If you don't feel like reading this entire review, here's the summary: If you've never played the original Silent Hill, go buy this game now (unless you don't like creepy-scary games). If you have played the original, consider buying it anyway, or at least renting or borrowing it.
If you actually like to read up on games, you might want to also read my first impressions of Silent Hill: Shattered Memories which I wrote when I was about halfway through the game and blown away by just how good it is.
Title: Silent Hill: Shattered Memories
Publisher: Konami
Date: January 2010
Format: UMD
ESRB Rating: M (Mature)
Other Platforms:PS2, Wii
So... Creepy...
Maybe it had something to do with the fact that the weekend I played Silent Hill: Shattered Memories it was cold, snowy and dim outside, perfectly matching the setting of the game, but for the first hour or so I kept thinking, "This game is so creepy." Even before I encountered the first nightmare sequence with its weird half-naked denizens, I found the atmosphere thoroughly eerie. I was hooked almost immediately, and that first day of playing I only put down my PSP when hunger or calls of nature got too insistent, and then the game only went on "pause." I only stopped playing that night because my eyes were losing focus.
Even though I haven't played the original game (soon to be rectified), I was quite familiar with it because it's such a classic. Everyone's heard of Silent Hill. Even so, I was blown away. My first few encounters with the nightmare sequences (or "Otherworld") were a little frustrating, as I found myself going in circles over and over while trying to escape, but in retrospect, even that small dose of helplessness added to the game's atmosphere, and it never got so overwhelming that I was tempted to set the game aside.
The top-quality voice acting, immediately apparent in the intro cutscene, made it even easier to get absorbed in Shattered Memories. I was never jarred by poor voice acting. Similarly, while some of the music was a bit repetitive, even that added to the overall atmosphere. The only real sound flaw was that it was occasionally hard to hear what the characters were saying over the music.
Point-and-Click
As I mentioned in my first impressions article, I was struck by the similarity in mechanics and feel between Silent Hill: Shattered Memories and the very best point-and-click adventure games. I happen to be a big fan of old school adventure titles--the very first real video game I played (not counting the occasional session of Centipede or Pac Man on the corner store arcade cabinet) was Zork: Nemesis and I fell in love with exploring strange empty landscapes and solving the puzzles left behind by the vanished inhabitants. While it's true that few pure adventure games use third-person perspective like that in Shattered Memories, and not many use action sequences like the nightmares in this game, I think it's still a fair comparison.
If you're considering giving this game a miss because of that similarity, I urge you to reconsider. Most of the common flaws of adventure games are not found in Silent Hill: Shattered Memories. The puzzles seamlessly fit the context, and there's no "pixel-hunting." There is, however, a lot of exploration. There are things to discover, like ghosts and mementos that provide added context, that aren't essential to completing the game.
Like many pure adventure games, replayability is perhaps a bit low because the puzzles each have only a single solution, and they're the same puzzles each time you play, but searching out more ghosts and mementos might be an incentive to give the game another go-through. It would have been nice, though, if there was some indication of how many were left to be found.
So Close...
I came so very, very close to giving this game a perfect score of 5 out of 5 stars. In my first impressions article I gave it a half point less because I found the nightmares so frustrating at first, but I later reconsidered when I realized how much that mild frustration added to the feel of the game. But in the end, there were a few small flaws that kept me from handing out the perfect 5.
Aside from the music sometimes drowning out the dialogue (mentioned above), and a couple of places at the end where the cutscene goes black and silent and stays that way until you select "skip cutscene" from the menu, there was really only one flaw, and it's possible it was intentional--to keep one of the puzzles from being too easy. I won't give any spoilers, except to say that in one later puzzle the colors you're supposed to match aren't quite the same in the hint and the puzzle, leading to considerable frustration as you use colors you think are correct, but aren't. If you encounter that and get annoyed, just try related colors instead.
One other aspect of the game that some players might find a flaw, but which I actually found refreshing, is its length. I played through it easily in a weekend, but that was partly because I couldn't put it down. For some gamers, that's too short to make it worth full price, but in my opinion, if a game is perfect, it shouldn't matter if it's not 40 hours long.
I loved Shattered Memories so much that I'm going to download the PSOne Classics of the original Silent Hill from the PlayStation Store and explore that creepy town again.
