I'm genuinely curious how this game pans out.
I find Homecoming just OK, but not SH 1-3 level. Origins was kinda long and less SH-ish. I hated Shattered Memories. How would you rank your SH games Dusk Golem + this game?
Mind you this is a personal opinion, and I will also say the only game I haven't played (well, outside of Arcade) is Origins so I can't rank that.
Like many others,
Silent Hill 2 is my personal favorite. I could go on and state the things that everyone loves about the game, it's great story, great atmosphere and feel of isolation, it's attention to details and deep symbolism, but I think this is all underlined by what really makes Silent Hill 2 a fantastic game, and something this game does better than any other game I have witnessed to this day: Subtlety. I think that is Silent Hill 2's single greatest trait, and something a lot of video games fail at. I think that a problem a lot of horror games have is the lack of subtlety, where they aim too hard to captivate the player with action focus, have all of this flashy stuff, grip them with over-the-top set pieces from the get-go... And this approach isn't wrong, but there's so much of it in the market that it can be easy to forget there are other fantastic ways to open up a game, or a fantastic and gripping way to hold an audience than just having deep combat. Silent Hill 2 opens up with you all by yourself walking into town. Everything from the noises, to your first conversation, to the appearance of the first monster, is slow, building up, but subtle. The game doesn't spoon-feed you anything about the story or what it means. It's laid out all you need to know in the game, but not always in plain sight. James is fairly tame, the location he is in nightmarish, but also has an air of loneliness and normality about it. Silent Hill 2 has a fantastic pace, and is such a good example of a video game story and experience because it doesn't rush itself, it doesn't shove monsters in your face to try and scare you. It works subtly to accomplish this, and the whole game is reflective of this as over the course of the game everything pieces itself together and gets more and more twisted. There's a lot more I could say, but I'm trying to stick this all to one (lengthy) paragraph.
Silent Hill 3 is my second favorite, in big part because I think it's both excellently designed and the second scariest game in the franchise. This game has the most combat in the series, but it never feels like an action-game. That's because it doesn't forfeit atmosphere and the experience in favor of this action. It more feels like Heather's desperate struggle for survival. The game is tense, and odd. With probably the most likable protagonist the series has had, matched with some fantastic scares, and generally just being the most odd of the titles... Instead of some isolated town you literally feel like reality itself is shifting into nightmares. Locations that one may go to in their every day lives is twisted into these nightmarish hellscapes. And don't get me started on the game's excellent secrets, which have a good sense of comedy about them. I forget who said this, but horror and comedy are two sides of the same coin as they are created to evoke emotional responses from the audience. Silent Hill 3 I think had the most well-designed structure, some of the best characterization the series had, some of the best scares and locations, and some of the best secrets the series has ever had.
Silent Hill 1 I think has the benefit of being the initial establishment, the mystery of what Silent Hill is. Often times part of the issues with horror games is that franchising them can be hard. In Resident Evil, the first game for example has a sense of mystery and isolation about it, but the consecutive titles got a bit more action-focused to make up for the lack of mystery or malice of the unknown. For Silent Hill, even knowing fully the plot of the first game, the game has an atmosphere of mystery and dream logic about it that really pulls the player in. I think the best moments of the game are the opening sequence (which is a fantastic way to draw players in, though I will admit I'm less fond of the following Diner scene and running around town collecting keys), Midwich Elementary School (particularly the first transition to the Otherworld and seeing everything in the school you've previously been in twist into some nightmarish yet intriguing version of itself), and the end sequence of Nowhere (I think the ending moments have some of the game's best music, some of the best twisted dark elements, and things like Lisa to the reveal about your daughter make it unforgettable). Unfortunately I think some of the middle section of the game doesn't quite stand out as well. There's nothing wrong with it, but it doesn't have quite the same novelty. And I also feel that Silent Hill 1, while a good game, doesn't hold the same woah moments that 2 and 3 have even with it's great sense of mystery and feeling like you're going through a dream.
