• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Silent Hill: Shattered Memories - |OT| of Not Your Father's Silent Hill

mollipen

Member
wrowa said:
My god. Am I playing the game wrong or are the nightmare sequences really just annoying? It seems to me like it's pure luck to survive. Jesus.

They're huge quick-time events, basically. Do over and over until you know the exact pattern to beat them. Super annoying.
 
Ok I'm stuck in the
High School. I have to get to the gym but it seems the only way to get there is through the Planetarium. I guess there is a puzzle I have to solve with the projector in the Planetarium but I can't figure out what it wants me to do.
 

MiniDitka

Member
Hellsing321 said:
Ok I'm stuck in the
High School. I have to get to the gym but it seems the only way to get there is through the Planetarium. I guess there is a puzzle I have to solve with the projector in the Planetarium but I can't figure out what it wants me to do.
Look at the
picture on the canvas and align the statues accordingly which will give you a number to dial

If you cant figure it out the
number is 555-8465
 

hellclerk

Everything is tsundere to me
Played through a second time trying to replicate the first so I could record the ending. Needless to say, there are some massive spoilers in that video. it's the ending sequence as Harry
arrives at the lighthouse
. HQ should be up shortly. I was actually surprised how much everything changed from my first run despite how I was trying to play about the same. I might try for the UFO ending next. I managed to summon them, so I'll do it again next time.

In any case, I really liked the game, but it's still not my GOTY, that's still Little King's Story, but to be fair, thats alot to live up to.
 

Oyashiro

Member
I just finished the game. The ending left me speechless. Literally, speechless. I was just staring at the screen in disbelief because I honestly wasn't expecting that at all... and when
Harry walked in
, I freaked the fuck out.

Overall, I thought the game was very enjoyable. I liked the puzzles, the graphics (they did a nice job with the signs and stuff... unlike other games where if you get within 15 feet of them they turn into a blurry mess). I think they did a great job with the Wiimote features too. The only thing that really pissed me off is the "trowing enemies off you" controls. Other than that, everything else was great.

I think I'm gonna go through the game once again just to see the differences. Also, I'm hoping to understand the symbolism a bit more... I've read various "plot analyses" and such, but I still don't really understand
who Dhalia is and what Lisa's purpose was.
Anyone care to explain?
 

iammeiam

Member
I didn't read any of the spoilers, but the way it was talked about in this thread, I wound up figuring out "the twist" during the opening cutscene. I can't even rememeber what tipped me off initially anymore, but I wound up playing most of the game with the assumption that that's what was happening.

Which makes me really appreciate how well the game hangs together; it doesn't tip its hand early on (somebody said they felt the shrink gave it away with the mention of
"slut" in the high school description wordlist
, but he does
kick off the list with "jock", which carries a fairly strong male connotation.
)

The last couple of 'chase' sequences were really well done, I thought, but the previous ones were all irritating. The last one was fantastic because it sort of highlighted something I'd noticed earlier on, namely that
the creatures don't actively want to hurt you; creepiest thing I saw was, upon dying in an early chase sequence, that one of the nightmare things just starts gently petting Harry.
. Second-to-last kind of turned the whole "constantly lost" aspect into a perk.

One thing about the interpetations I've read is the assumption that
everything was happening in Cheryl's imagination
, which I don't necessarily agree with. I tended to see the whole thing as
Silent Hill taking the strong memory/emotion Cheryl was processing in therapy, and spitting out a Harry doppelganger who proceeds to act as the on in Cheryl's memory would. So everything in the game, to one extent or another, actually happened.

I don't know that it totally hangs together, but I like it because it covers certain things that don't necessarily make total sense otherwise.
Lisa, for example, might not actually have any significant historical meaning for Cheryl herself. She could just be some poor nurse caught up in modern-day SH mania, who runs into the manufactured Harry. Dahlia in the apartment might be the real Dahlia, hence the actual reference to Cheryl's real location, while teenage Dahlia is some sort of mental image Cheryl has of how her mom might have been earlier on; mom being the "bad girl" makes sense if Cheryl's blamed her all along for dad's drinking/sleeping around/the divorce/whatever. The whole thing with Michelle/John might have actually happened; etc. It also adds an aspect to the "no creepyness outside of nightmare world", since Harry himself is a creepyness construct. He's a semi-crazed dead guy wandering around with dead-set determination to find someone who hasn't existed in 18 years;he only really gets messed with when Cheryl's emotional panic pushes him into nightmare world to stop him from realizing the truth.
This could all be painfully obvious or painfully stupid, but it 's made the whole thing more interesting for me.
 

somedevil

Member
Just beat for the first time. I enjoyed it the game. I played silent hill 2 and 3 and I enjoyed this game. Its not silent hill 2 but its a good addition to the series.

