Customer Reviews

Silent Hill: Shattered Memories

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Just finished very first play-through of this game-very interesting re-imagining. This very much reminds me of the conversations I was having back when the original SH came out for the PSone. What if Harry is really....or Cheryl....what about Dahlia? I don't want to spoil ANYTHING, so I will stop there so you get the idea.

Graphics-pretty ugly for a such a late PS2 title. I really wish they would stop just scaling down the engines and dragging them onto the PS2 without optimizing it first. Some textures cut in and out when viewing them, particularly posters. Also, can we at least try to anti-alias this thing. Some areas, with our swinging flashlight painfully illuminating the lack of A-A, were pixelated nightmares. Also, I noted that the top and bottom of the screen had some distortion-was this intended to make it look like video tracking or a graphical glitch. Dunno. Finally, FMVs were washed out, faded, with an obvious resolution shift.

Deep Breath....that's really my only complain for the moment, though

Gameplay-Wow. A game that responds to how you play it? Balderdash. I couldn't believe this was even possible. But it is-you can have a completely different experience depending on how you play, and how you respond to the "good doctor's" questions and exercises. There are a few places where you will notice obvious forking-you can only take one of two paths-and it is clear that this transforms the scenes ahead, and of course the ending. I really liked exploring each area for these markers, as they set up a great binary opposition in terms of your path-good or evil, easy or difficult. For some reason, all my scenes, interactions, and even scenery was vaguely sexual. Gotta wonder if that was intended or just "my play-through," but that is a digression. I plan to go through it again and try for a different scenario. Side note-you also have collectibles that come up in various spots-mementos-that just give you a little bit more to do.

Now for my last gripe-the "dog runs," or at least that is what I call them, the scene's where you are running for your life from your enemies, pulling down objects to get them between you and your attacker. I really liked the visceral sense of combat in the older games-stalking your enemy with a lead pipe and beating them to death in brutal fashion. I was very disappointed that this was missing. The new feature-running and hiding, with an occasional flare to keep enemies at bay-frustrated me to no end, but I felt that this wasn't the whole of the game, so I can let it slide. Plus, it gets you EVERY time when one of the ankle biters latches onto you and have have to time your button presses just right to get them off of you. Try this on when you have three of the things trying to give you hickeys. Not fun. Thankfully, the game is forgiving if you die during this, and restarts you at the beginning of the run.

All in all, I REALLY enjoyed this game. I believe that for such a late title, the graphics could have been polished/optimized a bit more for the system (I hear the Psp version is the best one to get), but I am not dissatisfied with my purchase. It's not going to be for everyone, but it is a worthwhile entry and new direction for the series.

Ankle biters...

I'm a big fan of Silent Hill series and have played SH1, 2, 3, 4, and Origins. Though I would've played 5 (Homecoming) if only the controls were inverted. Anyway, I wasn't too sure what to expect in Shattered Memories but I picked it up right away at a local store since I wanted to play it right away.

On with the good part.

First impressions of the game was pretty interesting since the concept is new and a little different. You first answer a questionaire about yourself which will decide what ending you will get. The game is more interactive such as having to open up cabinets and finding keys to open lock doors. Opening up desk drawers to find mementos. You get to use a cell phone to call phone numbers you find in the game. Receive text messages, receive phone calls, and take pictures using your cell phone. There are also a few puzzles to solve and some interesting scenes to watch as you progress more into the game.

Getting into the nightmare mode was kind of trip since it's not the bloody, rusty scene most people are familar with in the SH series. Instead places are covered in glaciers of ice. What's pretty fun is that while in nightmare mode you're only option is to run since there are monsters that will chase you no matter what you do. There are guide markers to help you open a door, climb a wall, hide, etc. There's also a flare to use to prevent the monsters from chasing you but it doesn't last long. If the monster grabs you, you press a certain button to take them off of you. You can also pull down objects nearby to block the monsters for awhile.

Now on with the bad part.

This game is pretty much linear, a little repetitive, and not difficult. It's pretty cool that the game is interactive but it kind of feels more of the same. As you go to each stage, it's always about finding a key somewhere to open a lock door. Then you explore the stage looking for clues on where to go. As you are about finish the stage you enter the nightmare world. You are given markers (which makes the game kind of easy) to help you run from the ONLY ONE type of monster in the game. Don't expect to see any other monsters since there are no bosses. I was really disappointed by this. Also, you don't have a health bar in this game but you can die if the monsters grab you too much.

