Silent Hill: Shattered Memories

Silent Hill: Shattered Memories is being marketed as a couple of things: a "re-imagining" of the first game in the series, as well as a deep, story-driven psychological thriller. Both of those things are somewhat false. Beyond a few character names and the setting staying the same, from what I understand, SH:SM is absolutely nothing like the original Silent Hill. And while the game does feature an impressively well-crafted story, I never felt like the psychological aspects were fleshed out as fully as they could be. But more on that in a bit.

It's hard to discuss this game without using spoilers. I'll try to warn you before I use them, but there might be a few small things here and there. You play as Harry Mason, a man who's having an incredibly bad day. In the opening minutes, Harry crashes his car and goes unconscious. When he wakes up, his daughter, Cheryl, is missing from the car. Thus, Harry sets out to find her in the town of Silent Hill, in the midst of the worst snow storm in centuries.

The town of Silent Hill is rendered using some of the best 3D graphics on the Wii. Running the game in standard definition on a nice standard definition TV set makes the game almost look like an XBox or PS3 game. This is largely achieved through the use of really nice lighting and attention to detail. One aspect I didn't appreciate so much was how dark the game was. I know that it's a snow storm and the power's gone out, making you rely on Harry's flashlight (which works really well, utilizing the Wii's IR sensor), but I also feel like it was almost a crutch, a way to include as much detail in that small area as possible. The game makes you feel claustrophobic, which could be intentional, but because the game relies so heavily on the flashlight mechanic, offering very few places that don't require the flashlight, it gets just a little irritating after a while.

The gameplay is divided up into three or four different aspects: the main one is simply exploring the town, trying to find your daughter. This part of the game is an unqualified success. Just walking around and trying to figure out what's going on is done really, really well, especially since the game does a great job of limiting the HUD aspects of its presentation. All posters, signs, and documents can be read in game, without the use of text overlays. As well, Harry's phone plays an integral part in the proceedings, allowing him to take photos, call people, receive text messages, and consult his GPS. This too is done really well. The parts that fall a little flat are the other aspects of the game. As per the Silent Hill tradition, there are monsters. I applaud the decision of the developer (Climax) to make it so that Harry doesn't have any access to weapons – his reaction when the monsters arrive is to run like all hell, which is certainly what my reaction would be.

The problem with these sequences is threefold: first, they're never unexpected. They always happen when the environment freezes over, and based on the rhythm of the cutscenes proceeding them, you can just about guess everytime it'll happen. Second, they're just not that great. It's not scary, mostly just kind of frustrating, because it's easy to get lost during these segments and end up just going around in circles while the monsters chase you. Finally, I don't really think these sequences fit in with the psychological themes that are being explored in the game. Without giving too much away, the game does explore notions of the perception of reality, gender, and parenthood; the monsters can't really be explained away using any of the thematic tropes that the game outlines. In fact, the game would be considerably stronger if these segments had been done away with entirely. Of course, then you'd have angry fanboys decrying how far out of touch the game was with Silent Hill history (something that it already is, anyways), or even more people complaining how without these sequences, it wouldn't really be a game.

The third aspect of the game is the numerous cutscenes, which are acted out well and shot dynamically. The voice cast does a really good job conveying the moody tone of the game. I know that Harry is suffering some sort of psychological trauma, but from scene to scene, it does kind of feel like his emotions don't exactly transfer considering what happened to him just five minutes previously in the game. For example, at one point, Harry has shown up at his house, only to find other people living in it. The people in the house become frightened and call the cops; the next scene is Harry in the cop car, no longer nearly as distraught as he just was, discussing his profession with the cop. It doesn't really seem all that logical. That would be my only gripe with the otherwise well-crafted story, which also has the added bonus of having a really great ending that more or less ties everything together really nicely.

The final, and most highly touted aspect of the game, is its psychological profiling. Basically, at certain points in the game, you find yourself in a psychologist's chair, being asked a number of questions by a psychologist with pretty terrible bedside manner. The game then supposedly uses your responses to craft the game world to more accurately connect with the player. This is the main way in which the game does this, but there are other ways as well. For example, if you spot a poster with a scantily-clad lady on it and look at it for a little too long, the game concludes that you have some sort of sexual fetishization going on and changes certain elements of the game to reflect that. I only played through the game once, but having read around the interwebz a bit, besides a few different cutscenes and some minor graphical changes on some of the characters, buildings, and monsters, there's not that much that changes in the game. That's a little bit disappointing. It's nice that they included this feature, but seeing as the game is all about the investigation of the psyche, making this element more crucial to the gameplay would have helped to convey that a little bit better.

I think that this game ended up being a case of me admiring it more than genuinely enjoying it. I appreciated its close attention to detail when it came to the story, but felt that a certain number of elements of the game didn't really resonate with me. If it was just a moody exploration game (kind of like a more refined Indigo Prophecy, which is actually something that it feels like a lot of the time), I think it would have worked better, rather than having the superfluous monster sequences. As well, once again, this is a short game – 5 hours-ish. I'm OK with short games, but in this one, it feels a little rushed, not giving you enough time to fully explore the town. As it stands, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories is a curio that I would suggest as a rental. It has a pretty great storyline that gets tarnished a bit by its less inspired moments.