The only flaw was they could made the phone calls a bit scarier. Also saw the ufo ending it was amazing.
 

Luigiv

Member
Hmm, I'm watching the Giant Bomb quick look for this game and I've noticed in the opening cutscene that
Cheryl was not even in the car
. Does this observation, in any way, tie into the twist?
 

Oyashiro

Member
So other than gameplay-wise, is SM vastly different from SH1? I'm just wondering because I've never actually played any other SH game (I saw my sister play through SH1 when I was like 11 or so, but I don't remember anything about it.) and I recently got a PSP... so I'm thinking about getting SH1. I'm also thinking about hunting down a copy of SH2 on the Xbox.
 

Ridley327

Member
It's a very different beast in all respects compared to SH1. The only thing they really have in common is the initial setup and character names.
 
Ive played about 30 minutes or so and Im really loving it so far. Opening doors with full control is such a huge breath of fresh air, and also a bit of a frightening one. There is a very eerie feeling about cracking open a door and taking a peak, as it really connects to you more than most mechanics in gaming. Only real complaint I have at the moment has to do with the movement of the main character on the screen. It isn't terrible or anything, but he seems a bit disconnected at times. During certain movements and angles, he appears to have the "sliding" characteristic of fps characters as he moves, just not nearly as bad.

This is definitely worth the price of admission from the bit that Ive played.
 
abstract alien said:
Ive played about 30 minutes or so and Im really loving it so far. Opening doors with full control is such a huge breath of fresh air

Do not highlight this if you haven't beaten the game:

This is something else that frustrated me and felt like lost potential. Why allow that function, and like everything else in the game, not do anything with it? When I heard about this back at E3 I was like wow there's so much room for possibility with that door opening function, but you can go through the entire game without doing it and it doesn't make a difference and they don't have a single room you can enter in the game that you should enter slowly like that; there's nothing interesting or scary they did with that element.
 

kaskade

Member
The Giant Bomb QL surprised me. I never really had an interest in horror games at all but this looks like a lot of fun. Good use of the Wii.
 

mollipen

Member
abstract alien said:
Ive played about 30 minutes or so and Im really loving it so far. Opening doors with full control is such a huge breath of fresh air, and also a bit of a frightening one. There is a very eerie feeling about cracking open a door and taking a peak, as it really connects to you more than most mechanics in gaming.

Of course, the problem is, that awesome little piece of game design then never, ever matters.

Think about that mechanic in, say, Silent Hill 2 instead, where you slowly crack a door open only to see Pyramid Head brutalizing some poor creature.
 
shidoshi said:
Of course, the problem is, that awesome little piece of game design then never, ever matters.

Yeah that's what I said. Very disappointing. I mean, they give us the option to do this, and they take the time to implement it, yet, it leads to nothing.
 
Is it weird that I kind of wish there were no creatures/monsters in this game?

I haven't gotten it yet but the chase/nightmare sequences seem the least interesting to me; whereas just wandering around a creepy dark world seems awesome.
 
shidoshi said:
Of course, the problem is, that awesome little piece of game design then never, ever matters.

Think about that mechanic in, say, Silent Hill 2 instead, where you slowly crack a door open only to see Pyramid Head brutalizing some poor creature.
Damn, you just spoiled it, now I wont have any tension what so ever :^/ I was never scared in silent hill 2 anyway, so this feature wouldn't help me much there. Now in SH 3....oh hell yeah.
 
shidoshi said:
Of course, the problem is, that awesome little piece of game design then never, ever matters.
Tons of missed opportunities in this game. The biggest, I feel, is that the lack of combat was utilized so haphazardly, rather than creating an oh-shit-better-turn-out-your-flashlight-and-creep kind of stealth gameplay.
It was also cool that you could walk up to things and read them; the problem was that everything looked like crap. The
"Married in Hawaii"
picture, aside from being part of one of the dumbest puzzles, looked ridiculous, like nothing anyone would have on display in their office.
The usage of the Wiimote speaker was excellent, but could have been so much more, were there enemies in the overworld.
The drawing on the map feature was an awesome and welcome idea, but COMPLETELY superfluous, considering the game was linear to the point of blocking off previous areas, and the solution to every puzzle was never more than a few steps away.

DevelopmentArrested said:
Is it weird that I kind of wish there were no creatures/monsters in this game?

Absolutely. For a similar experience, walk around your neighborhood...in the EVENING!
 

