncomfortable voicemail or running frantically from the static that you know means monsters are on your tail.

This brings me to the last new addition the series, and the one I am most conflicted on, which is the Nightmares. Instead of having monsters roam the environments like in past Silent Hill games, the game presents set sequences where monsters appear, the world freezes over, and you have to escape to a waypoint. Combat has never been a strong point in the series, so Climax decided to take it out completely, instead having you run from your anatagonists. It’s a great idea on paper, and it works to a degree in the game, but a few flaws keep it from being truly spectacular. The idea of running from monsters instead of having the ability to fight greatly raises the horror factor in the game. You are utterly helpless and cannot do anything save for creating obstacles for the creatures or throwing them off you using pushing motions with the Wii Remote and Nunchuck. The problem is that the monsters are only present during these nightmare sequences, so any fear you would have while constantly trying to avoid them during the rest of the game is gone. You know they aren’t present until the sequence starts, so there’s no real danger in the majority of the game.

The technical limitations of the Wii are another setback. During the Nightmares, your only escape is to find the exit. As your run from monsters, the camera swoops in close behind Harry, providing both a sense of speed and urgency as you run. Harry will slam through doors and hurdle over walls and it provides a nice chase dynamic that can really terrify you. The issue? Harry will be moving so fast that when you hit a door, the game will freeze and a loading prompt will come up for a few seconds. The game also stutters going into cutscenes and the characters’ voices will skip or distort. For a game that is immersing you in so many different ways, these stutters and loading hiccups really dampen the experience.

Silent Hill: Shattered Memories is an impressive Wii game. It uses all of the platform’s features in an immersive fashion, providing a moody and atmospheric experience that conforms to your own psyche in interesting ways. Some technical issues and poorly executed design choices hold the game back from greatness.

Game Score
Gameplay: The game is split up into exploration and Nightmares. Exploration is a haunting affair, while Nightmares have your running from freakish creatures
Graphics: The lighting effects are some of the best on the Wii and the world-freezing transition is both beautiful and horrifying
Sound: Series composer Akira Yamaoka returns to produce a soundtrack that will make your hair stand up
7.5 Final Word: SH:SM is an impressive game. It uses all of the Wii’s features to immersive you, providing a moody and atmospheric experience that plays off of your own psyche in interesting ways. Some technical issues and design choices hold it back from greatness.

I’m all for videogames that ask uncomfortable questions; the purpose of art, after all, is to challenge our ideas of truth and beauty, and you can’t always do that without causing some anxiety along the way. Developers like Tale of Tales have built a reputation for crafting thought-provoking and sometimes disquieting meditations on death (The Graveyard) and loss of innocence (The Path). But some games’ “uncomfortable questions” aren’t quite so abstract.

Have you ever cheated on a partner? No, actually. I’m cool like that.

Nod if this word applied to you in high school: virgin. Clearly you didn’t know me in high school, Doc.

Do you enjoy role-play during sex? Erm …

It was roughly at this point that I began to wish I hadn’t fired up Silent Hill: Shattered Memories with an audience in the room. I can safely say it was a learning experience for all of us.

Shattered Memories’ most novel addition to the Silent Hill series is a blowhard therapist who tries to figure you out while you’re puzzling over the rest of the game. During occasional lulls in the main storyline, you’ll find yourself transported to his office, where you’re forced to sit helplessly as he waxes philosophical about the primal nature of guilt and fear. Then he’ll ask you to take a short test, ranging from pen-and-paper questionaires to simple sorting games. (“Dead or Asleep” is a personal favorite.) As soon as you’re finished, he’ll either berate you for lying or claim he knew how you would respond before you did. He’s pretty much the worst therapist ever, but he’s also a scene-stealer.

The back of the box claims that Shattered Memories takes your responses in these tests and uses them to tailor the game world to fit your personal psychological profile. In practice, you’re unlikely to discern the difference, at least in a single play-through. Instead, you’ll find a curiously familiar middle-American town, socked in by a freak blizzard that has deposited just enough impassable snowdrifts to neatly corral you from one desolate alleyway to the next. You’ll know at a glance that Shattered Memories is one big, linear haunted house – but when you have your first “aha!” moment during a tricky puzzle, you probably won’t care.

