Silent Hill: Shattered Memories

First off I am a huge, huge, huge fan of all the Silent Hill games. They got me hooked since the 1999's release of the 1st Silent Hill on the original Playstation. I speak for a lot of other SH fans in saying that no one was quite sure on what this game would be like and what to make of it.

As you may know this is a Re imagining of the 1st game NOT a remake. The 1st Silent Hill was set in 1986 and SH Shattered Memories is present day and is very different in the fact that Harry Mason has a snazzy cell phone which I think works very well. You can try to contact Cheryl and pick up paranormal activity using your camera, plus you can save the game when ever you like using your phone instead of trying to find a save point.

This game is very different to all the other SH games in many ways.
For me it doesn't have the same feel as the others. However it does keep you tense through out which is great.

All combat has been removed. You cannot kill or even hurt the monsters in this game. However don't be put off by this because it helps to make it more realistic in the fact that this is a survival horror. I mean lets face it if this happened in real life, unless you were cornered you wouldn't confront these creatures with a steel pipe or wooden plank, you would simply RUN.

Also the fact that your actions during the game, as well as your answers to the Psychiatric tests all alter how the game pans out. It can change the way the characters look, act towards you and where about you meet them. This I feel is the best part of the game in the fact that the game watches your actions and changes itself to make it personal to you, it even changes the way the creatures look. Some of the questions get quite personal like your sex life or cheating on any partner you have had (which I proudly have not). I would strongly advise you to answer the questions as truthfully as you can for the first play through.

The only real problems I have with the game are its graphics. This should have been done on the PS3 like homecoming and not taken a step back onto the PS2. There are times where I feel like I am playing this game on the Wii or on an arcade machine. Also when you enter the Nightmare world it is not that different from the normal world. In the normal reality it is dark and snowing.

Instead of shifting to metal railings, flooring and a hellish looking environment (which I understand has been done too many times now) it shifts reality to the same look but the only difference being that everything is covered in ice as well as snow and that's it. So you don't really get the same "Oh Crap" feeling when it is changing.

What would have been good is your answers to the questions should have decided what the nightmare world looked like so it would be personal to your fears. That would have been interesting.

All in all this is still a very good game. If you are a fan of the Silent Hill series or any Horror series I would recommend it. But again I cannot stress it is very different to the other SH games. Don't let the changes put you off.

Hope this review has helped. Enjoy.

Being a hardcore fan of the series, I was a little worried about the new direction that they were going and all the "reimagining" thing, and I was expecting to be just an "OK" game. The way I saw it, they were just trying to make a few easy bucks taking advantage of the original masterpiece that was Silent Hill on PSX.
But I have to admit, after I started to play it, I just became hooked by the story and the psych feauture. All the diferent ways the game may take, depending on the players personality and psyche is really awesome.
By playing it on an PS2, you can clearely see that the game was made for the Wii and that the PS2 version was just a way to give a chance for those who dont own a Wii, but still the game has alot of potentional.
The chasing sequences can get a little confusing for some people, but after getting used to the games mechanics you'll get through those easily.
The puzzles are fun to do and sometimes quite challenging but not to the point of frustrating, where you just want to throw away the controller

Overall the game has an good story with a interesting ending. The gameplay is fluent and easy to get the hang of, soundtrack (by Akira Yamaoka) is also great. So, either if you're a newcomer or a fan of the series you should defenetly give this game a try.

Being a huge Silent Hill fan, I nearly tripped over myself trying to get hold of this. I bought it during a bit of a dry spell on the PS3, and I was excited to hear of a new game from my favourite franchise. If you are thinking of buying this and are expecting classic Silent Hill gameplay and graphics, you need to let go of that hope! If you think of this game as an interpretation of Silent Hill with graphics not much better than high end Playstation One games you might not be too disappointed. There are already some very good reviews on here so I will just go over what I liked/disliked about it.

How I decided on three stars:
There is the unique twist of the psychiatric evaluation. The game plays you as much as you play it and events and décor for want a better word differ depending on how you perform on tests and your general actions. The game seriously tries to mess with your head! That's one star.
There is actually a really good story here plus a little replay value which is another star.
Some good puzzles and interesting/spooky situations which take place in the usual types of location such as the Mall, creepy burger joints, a school, an amusement park etc. so that's another star.
A helpful, interactive PDA to use which gave a much needed boost to the rather threadbare gameplay and added a unique feature. Another star.

Oh wait, that's four stars! But I had to detract a star for the sheer ugliness of the graphics and the lack of monster walloping! No Silent Hill game is complete without the fun of smacking around monsters with a plank and this game is seriously lacking action! Other niggles are the lack of interactive inventory items/collectibles, and the things you do collect are for display purposes only. The graphics are truly ugly - and I mean ugly. You have to run away from enemies, and that happens when the world shifts from normal to butt ugly and turns into a supposedly icy environment, but it's nothing more than a bland, blue/grey blocky mess and then the uninspiring monsters come for you and all you can do is run from them until the world shifts back and it gets boring after a while.

Even with all its faults and lack of that special Silent Hill quality that even SH4 had, I did actually enjoy playing this dreamy, wishy washy effort and with better graphics (and we all know the PS2 is capable of generating them - just compare to older Silent Hill's on PS2)and beefier gameplay, it could have been a true, four star game and I did find it interesting enough. However after playing games such as Assassin's Creed 2 and Red Dead Redemption this pales into insignificance - but they are PS3 games and it's not really fair to compare them side by side. It is mostly down to my love of the franchise that I enjoyed it as much as I did. If you still haven't tried it yet it might be worthwhile if you like collecting Silent Hill games but don't expect to be blown away by it! It's more like playing a fragmented dream of Silent Hill rather than an actual Silent Hill game.