After passing the nightmare world, everything goes back to normal and you go back to your psychiatrist and do another questionaire/experiment. Later on, you'll realize that you can't decide on what you want on the questionaire/experiment in order to find the different endings. After all this, you go back into the game and you repeat what you just did the last time. Figure out how to get into the next stage by finding a key, entering another stage, finding mementos, taking pictures, solving some puzzles, entering the nightmare world, finishing the nightmare world, go back to psychiatrist, and repeat.

I won't talk about the story or who you will meet but I was surprised by the ending. But don't expect this game to be entirely similar to SH1. Think of it as having the same characters and setting, but different plot. I also felt that the survival horror aspect of this game to be somewhat weak and there was no nostalgia. I realized that this game was intended to be on the Wii, so there's no way of seeing a port to PS3 or Xbox 360. I still think Konami should've done a full remake of SH1 by keeping the story the same with the graphics in 720p/1080p. Overall, I think this game deserves to be a rental.

I am a Silent Hill nerd. Needless to say, I periodically check the internet for new games in the series and as soon as I found out about Shattered Memories, I shifted between hopeful and skeptical like the titular town shifts between eerily atmospheric and disgustingly hellish. I stayed more on the good side when I read Akira Yamaoka would be involved, but then I saw it would be combat free. Both of these once-rumors are true. But is that good? Read on and see.

First, the sound. I listen to Akira Yamaoka's Silent Hill OSTs like most people listen to Maroon 5 except the former doesn't make me wish guitars hadn't been invented. Its a long story, but GameStop messed up my pre-order and the copy I bought here had no soundtrack. And I really wish it had because the music in this installment is not bad by Silent Hill standards, real good by general music standards. Some of the tracks (I got the OST elsewhere) are, frankly, cacophonous while others are hauntingly beautiful due in part to returning vocalist Mary McGlynn. But the music is not the only sound. I didn't find the enemy sounds all that scary, but the ambient sounds and hints of what might lunge from the darkness put the fear of Samael into me. At times, its just footsteps, but even they aren't just 'guy walking'. They have that special echo that I hear whenever a detective in a book is searching for clues, which is very fitting because...

Without combat, Shattered Memories busies the player with seeking out clues as to Cheryl's whereabouts and with finding lingering spiritual residue around town and hearing a little horror skit on a cell phone. Basically, in addition to a father searching for his daughter, you're a detective of sorts. I would have liked to bash some of the more persistent demons with the classic steel pipe, but the searching and unraveling is engaging and interesting enough that I was almost never all that worried about it. Besides, they only come during events. Most of the time, you're free to look around without worrying about being grabbed from behind and you can enjoy it more. Every Silent Hill game has lots of environment to take in, but the demons always felt like you were in a gallery being hurried into the next room. Now, you can take it at your own pace, which I find to be a nice change.

In between sections of town, we see scenes of someone being analyzed by a psychiatrist. That someone is you. The former bastard, now creepy shrink Dr. Kaufmann asks some unseen person questions and gives them tests (one of which is, I'm not joking, coloring a picture of a smiling family), which the game then analyzes and adjusts the main game to. I said in my review of Prototype that I liked the feel of not being accountable for your actions, but this game goes in the complete opposite direction with it. Looking at posters changes who Harry Mason is if you do it enough. This is an absolutely brilliant addition to the series and when the next one comes out, I'd like to see it again.

I also liked hearing some of the best voice talent the anime industry had to offer appearing here including Kirk Thornton and Laura Bailey. While my concern about whether this means the anime industry is sinking and games are a life raft or if the actors just expanding their careers is neither here nor there, but I am a bit surprised they were chosen over less specialized talent. No doubt they pulled off the roles, but its somewhat unusual for voice actors who primarily do anime to have featured roles in a game like this. But I guess it is becoming more commonplace and if my concern for the industry is notwithstanding, I'll accept it gladly. Thornton does a good Harry Mason in all his potential aspects but Bailey's Dahlia sounds enough like Lust (FullMetal Alchemist) that they remind me of each other, especially now that Dahlia is sexier in both body and personality. But thats good because it makes for a good segue.

This is a re-imagining of the original Silent Hill for the PS1. When I say re-imagining, I don't mean its been made prettier. I mean its an altered cast in a completely new world, doing completely new things in completely new ways. If not for the names of the characters, this could easily pass for a whole new game. But the biggest change is to the history of Silent Hill in the form of one chain reaction starting thing.

There is no Alessa.

If you know what that means, you've begun to grasp the depth of the differences between this and Silent Hill 1. It means that, if this were the 'real' Harry Mason story, none of the other games could have happened in any way. Its the Batman Begins of the series, but its a dead end. Nothing involving The Order can happen in this timeline. If you just want to play a good mystery, great, but if you care about Silent Hill as a whole, this will either frustrate or intrigue you.

