Silent Hill: Shattered Memories Review

I've been wanting to play Silent Hill Shattered Memories for a long time, the problem was is that the game was always insanely expensive when trying to get a physical copy and PCSX2 for the longest time had a hard time running the game stably but recent developments has now allowed me to play SHSM from begginning to end without much if not any issues at all. I could've played the Wii version but I don't like motion controls.

As for the game itself, I don't love it but I don't dislike it either, I would be much more lukewarm on the game but I didn't find the gameplay to be grating enough to overly detract from my experience playing the game.

What Shattered Memories basically is a nutshell is a reimagining of the first Silent Hill where the bad ending that everything was in Harry's mind was the focal point to the story. So esstentially a "what if", an Elseworlds story or one of Marvel's many offshoot universes outside of Earth 616. There is no mention or even a slight refrence to the cult group from the original game, the characters in that game are so in name only and there are also new characters who also never appeared either.

When going into the game knowing all this, the many changes to the original game's story becomes easier to accept, it's not really a full on remake but a different take featuring the same concepts.

What Shattered Memories has going for it is by far it's presentation. The visuals look great and hold up great for a Wii game. The snow and character models are quite detailed and the seemless transitions to the Nightmare World is pretty impressive considering it's happening as the player is walking around in the town. The way Harry's flashlight's interacts with the world is pretty quite immersive since shinning things with flashlight is what the player is primarily be doing.

The story is pretty interesting and the voice acting might be some of the better in the series. The way it is told is pretty interesting in how Dr. Kaufman is a therapist and how interviews you the player and how it effects the story going forward. It's told in a rather indirect way but this is usual for the series. I do think the voice acting and character interactions are enough to carry me through it since Harry's conviction to save his daughter is still there and the plot point that he is a writer isn't missable this time around. It was pretty engaging for the short time the game lasts.

The music is decent but it is a lot more minimal this time around and it might be one of Yamaoka's weaker OSTs, probably due to the minimalism but I don't recall the tracks here that much outside of Hell Frozen Rain.

Gameplay is the most divisive part of the game and I didn't outight dislike it but I don't love it either. Combat is gone now. There is no ammo or health to pick up, no levels to explore, no items to collect and anything relating to combat or exploration. It's esstentially a narrative exploration game with scripted chases here and there.

So in a sense, SHSM was breaking new ground for being one of the first popular experimental horror and narrative based games.

While I'm not big on those kinds of games, the short length plus the chases not being overly long prevents the game from a complete and total slog, but your milage may vary depending on how good you are at guessing the route you need to go without getting grabbed by monsters too much and getting a game over. However the game does feature a map on Harry's phone and while monsters are searching, you can look at it to tell you where you need to go and even outside of combat, you will always have a marker telling where to head to.

The only thing left now are the puzzles and they mostly consist of typing in codes and finding keys, the latter of which you find by doing an easy motion puzzle which obviously tells you it was made for the Wii first and foremost.

Here is the thing, I would be be more critical on all of this but Silent Hill never really had the greatest of gameplay. It wasn't bad by any means and especially in the original SH2, it was nothing more than a means to an end. The 1999 game had servicable enough gameplay and only SH3 out of the original few games had moment to moment gameplay that could rival a Resident Evil and it's indie game successors.

Combat is removed? The normal difficulties of SH1 and 2 pretty much made you feel like an invicible one man army to begin with. There wasn't a whole lot of tension in the combat in either of them especially SH2, so the idea of a game in the series fully embracing that gameplay as a means to an end and the tension is about running away is something I don't mind at all especially combined with the short length, map and easier puzzles.

If this was say a Resident Evil and Dead Space game with no combat, I would be much more annoyed since the combat in them I do enjoy.

Overall, I enjoyed Shattered Memories but as a weird experimental game especially before they became commonplace in gaming.