Written by: Alex

 

 

 

"Silent Hill: Shattered Memories" is a reimagining of the first game from Konami’s incredibly popular third person survival horror series. Taking only the most basic concepts from the original game it completely changes the series structure that fans have come to expect.

 

Yet despite changes it manages to retain the core ethos of a disturbing, psychologically focused, horror experience.

 

 

Silent Hill was an incredible, if mechanically flawed, game. It would have been easy for Konami to simply do a strait translation to the Wii with improved graphics and watch the money roll in.

 

Fortunately developers Climax Studio had greater plans for the title, and set about rebuilding it from the ground up taking only a few elements of the original as a foundation.

 

While the overarching concept for the game remains the same as the original, focusing as it does on Harry Mason who is looking for his daughter, the rest of the tale differs wildly. While many of the locations and residents of the town of Silent Hill remain present their roles and personalities are changed beyond recognition. Gone are suggestions of an occult presence within the town, replaced instead with a heavier focus on personal psychological terrors.

 

 

Framing this greater emphasis on internal turmoil are frequent scenes in a psychiatrists office. Interspersing the main third person sections of the game, the player is thrust into the first person perspective to receive ‘therapy’. Answering questions during these sessions’ effect subsequent events, tailoring the story to fit the player.

 

This interaction beautifully creates the impression that the third person segments are memories, retold to the doctor during the session.

 

 

Guiding Harry through the world from the over the shoulder third person perspective could fool you into thinking this game plays like all previous series instalments. Alterations to the narrative however have also affected play structure. Most of the time this new Silent Hill is not crawling with twisted creatures of earlier titles. Instead for the majority of the time you are free to explore the world unimpeded. By allowing exploration the game allows you to from a stronger connection with the world, talking to characters and thinking about what you see during interactive sections of the game rather than being under the constant pressure of attack.

 

In trade off for these thoughtful, atmosphere-building sections Shattered Memories also throws the player in to frantic chase sections. Silent Hill games have always stressed the everyman nature of the protagonist by making them pretty useless in combat, though this was probably due to a bad combat system rather than by design. Retaining this theme Shattered Memories removes combat altogether leaving stealth or evasion as the only option through these areas.

 

 

Perhaps the greatest defining part of every Silent Hill game the dark and twisted ‘mirror world’, and it is here that Shattered Memories chase scenes take place. Let me be clear here, they are bad, irritating to the point of tears. Without the ability to attack you are forced to outpace the warped female forms that peruse you. If they catch Harry you are forced to throw them off using exaggerated gestures with the remote and nunchuck. Frequently these actions fail to register, and you are left thrashing about futilely until you are dragged to your death and forced to restart the area. Even if you manage to escape the mindless thrashing required means the controller wont be aimed at the screen and as it is the infrared tracker that controls the games camera you end up disorientated unable to direct Harry, allowing him to be easily recaptured.

 

These chase scenes are made all the more frustrating because as you run through the world there is no time to check the map because it is accessed it in real time, leaving you venerable while you try to plot a path to the single indicator on your map. This result in you only ever being able to plot a route as you enter an area, but as the map does not indicate blocked routes even the best plans tend to be in vein. If stealth were an option then perhaps this issue could be mitigated, but the eyeless forms that follow Harry seem to be able to locate him no matter how cautiously he is moved through the world.

 

Maybe he should change aftershave.