I do love a game that can scare the shit out of me. It means the game makers have captured my imagination and found a way to make me invest my emotions in their character while sending me through whatever situations they have conjoured up in their evil minds. It requires delicate detail to graphics, sound and control but is mastered by taking these away from you also. It’s a great quality but quite rare. Resident Evil used to have it. Project Zero (or Fatal Frame depending on where you are in the world) had it in bucket loads. Dead Space brought the love of fear to high definition and Silent Hill, many years before, proved that terror, true terror, could exist in a digital format.
After many sequels, with them getting unanimously worse as time goes on (with exception to the absolute masterpiece that is Silent Hill 2), especially since developement has left Japan, the series has gotten somewhat stale. Ultimately, the true appreciation for this new game will come from knowing just how bad it could have been. Or should have been.
Silent Hill Shattered Memories is made by Climax, the same people who broke our hearts with Silent Hill Origins, so its pedigree has left a lot to be desired! To make matters worse, it’s a reimagining of the 1st Silent Hill that stole our hearts and soiled our pants with fear. Not off to a good start! So the character names are there, the street names and various locations are present but does it feel like the old game?
No. But in the best possible way!
Silent Hill Shattered Memories is a whole new game of its own. Like the newer Batman movies, Shattered Memories soars above the last bunch of rubbish and even though it’s retelling the first story again, which was already told fantastically, it’s doing it in a more believable and realistic way.
You play Harry Mason. A man looking for his lost 7 year old daughter in an intense and severe town called Silent Hill. Along the way, he encounters a few other people who help or hinder his progress and a whole bunch of twisted freaky monsters who want to eat your brains but these two catagories never meet at the same time.
The gameplay is divided up into two sections with some psycho analysis parts in between. The first is your exploration/story mode where progress is aimed at finding your daughter, Cheryl, and the dilemmas of your new found friends whilst making your way around the ghost town of Silent Hill. The feeling of loneliness is closer to abandonment when you have contact with someone and they seem like they are genuinely trying to help you and then they leave you to follow their own agenda. These encounters really build up and push you towards the amazing climax of the ending. Nothing feels cheap or out of place and all the voice acting is convincing.
Then there’s the action sections where the Silent Hill world snap-freezes, literally, before your eyes and everything is shrouded in ice and a brooding darkness. The other big change is the inhabitants. Besides the ice sculptures of citizens, you also meet the twisted monsters of Silent Hill. They screech in a terrifying manner and proceed to run after you like rabid dogs with the intent of ending your noble search quite violently. This is where this game truly earns its merits because, unlike every Silent Hill to date, there is no combat to speak of. Harry is no army man, police officer or boxer or any kind of fighter. And would you stop and have fisticuffs with a pack of truly nightmarish creatures out of a Clive Barker horror flick even if you were? Hell no! You’d run like a bitch if you have any sense! And thats exactly what Harry does. The mix of pitch black darkness, the static noise coming from the Wii remotes speaker, the screams from the monsters and the impending death they offer really gets your heart racing like mad as you crash through door after door, praying you’re going the right way to get you out of this hell. If the freaks do catch you, they latch on like fierce leeches and you must shake them off by thrusting the remote and nunchuk in a way that would throw off someone trying to bite you. It works so well to freak you out and the urgency is heart attack inducing.
The big cherry on top of this cavalcade of sheer terror is the odd promise on the back of the game case. This game psycho analyses you as you play and uses it against you to make the experience more confronting. There are sequences peppered throughout the game where you are in a session with a psychiatrist and during the end credits, it reads out your evaluation. My one was so on the money that it kind of unnerved me so I have started again, making my choices the opposite and I have found a very different game indeed on my second time around. Certain people have changed their demeanour, even clothes and dialogues. It has me wondering how many different scenarios and endings this game might have.
I feel a special mention is deserved for the games sound. Series veteran Akira Yamaoka returns with his great ability to pick certain noises to invoke unease and tension right where it’s needed. Also there is a truly haunting rendition of “Always On My Mind” made famous by Elvis and The Pet Shop Boys that has to be heard to be believed. I’ve found few games where silence is used so well to instil fear in the player, or better yet, just the echoing sound of your own footsteps and deep breathing being the only thing your ears pick up.
Now, I hate the term ” good for a Wii game ” but a lot of people will use this line in describing this game. Graphically, this is the best the Wii has shown us to date. Shattered Memories looks better, in parts, than its retarded PS3 and 360 brother and it’s lighting and shadow effects puts most next gen games to shame. No short cuts have been made in the presentation. If Harry takes out his wallet, his jacket opens from his body and each item can be seen, and even read clearly. Rarely has the same texture been used twice and it all adds to the realistic feeling that this world could actually exist.
There are so many nice touches, like Harry’s mobile phone. It can take photos but if you snap certain areas, the picture will be something you can’t see normally. It also has GPS which acts as your map. Genius really. But the greatest of all is when making or taking a call. You have to hold the Wii remote to your ear to hear the other person through the little speaker. Harry’s voice comes through your TV but the other person can only be heard through the remote. Innovative, simple and damn effective.
With all the clever controls, it becomes obvious that Shattered Memories should only exist on the Wii and a high def version on a bigger console would have ruined the experience by leaving out the interactive side of the gameplay. This one game is good enough to get a Wii for and that’s something I usually only say for Mario games. The only downside is actually trying to find a copy! I found it hard to find a place that sells this game. Like Dead Space Extraction, another A grade adult Wii only title, it’s harder to find than a black man in a kilt shop. Regardless of what horrors you may have to go through to get it, it is worth it all. This is the most satisfying return to form I have ever come across. It scared the bejeebuz out of me and I took something deep and personal away with me when I finished it. That is the mark of a true Silent Hill game. First timers to Silent Hill will love this but those like me who believe we have our own apartment overlooking Toluca Lake, will weep with joy that they finally got it right again! Here’s to more like this one. Hurrah!
– Stubby