The world of Shattered Memories can be staggeringly disorienting. At night, you’ll rely on your flashlight to see anything, and since it only covers roughly a quarter of the screen, you’ll be tracking across the screen constantly to piece together your surroundings. Then there’s your minimap, a function of your in-game, GPS-enabled smartphone. It marks off buildings, roads and doorways, but since so much of your routes take place indoors or around unmarked obstacles, the map is near useless from the start. It’s hard to say which of these design decisions are intentional, but the end result is a constant battle just to figure out where to travel next.

Curiously, the only time Shattered Memories’ environment becomes open-ended is when you least want it to. Every so often, you’ll find yourself plunged into an icy, misshapen version of your previous surroundings, with a pack of faceless, fleshy humanoids nipping at your ankles. Without weapons or offensive capabilities of any kind, the only way to make them disappear is by reaching a set checkpoint, but it can be nearly impossible to find, especially under the creature-imposed time limit. Worse, there are decoy routes everywhere that seem to exist solely to trip you up. Instead of deliberately making your way from point A to point B, you’ll likely run for the nearest exit in every room and pray you’re a step closer to the finish line.

The chase sequences and therapy sessions are mostly diversions from the core gameplay of exploring and solving puzzles, however. At their simplest, you’ll encounter a locked door with a key hidden somewhere nearby. But it doesn’t take long for Shattered Memories to get more intricate and creative with its quandaries. Later puzzles make good use of your cell phone: You may have to phone a friend for help, for example, or dial into a radio request line to get them to play a certain song. They’re just complex enough to force you to linger on them for a minute or two, but simple enough that you’re rarely stumped.

Unfortunately, even the most brilliant puzzles aren’t enough to sustain your interest after you’ve repeated the same nightmare sequence for the dozenth time in a row. Simply put, these sections are inexcusable, and a huge misstep in an otherwise unique, provocative and atmospheric experience. Perhaps if you’re already a fan of the series, you’ll be more willing to forget this frustration and forge ahead. But if this is your first Silent Hill game, as it was for me, then you’re in for a bumpy – and probably short – ride.

Bottom Line: There are just enough stellar gameplay ideas in Shattered Memories to make you want to keep playing – until you get stuck in the same nightmare for twenty minutes and give up.

Recommendation: Rent it. Many of Shattered Memories’ puzzles are brilliant, and it’s worth a few bucks to experience the therapy sessions alone. But the chase sequences are so frustrating you probably won’t find them worth suffering through after the five-hour mark – I certainly didn’t.

Jordan Deam doesn’t want to talk about his father right now, OK? Who’s paying for these sessions, anyway?

Silent Hill: Shattered Memories Review: Daddy Issues

It is the tenth anniversary of Konami’s Silent Hill series, a franchise that has focused more on the psychological side of horror than its peers. The latest, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, delves further into the psyche than ever before.

Silent Hill: Shattered Memories tells a very different version of the first Silent Hill game, chronicling writer and father Harry Mason’s horrific search for his missing daughter Cheryl. Having unfortunately lost her in the town of Silent Hill after a car crash, Harry takes to the streets, sewers and dilapidated haunts of the accursed town to recover her. In Shattered Memories, Harry is equipped with some new tricks, including a multi-functional cell phone that acts as his map, camera and a source for many of the clues that flesh out the re-imagining’s story. Developers Climax Studios also have a new trick up their sleeves, the psychological profiling of the player throughout the game, offering a personalized experience during each playthrough.

And in Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, Harry is more lover than fighter. The game features none of the traditionally awkward combat for which the series is somewhat infamous, favoring frantic escapes over clunky confrontations. Including Cheryl, there are plenty of things missing from this Silent Hill. Will longtime fans miss the series’ trademarks? Or is Shattered Memories a cool, refreshing update to a franchise in need of a new perspective?