You'll notice I gave this game a two star fun rating. Its not an accident. This game is really good. Its well-made, written, acted, scored and modeled. Its beautiful visually and audibly, yet its ugly emotionally and psychologically. It plays well, rewards ingenuity and induces floods of adrenaline during the chase events. The mystery is deep and intriguing, the twist at the end would put M. Night Shyamalan in his prime to shame and made me actually care about everything. Its just not a lot of fun. Most of the game is just looking for stuff and making the static on the phone loud until you find a spot to take a picture and hear a short play about dying or passive fantasies a man has about his daughter. Its easy to make Harry a blend of all the possible personalities just out of habit of looking at everything. Its interesting but not always entertaining.

Final word, buy it, but only if you can devote yourself to it. If you can't find an hour or more regularly to let yourself live the game, don't bother. Silent Hill is not a game, its an experience. If you can't truly experience it, I can't recommend it. But if you can, I can and enthusiastically do.

When I heard they were doing a remake or re-imagining of Silent Hill, I was a bit nervous and excited. I haven't played Homecoming, not owning a PS3, so when I found out this would be released for the Wii and PS2, I was thrilled, and for the starting price of $30 and a bonus soundtrack with a preorder, my money was on the counter. Silent Hill has always been a cherished gem in my collection, and I was more than curious to see how some outsiders would reproduce it.
Well, for starters, this game is worth $20, maximum, if not for the music alone (which I listen to often, it's beautiful and haunting, capturing the pain of severe cold.) It wasn't until after I preordered this game that I did a bit of research on it (Silent Hill is all I needed to see, this is my favorite franchise). It seems Climax to the reigns again, spearheading another venture into our favorite ghost town after their so-so title: Silent Hill: Origins. I wasn't blown away by anything from that game except the music (I am a huge Akira Yamoka fan). They didn't bring to much innovation to the series besides the ability to go between the realities through mirrors, an element that was confusing due to the previous storyline explaining why the environment would take a sudden turn to a nightmarish relic of it's normal predecessor. They also introduced a new melee fighting system, which again was so-so. So I went into this title expecting that Climax would improve upon their previous effort.
In terms of story, it's complicated. This game is noteworthy for it's "choose your own path based on choices and questions" which I found to be a great addition to the series. But then the hammer came down, hard, when I discovered there would be absolutely no combat in this game, there would be one type of monster, and the levels freeze over instead of turning into blood soaked, rusted, terror filled environments. I thought that the no combat system might work as long as they keep the horror element in tack. I was wrong. Every so often the place you are in will freeze over and you will have to run through a maze like place, knocking things over or hiding to allude the single monster chasing you. Once you reach the end, all is back to normal. There are items you can find all over the place, but they have no use. The puzzles are super easy. The graphics were sad compared to Silent Hill 2 - 4 (all of them stunning).
All in all, this doesn't add much to the series, and delivers very little scares found in previous titles. Stick with the first four, done by Team Silent (I can't vouch for Homecoming, having yet to play it) if you want a great story and overall game. Shattered Memories is a fitting title, seeing as that's what this game did to my memories of the first game. The only thing you do in this game is explore and run, which were fun to do in the others but there was more to survival than simply running away. The one thing I thought really stood out about this game was the cell phone and the numbers you could call when you stumbled across them, that was cool.

So if you are like me and you want a complete collection, then buy this game for the title alone to stand along side the great games in this series, and if you are a casual gamer who hasn't been to Silent Hill more than 4 times, steer clear of this title, it gives the others a bad name. If this is the future of the franchise, it's as dead as Alyssa.

This has been Astral Productions,
Telling You What's Up.

ive played all the silent hill games and heard that they were redoing 1 with a young dalia, no weapons, and lots of changes. and i really did try to dislike it. but with the story making changes depending on your visits to the shrink, changes in character appearances and actions and even which building were available to enter based on your choices, i began to get into it. yes, the chase scenes are kind of repetative and the monsters all the same, but it was still fun running, grabbing flares, throwing obstacles behind you, etc. my one big complaint is that, when things change, it looks more like stone than ice in most places. the ending may not be what you wanted and it might not fit the other games but it wasn't what you expected and thats part of what makes a silent hill game. they arent supposed to be carbon copies of each other, they arent supposed to have an easy answer. and yes, there are multiple endings. they could have easily used the "good" ending but set it after game 3 if you think about it... thats what i thought they were shooting for at first. the problem is, as it stands, it makes it kind of hard to do more sh games, but who knows. (on a negative note, the graphics seem to be something you might see on ps1...)

