Review: Silent Hill: Shattered Memories

Game: Silent Hill Shattered Memories
Platform: Wii
Developer: Climax Group
Publisher: Konami

Back in 1999 Konami released the first Silent Hill on the Sony Playstation. Casting you as Harry Mason you explored the foggy town in search of your missing adopted daughter. With the sound of an air raid siren filling the air, the small town transformed into a blood soaked, rusty, nightmare world, populated with deformed monsters. As the story progressed you discovered that your daughter had a dark past revolving around a cult that aimed to bring to life a demonic god to judge all mankind. It was nonsensical, but fantastic at the same time.

Since then there have been several other Silent Hill games: Silent Hill 2, 3, The Room, Origins, and Homecoming. Late last year the latest Silent Hill game, Silent Hill Shattered Memories, was released in the USA on Nintendo Wii, Playstation 2, and PSP. Instead of the traditional Silent Hill gameplay, blending combat with puzzle solving, the developers instead decided to take a more psychological, non-combative take with this latest game.

Silent Hill Shattered Memories is something of a re-imagining of the original Silent Hill. Once again you play as Harry Mason, a devoted father who wakes up after a car crash to discover that his daughter Cheryl, is missing. Wandering out into the snowy surroundings, Harry stumbles on the deserted town of Silent Hill, which is in the midst of a severe snow storm. With no one on the streets, and Harry’s memory severely lacking, you are left to wander the streets following clues to find out where your daughter is.

The town of Silent Hill is experiencing an extreme snow storm

All of this takes place after the opening of the game, just to confuse matters slightly. To start the game your character is sitting in a psychiatrist’s office starting their first session with the latest in a long line of therapists. To begin with, your therapist asks you to fill out a simple personality test, with questions ranging from the simple “do you make friends easily?” to the somewhat more perturbed “do you enjoy role play in sex?”. The way you answer the questions will have a radical effect on the way the game plays out. For instance, the way I answered the questionnaire in my first play through meant the first level was in a video store, whereas altering my answers lead to the very same level becoming a clothes store on a later play through, complete with different puzzles.

Much of the game's outcome is determined by the way you answer the Psychiatrist's questions

Speaking of puzzles, gone are the days of old where you would come across a locked door and have to traipse across town in search of the required key. Now the solution to the locked doors is more realistic, with the set of keys for each locked door being in a logical place near the actual door. The only challenge in solving these simple puzzles lies in the manipulation of the Wii remote. By pressing the A button you can interact with set parts of the environment and use the Wii remote to grab interactive objects, such as tin cans, or latches on doors. Sometimes the solution to the puzzles seem a little arbitrary, such as the locked door whose key is hidden inside of a nearby tin can, but overall the puzzles make sense, which is refreshing for a series that was well known for it’s lengthy and bizarre puzzles.

The phone is key to discovering segments of the back story.

The use of the Wii remote in this game is particularly good. Using the nunchuck to walk forward, backwards, and to strafe left and right, the Wii remote is used to point your torch, which allows you to turn as well as illuminate the dark surroundings. Other brilliant uses for the Wii remote include using the remote’s built in speaker as the speaker of your mobile phone, which acts as a key implement in solving a number of side puzzles, as well as receiving valuable information.

Spread out around the town are a number of hidden memories; static figures that can only been seen clearly through the lens of your phone’s camera. Taking their picture unlocks a voice mail message that fills in some of the background of the game’s story. The phone also contains a map of the town that allows you to draw your desired route to your objective, although this drawn path is only visible on the phone. Annoyingly your speed of walking is dramatically reduced when you have the phone in hand.

As you progress further through the story and unearth key details, the world around you becomes encased in ice, and the game shifts from methodical exploration to frantic escape. Along with the ice, a number of skinless creatures begin to chase you through the darkness. You are unable to physically harm your pursuers, and instead must simply run away from them, attempting to block their path by knocking down objects, or hold them off by setting off flares. At this point in the game it becomes more about escaping from the labyrinthine nightmare mazes. While the exit is always marked on the phone map, there is rarely a chance to stop and check the phone, so escaping from these mazes can often be more trial and error than anything else. Fortunately, any path you have already taken is marked on the phone’s map, which does help in staving off a lot of the back tracking.

Your enemies cannot be hurt, only held back by flares

If you are unfortunate enough to be caught by one of your shrieking pursuers then you must shove the nunchuck and Wii remote in the direction of your attacker to throw them off. You can sustain a number of blows from your foe before they knock you down, but the more beatings you take, the more you stumble when you manage to escape. Fortunately there is no death in this game. If your enemies overwhelm you then you are merely dumped back at the start of the maze and must try and evade the enemies again.

The shrieking skinless monsters are incredibly clingy in this game.

The chase sequences are usually preceded by another flash-forward to the psychiatrist’s office, where you will undertake other simple tests such as colouring in a picture of your dream family or separating pictures of dead people from pictures of sleeping people. How you perform in these tests, in which there is no “right” answer, is reflected in the following level. For instance, with the colouring test, I merely scribbled over the picture with a purple pen. In the following level my home was coloured a vibrant purple, and the people inside were wearing purple clothes. While that test had only a minor effect on the environment, later tests have a more drastic effect, and to discuss them further would perhaps spoil the outcome of the game itself.

Upon completing the game, which only lasts about six hours, you are treated to a psychological profile of yourself based on the decisions you made in-game. I was genuinely surprised how accurate the profile was in describing me personally, faults and all. Of course you will only get a similar reaction if you take the tests seriously and answer truthfully.

Review Round-Up

Graphics: 4/5 The developers have clearly gone to great lengths to make this game take full advantage of the Wii’s limited hardware. Of particular note are the character’s faces and facial animation, which look stylised, but believable at the same time. The game has a film grain filter placed on the graphics that adds significantly to the dark and mysterious atmosphere.

Sound: 5/5 Akira Yamaoka provides his trademark excellent score, as he has for every Silent Hill game to date. The voice acting is particularly believable, with the actor that plays Harry exhibiting all the necessary emotions to make this game seem like a genuine nightmare.

Gameplay: 5/5 The way the developer has worked with the Wii Remote should set the standard for any developer working on a Wii title. Using the the Wii Remote to control your torch, and having it act as your mobile phone works spectacularly.

Longevity: 3/5 The main story will take about six or so hours to complete, and there is no multiplayer to speak of. However, the compelling nature of the story and the sheer variety in puzzle answers will probably have you reaching for your remote to start a new game as soon as the first one finishes.

Overall 4.5 Skinless Monkey attacks out of 5 Climax have managed to take Silent Hill in an exciting new direction while at the same time maintaining some of the key atmosphere of the series. In a lot of ways this game is the anti-Resident Evil 4 – where Resident Evil 4 took the lumbering Resident Evil franchise and transformed it into a fast-paced action game, Silent Hill has instead travelled down the opposite path, into a non combative psychological thriller. Really, any self respecting Wii owner that laments the lack of “proper games” on the Wii should buy this.

[starreview tpl=16]

Tags: Akira Yamaoka, Climax, Harry Mason, Konami, Mightyles, motion controls, Noob, PS2, PSP, psychiatrist, psychology, reimagining, remake, remote, Resident Evil, Review, Shattered Memories, Silent Hill, snow, Wii

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