Loved
A Retelling, Not A Remake: Shattered Memories is thankfully more than just a warmed over version of Silent Hill, tacking on Wii Remote controls and updated graphics. It is a very different account of the events following Cheryl Mason’s disappearance. Trying to fit the game’s storyline within the canon of the rest of the Silent Hill universe is an exercise in futility, an exercise that will likely cease at the game’s conclusion. Climax Studios was smart not to offer an obvious, cleaned up rehash, giving the Silent Hill fan something to pick apart and appreciate as a side story to the series.

Profiling: Silent Hill: Shattered Memories is peppered with interactive intermissions in the form of therapy sessions with the unusual Dr. K, a psychologist who has the player perform a battery of tests. You know, the kind where there are no right answers. The player’s responses to each test will substantially change the characters, the settings, and the flow of the adventure, even the screeching beasts that hunt Harry Mason in Silent Hill’s otherworld. The options for changing one’s Silent Hill experience and its endings are less cryptic than in previous games, making the story worth revisiting, worth experimenting with. While this Silent Hill may be the shortest of the bunch—my first playthrough lasted somewhere around six hours—it is designed with replays in mind, chances to change the world while having one’s head examined. Oh, and did I mention that Shattered Memories spins one of the more interesting yarns of the series, capably delivered with smart symbolism? Because it does that too.

Silent Hill On Ice: As much as I enjoy the rusty, bloodstained, throbbing otherworld of Silent Hills past, it’s well worn territory. Shattered Memories doesn’t recycle those familiar nightmarish environments, instead choosing to establish its own alternate world, one claustrophobic and frozen. Granted, it’s nowhere near as frightening or visually stunning, but Shattered Memories deserves credit for doing its own thing.

Smart Use Of Wii Controls: The Wii Remote acts as a pretty good flashlight, a fact not lost on most Wii developers, including Climax. Illuminating one’s way around the town of Silent Hill is satisfying, as is the act of using the remote as your disembodied hand while searching for clues. With shooting and hand-to-hand combat abstracted from the Shattered Memories experience, the games simplified control scheme makes one appreciate not having to deal with previously awkward mechanics.

Hated
Running Down A Dream: As interesting as Silent Hill: Shattered Memories’ chase scenes—Nightmares, the game calls them—would have been as a complement to more traditional monster encounters, the game unfortunately relies on them as the only action sequences you’ll experience throughout the game. It’s fairly repetitive, expectation setting stuff. Normally, you’ll explore, find keys, hunt down messages, open doors, but when the town of Silent Hill freezes over, just… run! The Silent Hill series’ combat has never been that much “fun,” mind you, but replacing all of it with running toward blue markers and shaking off leathery demons with Wii Remote thrusts isn’t any more enjoyable. Worse, the sense of tension elsewhere in the game is practically non-existent, thanks to the clear division between action moments and exploration moments.

Losing My Bearings: The game may feature solid use of Wii Remote controls, but the motion controlled camera-flashlight combo can be disorienting, especially when hopping down from ledges during Nightmares. The GPS-style map system on Harry’s phone is less useful than any previous Silent Hill in-game map and painful to manipulate during portions of the game. Finally, one moment in the game drops the player into a nearly pure black abyss, an exasperating search for radio static.

Quality Assurance: A pair of bugs, one involving falling through the world and into blackness, the other turning Harry into a disembodied arm holding a cell phone, less than a complete human—making the game unplayable and forcing a reload—happened to me during my first playthrough. Not outlandishly frustrating, since the game lets the player save at any point on Harry’s cell phone, but bothersome nonetheless. The game also experiences some slowdown when Harry opens doors, which is more frustrating, especially during panic-filled chase scenes.

Perhaps appropriately, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories left me torn. On the one hand, I was appreciative of Climax Studios’ effort to bring something new to the series, blazing a potential new path for future Silent Hill adventures, where the same environments and aged mechanics needn’t be revisited. And, better, Shattered Memories doles out a well-told, fairly blunt story, somewhat atypical for the series. Straightforward though the tale may be, sequences and allusions throughout that may seem like storytelling stumbles gel later on, giving the player something to ponder after the game’s surprising conclusion.