Silent Hill: Downpour goes here for me. This might change as of course this game is still sinking in and I'm still playing it, but I do think I'm almost done for my first playthrough. Silent Hill Downpour I'll wait to fill my full impressions on once I beat it, but so far in my eyes at least it's almost as good as the original trilogy. It does some new things that I'm enjoying, like the randomized storm effects, the side quest, and the likes. This is also met with some great atmosphere, some good story-telling, excellent puzzles, and probably the best exploration element the series has ever had. But then the graphics are just alright and there's a few technical hiccups, the combat is very clunky and the inventory system is definitely a love it/hate it thing (only able to carry two weapons at any given time, weapons break, etc), the voice acting is really hit and miss... And generally, it feels like it's a bit sloppy in some ways. It's kind of hard to explain, but I think it kind of shows how this studio making the game are somewhat newcomers to the gaming industry. But it also genuinely shows that these developers have a lot of heart for the franchise and know how to make a good horror game and are daring to use old and new conventions in gaming to accomplish what is probably the Silent Hill game in the last 8 years I've enjoyed the most. The environments are both interesting and well-designed. The surreal moments are fantastic. The chase sequences are better than Shattered Memories, as well as the exploration. The game in some ways feels like a mixture of elements from the Silent Hill series, but implemented together in new ways and it probably feels a lot fresher than one might expect simply because a lot that the game does a lot of current-gen horror games aren't daring enough to try. The game is probably the biggest Silent Hill game as well, and even though I'm almost done with the story there is so much of the town I haven't explored yet and the side quests themselves seem like they're another half to the game to experience. In that sense it kind of reminds me of Deadly Premonition actually, which is a weird comparison but the side quest in that game really fleshed out the whole experience more, which the side quest here seem to do as well in my opinion. I'll leave full impressions whenever I finish, though.
Silent Hill 4: The Room I believe is the scariest game in the franchise. It's controls and camera are unfortunately helplessly broken. The game can be sometimes emotionally draining. However, the surreal locations, music, scares, story, and just general strangeness this game has I believe is done really well in this game. Unfortunately in terms of gameplay it is broken, and making you go through the same locations twice with those invincible ghost things (excluding your limited sword count) is just a dick move, I believe that this game is a great 'experience' that is held back by it's gameplay, but is wholly fascinating and terrifying.
I want to clarify, I don't think
Silent Hill: Shattered Memories is a bad game. It's good for a spin-off and I think it has some cool mechanics and is interesting. The problem I have with it is that the whole game feels more like a glorified tech demo than a game, and it just feels like Climax came up with this cool mechanics system of how to make a new Silent Hill game play like, and then just put together some game around it. That said, I'd be lying to say I didn't enjoy myself, but it felt like such a cool system was put to waste in what could have been a really great game if they had just utilized their mechanics and ideas better. Chase sequences could have been better and could have used more monster variety. Hell, more stealth elements might have worked wonders to vary out these sections as well. Exploration could of had more to explore and do. The changes the game has when 'psychologically profiling' you could have been much more than just changing lines of dialogue and aesthetics. It was interesting, I did enjoy it, but I also felt it could of been so much more instead of just settling for less.
Silent Hill: Homecoming is okay... But there's just things about it that irk me. I think the opening sequence of this game is the worst opening sequence of any Silent Hill game. I think the combat is terribly unbalanced, where you're either too powerful for everything around you with the ceremonial dagger or you're getting raped to death by a pack of nurses. The story actually made me laugh at how stupid it was in the Police Station scene, which seemed more like a monster or zombie film than anything that should be in Silent Hill. Pyramid Head is blatant fan service. The puzzles were either piss easy or were sliding tile puzzles. And the whole game felt like it was trying to be Silent Hill The Movie The Game. But for all of that said, the game did have some interesting, and dare I say, fun moments. I thought that the whole set-up of Alex's house was cool and well done. I liked the world in the game, the environments were interesting and detailed and I had fun going through them a good majority of the time (even if the Hotel and Prison dragged on for me). I do wish the environments would have been more open to explore though. But when I start to fondly remember elements about the game I liked, I then remind myself that I was fighting cult members with a knife in a scene that seemed like it's more fit for Hostel or the Saw films than Silent Hill and it just continues this loophole of mixed feelings I have with the game. Definitely the series weakest entry, but I also don't think it's as bad people say it is. It's not abysmal, just terribly misguided and just okay. The endings were really poor, though.
That sums it up pretty nicely.