RedSwirl

Junior Member
Just finished it once and I actually think it's one of the better stories in the Silent Hill series if for no other reason than the fact that they left behind all the cult shit. I'll probably go for at least one more ending or turn of events just to revisit the intrigue knowing what it leads up to now.

The one misstep this game made was separating the horror from the rest of the game. They bet it all on the chase sequences which didn't really work out. They would've done better if one: they had more creepy environments in the normal world and two: if they had more otherworld sequences like the middle one where you're forced to explore the environment with enemies present.

Despite kinda failing as a horror game though, Shattered Memories still succeeds as a good adventure game with psycho horror elements.
 

Miburou

Member
Heh, I forgot about that feature. The first time I tried to open a door it said I can do it via a motion with the remote or just by holding A, and I did the latter and since opening a door slowly never really came in useful, I forgot about that feature.

Regarding the length of the game, I usually take longer than most people on my first play through, since I like to explore every part of the game, and even backtrack sometimes (like if I end up taking the correct path on my first try, I go back and check the other paths), and SM took me longer to finish than SH1 or Origins, about the same time as SH3 and Homecoming, and a bit less than SH2 and SH4 (which had a lot of backtracking and walking).
But I think SM feels shorter because it has less memorable places and moments than the other games and you don't really spend much time in any one place to feel like you've explored it. Combat, fetch quests keys that are more than a couple of feet away from their locks makes it feel like you've spent more time in a given location than just going straight through it.

By the way, I think it's a nice touch that the battery level indicator on your cellphone mirror's that of the Wii remote.
 
DevelopmentArrested said:
Is it weird that I kind of wish there were no creatures/monsters in this game?

I haven't gotten it yet but the chase/nightmare sequences seem the least interesting to me; whereas just wandering around a creepy dark world seems awesome.
I enjoyed Haunting Ground for lack of enemies as well.
 

mollipen

Member
abstract alien said:
Damn, you just spoiled it, now I wont have any tension what so ever :^/ I was never scared in silent hill 2 anyway, so this feature wouldn't help me much there. Now in SH 3....oh hell yeah.

Not sure if you were joking or not, but really, there's NOTHING spoiler about that. It's been stated a hundred times already that there is nothing threatening in "snowy" Silent Hill, and it's also been stated many times that "stealth" in the nightmare portions is pretty much non-existant.
 
shidoshi said:
Not sure if you were joking or not, but really, there's NOTHING spoiler about that. It's been stated a hundred times already that there is nothing threatening in "snowy" Silent Hill, and it's also been stated many times that "stealth" in the nightmare portions is pretty much non-existant.
I did a complete black out of this game, so it probably was and I just didnt know about it, as didnt watch or read anything outside of the very first gameplay video shown. Hell, I didn't even know that there were "chase" sequences, or that the menu was done on the cellphone :lol I did know about the profiling system though, but thats about it.
 

ArjanN

Member
shidoshi said:
Not sure if you were joking or not, but really, there's NOTHING spoiler about that. It's been stated a hundred times already that there is nothing threatening in "snowy" Silent Hill, and it's also been stated many times that "stealth" in the nightmare portions is pretty much non-existant.

In a way that's actually the biggest possible spoiler for Silent Hill really.

It was the same with Silent Hill 2: if you knew beforehand there was pretty much never going to be a jump scare you'd stop anticipating one and a lot of the atsmosphere would be ruined.

As long as you don't know for certain there's never going to be a "monster in the safe room" type situation, it will still be kind of scary.


Just watched the Giant Bomb quicklook and this looks about 100 times more appealing than the last couple of Silent Hill games.
 
RedSwirl said:
Just finished it once and I actually think it's one of the better stories in the Silent Hill series if for no other reason than the fact that they left behind all the cult shit.
The problem with removing ties to the cult is that Silent Hill has now become
nothing more than a regular place. In the other titles, it was a cursed entity that preyed upon a person's weaknesses, and manifested them into horrific situations. In Shattered Memories, it's the opposite, with Cheryl warping the town within her mind. Cool twist, but it totally invalidates the significance of Silent Hill, as it could have basically been any city.
I think Silent Hill 2 did the best job managing the cult, by dealing indirectly with it through historical documents and references within levels.
 

Combichristoffersen

Combovers don't work when there is no hair
RedSwirl said:
Just finished it once and I actually think it's one of the better stories in the Silent Hill series if for no other reason than the fact that they left behind all the cult shit.

The 'cult shit' was what originally made me interested in the SH series, so seeing it being taken out makes me a sad panda. Without it, the series becomes not much more than any other standard survival horror game. That said, I'll wait to pass judgement on this until I get to play it. Think I'll buy the PS2 version when it's out here in February or so.
 