But as with pretty much every Silent Hill game beyond Silent Hill 3, I was left somewhat disappointed. I personally enjoy the horrific creations that populate the rustier, bloodier underbelly of Silent Hill. And I like confounding, abstract puzzles. And I like bizarre boss fights, disturbing monster design, mood-setting music and hallucinogenic fear. Shattered Memories doesn’t have any of that; the scares are few, the monsters nearly nonexistent and the Akira Yamaoka composed soundtrack… well, I barely remember any of it.

It may not appeal to the Silent Hill fan in me, one who’s been regularly disappointed since 2003, but at least this re-imagining shatters expectations.

Silent Hill: Shattered Memories was developed by Climax Studios and published by Konami for the Wii on December 8. Retails for $49.99 USD. PlayStation 2 and PSP versions are due later for $29.99 USD. A copy of the game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes. Played game to completion on Wii. Experienced a second, different playthrough until about the halfway mark.

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Send an email to Michael McWhertor, the author of this post, at mike@kotaku.com.

By: Tomás García @ Tuesday, December 15th, 2009

Silent Hill is probably one of the most recognized names in the survival horror genre, not for nothing won first place in our ranking of scariest games. But when speaking a different company to reimagine the masterpiece on the Wii, we all began to doubt. However, Shattered Memories takes the original game start as a starting point and from there they will do their own thing, resulting in a rather interesting title.

The Silent Hill series has always been known for marking each of his players with a hard act to follow psychological terror and that same philosophy is reflected in the latest title in the series, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, exclusively for Wii. This is the second Silent Hill developed outside of Konami, so it’s another test for developers in charge, who in this case have decided to make a title more rooted to the roots of the series. Shattered Memories is in part an original story and in another, a re-Imagineering of the first title out in 1999.

As in the original game, Harry Mason (the main character) loses his daughter, Cheryl, after an accident that leaves him stranded in Silent Hill no way to communicate with the outside world. But the main difference is that the story is told in the present, but at some future point where Harry meets a psychologist telling the facts. Here is where we come into play psychological tests. Throughout history, the psychologist will ask Harry to complete some tests, that will dictate how certain events that happen in the game. Many questions can be very personal, making it even more compelling evidence.
The basis of combat in Shattered Memories is that there is. So, there’s no way to defend against your aggressors and the only way to survive is to run very fast, opening door after door, to lose your pursuers, or find a flare that requires them to leave. The problem with these sequences, although they are very well achieved, is that they are too far apart from the rest of the game. Whenever you have solved a puzzle and see the story progresses, you’ll be locked in a maze which you must escape. Being so predictable, it loses impact.

Since there is no fighting, Shattered Memories feels more like an adventure game where you must meet certain objects exceeding exploring the environment and collecting items that they then use to move forward. But while this may give much room for imagination, usually advance means you have to do things like talking to characters, find the right way in the fog and find keys in hard to reach places. While this works well the first few times, eventually can become repetitive.

Most of the game will be using the flashlight to illuminate the various rooms that you explore, but you also have a mobile phone with which you can see the map, make calls and even take pictures of ghosts. But where the game really gets a prize in the ways you interact with different objects. Depending on the actions you should do will depend on which buttons you press on the Wiimote and most have been transported in very smart.

If you have to give credit for something is by trying to be a psychologically terrifying experience, instead of things that use cheap scares. In addition, make heavy use of the Wiimote, with the flashlight and the majority of interactions that occur. But the biggest problem of all, that one that goes against everything that represents the Silent Hill series. During the times that you must solve puzzles, you know that everything will be fine and nobody can make that assurance of the year and ruin the rest of the tense moments. Yet subtle changes in the story depending on the psychological tests give you more replay value and worth seeing different versions of the same story.

Score: 86%

Conclusion: Shattered Memories has little to do with the original game, but still a great addition to the series.