wow, where to begin... it's supposed to retell the first game but doesn't at all. it's totally different. instead of there being a really cool transition from the normal world to one of stinking heat, rust, blood, and barbed wire, it switches to a world of ice. so every time it switches it looks identical to the last time it switched. it almost seems like they were being lazy and didn't want to do much designing so they just said "hey if everything is covered in ice we can do it in less than half the time as a detailed environment since it's just coloring everything in a blocky blue!". and instead of there being a wide array of horrifying enemies and some very disturbing bosses to fight there is one type of enemy and that's it. one. and instead of a wide array of weapons to fight your way through you have no weapons at all. none. if this was a game under another name it may have been okay, but to call it a silent hill game is wrong.

This is possibly one of my all-time favorite games, and I haven't even finished it yet!

When I first heard about this game, I was very skeptical. Not only was I slightly concerned that Climax was part of the production team, but also the fact that there were no weapons. But after seeing some gameplay trailers and reviews on here, I figured I'd give it a try. The idea of only having monsters around when the world is in the "Nightmare" state was actually a really good turn for the Silent Hill series. And, as I had mentioned earlier, you don't find or receive any sort of weapon; you just run like hell. Overall, I'd say this game is a definite buy and I highly recommend it to any legitimate Silent Hill fan.

When I heard a reimagining of the first game was coming, I was there and waiting. When I played it, however, I saw a few flaws in some of the stuff. The worst of these were the combat problems, where you find yourself running a whole lot more than simply dishing out the pain. This was a real problem with the whole of the system and, truth be told, it hurt the impact. That said, however, this was a great play because I expected a lot less. A ported over game that is older in graphics? not normally a grand thing. Still, this was fun.

One other thing I want to say about this was that its soundtrack was great. I love SH sounds anyhow but, when the singing comes in, this makes a lot of it better. And, as has been the case since three, there are around four songs you can listen to this way. They mingle in with the whole of the experience, giving it a frightening theme. too bad the enemies were more the same than different - like in old games - or I would have loved this piece of SH lore. Still, it does add something in and, truth be told, additions are more to love when it comes to this series.
Not many horror-based franchises can say that they have so many good games. Barring the Room, I would say they all have something great to offer (and the room even has the soundtrack going for it).

Pick this up, take 4-8 hours and beat it, and feel good about the fun run. They are always creepy, after all, and this is being judged as a SH game and not as a game in genral. Otherwise, it wouldn't be so easy to knock.

Seldom does a putative remake breathe such originality into a genre. The original Silent Hill and its first sequel both took gaming forward as a medium for storytelling. Shattered Memories qualifies as the first Silent Hill since then to accomplish the same, and it does so by re-imagining the original's concept from the ground up.

Although you can connect this story with the other Silent Hill games if you want to, it stands on its own. Do not expect a rehash of familiar gameplay elements, a directly connected plot, or least of all a direct remake of the original. Do expect psychological horror which adapts and responds to your own particular anxieties.

The visuals in Shattered Memories look impressive for the PS2 and do not differ enough on the Wii for me to care. Your flashlight plays off corners and shapes in detailed shadows, and most environments involve surprising amounts of detail. That detail becomes doubly impressive on a second play, because much of it varies depending on your own decisions.

I find more intuitive controls slightly difficult to imagine. The left stick controls movement. The right stick controls which direction you point your flashlight. In comparison with the Wii release, some may find the Wiimote's direct control of the flashlight more immersive, whereas others (myself included) prefer the PS2's conventional buttons during chase sequences.

I've avoided giving anything away about the story or characters, which is the real draw of Shattered Memories. The themes and ending shape themselves around what you as a player reveal as your own fears or insecurities. I have known this game's finale to send more than one thirty-something male into tears--for different reasons and with a different ending according to the person. Even if Shattered Memories isn't for you, it's inarguably unique.

But I love pretty much all the games, even the ones the rest of the fans seem to hate. This game is not what I was expecting, but I loved it nonethless. It's just way too short!

I will say this game is quite different than the others. While Homecoming seems like a Silent Hill-Resident Evil hybrid with a lot more action, this game goes in the opposite direction and creates a puzzle/mystery sort of game. This isn't bad, however; it's pretty interesting.

The atmosphere is very different in the sense that things are a little less 'supernatural'. No fog or hostile ghosts (though there are some monsters, and even possible ghosts), and rather than an atmosphere of horror there is a chilling, mournful atmosphere of confusion and loss. If this doesn't sound like your cup of tea, you might be among those who didn't like this game, but it's certainly good in my opinion and many others feel the same way.