John Harker

Definitely doesn't make things up as he goes along.
Damn, just wanted to restate how good looking this game is. This is easily at the top tier of graphics for the system.

I just had my first monster grab me as I was walking through the door. That certainly was unexpected haha. I was trying to open it slowly and BOOM! It leaned through the door and jumped on my, I had to slam the door shut and turn around and run the other way :lol
 

John Harker

Definitely doesn't make things up as he goes along.
That slow walk scene after the high school to the club was mesmerizing, damn. It's such a shame Konami balked and decided not to promote this. I really hope it sells more than 211k units LTD at least :(

Does she change how she looks at all, in my game she's a blonde with her hair up wearing a pink dress
 

Erebus

Member
After watching GiantBomb QL, I noticed that when you're into the icy "evil" form of the town, there are these blue outlines around doors or on the top of walls that seem to indicate what your next step should be. Is this something that appears only at the beginning of SM or is it always present in the game like Runner's Vision in Mirror's Edge?
 

Jocchan

Ὁ μεμβερος -ου
DarkUSS said:
After watching GiantBomb QL, I noticed that when you're into the icy "evil" form of the town, there are these blue outlines around doors or on the top of walls that seem to indicate what your next step should be. Is this something that appears only at the beginning of SM or is it always present in the game like Runner's Vision in Mirror's Edge?
I think it's like the Runner's Vision.
 

iammeiam

Member
DarkUSS said:
After watching GiantBomb QL, I noticed that when you're into the icy "evil" form of the town, there are these blue outlines around doors or on the top of walls that seem to indicate what your next step should be. Is this something that appears only at the beginning of SM or is it always present in the game like Runner's Vision in Mirror's Edge?

Always there in Nightmare Mode, but they don't represent the best path to take, just possible exits. Because Nightmare World is so dark, and because you may turn off the flashlight to attract a little less attention, they're basically there to give you an idea if what to run towards. Basically every door and ledge/fence you can use is highlighted in blue, regardless of whether or not it leads anywhere worth going.
 

John Harker

Definitely doesn't make things up as he goes along.
brandonh83 said:
Michelle? Yeah, she changes.

What were some of the other models for her?

btw, where do all those Moments go after you find them?
Haven't seen a way to look at them after they've been stored
 

Erebus

Member
iammeiam said:
Always there in Nightmare Mode, but they don't represent the best path to take, just possible exits. Because Nightmare World is so dark, and because you may turn off the flashlight to attract a little less attention, they're basically there to give you an idea if what to run towards. Basically every door and ledge/fence you can use is highlighted in blue, regardless of whether or not it leads anywhere worth going.
Thanks for the clarification.

I was afraid that they would always indicate the right path to follow but that would definitely suck in a game like Silent Hill.
 

RedSwirl

Junior Member
ace harding: private eye said:
The problem with removing ties to the cult is that Silent Hill has now become
nothing more than a regular place. In the other titles, it was a cursed entity that preyed upon a person's weaknesses, and manifested them into horrific situations.
I think Silent Hill 2 did the best job managing the cult, by dealing indirectly with it through historical documents and references within levels.

The problem with the cult storyline in my opinion is that it tries to be too exploitative of why Silent Hill is the way it is. All we need to know is that Silent Hill itself is a screwed up town for reasons we can't fully understand.

I'll agree that SH2 probably had the perfect balance by mentioning the fact that the town was creepy without ever actually going into why. Shattered Memories would've done well with even just a single mention of the fact that this town is special.
 

John Harker

Definitely doesn't make things up as he goes along.
do you find out the combination to the safe in the toy store in the toy store itself? im havin trouble openin it
 

Ridley327

Member
John Harker said:
do you find out the combination to the safe in the toy store in the toy store itself? im havin trouble openin it

This one was fun to figure out; the safe itself is just one click away from opening. Turn the dial until you hear a click and try the handle. There's a couple of different numbers that it can be, so make sure to keep twisting the dial until you get one that works.
 

hellclerk

Everything is tsundere to me
John Harker said:
do you find out the combination to the safe in the toy store in the toy store itself? im havin trouble openin it
Just play around with the position of the knob until you can open it. Clicks help. Just so you know though, there's no key in there.
 

John Harker

Definitely doesn't make things up as he goes along.
ahh thanks gents. I way over thought it. I heard
the click and thought it was just 1 of 3 i needed to do so I kept playing around it. I also called the Toy Recall line thinking that number was a hint and kept trying to really specifically place the digits to the ones in the recall phone number that was given out :lol
 
Top Bottom