Game Reviews

My first exposure to Konami's Silent Hill series of scare-fests was back in 1999, fresh off of a week-long bender of Resident Evil 2. Ready for even more malformed monsters and mutant crocodile menaces, I was somewhat surprised when I powered my Playstation on to find an incredibly different environment than RE2's Raccoon City. Instead of facing a horde of genetically altered flesh-eaters, I was met with twisting camera angles, hauntingly melodic background music, and faceless creepy crawlies straight out of Jacob's Ladder. Silent Hill's titular fog-infested locale was frightening in a much more psychological sense, creating a general sense of uneasiness and anxiousness that offered a nice change of pace from RE's conventional Romero-esque scare tactics.

The franchise hit a high point with the scarring Silent Hill 2, a journey through the psyche of a tortured widower that garnered both critical and commercial acclaim; after a relatively successful direct sequel to the original with Silent Hill 3, the franchise slowly headed back to obscurity with the remarkably dissimilar Silent Hill 4 (originally not even a Silent Hill title), then ran safely back towards the horror conventions it tried so hard to stray from with the American developed Silent Hill: Homecoming. Despite its masterfully frightening origins, the Silent Hill series fell victim to contrived and confusing plot twists, as well as several inherent gameplay issues such as unwieldy cameras and a slow, cerebral pace that proved too taxing for survival horror fans accustomed to Resident Evil's gut-wrenching pace.Luckily, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories returns to the game's glory days by re-imagining the first Silent Hill and combining it with a more psychological ploy that harkens back to the classic second installment; Harry Mason is still searching for his daughter in the barren villa of Silent Hill and as the game progresses, players slowly begin to unravel the mystery of the town and the man who haunts its snowy streets. But rather than being a direct remake, Shattered Memories has an interesting twist: the developers -- Climax Group, the promising minds behind 2007's handheld prequel, Silent Hill: Origins -- bills it as a game that "plays you as much as you play it.