Konami sent us over a new trailer for Silent Hill: Shattered Memories. You know the one, that remake of the really awesome survival horror game which has half of us in the office squirming and the other half just keeping their goddamn mouths shut. I'll leave it to you to decide what all that squirming is about because I'll be damned if I care enough to find out.
The trailer, which runs nearly three minutes in total, is like a music video. It's the kind of thing that a bored high school student would put together out of footage from a game or anime and some song that could have some loose thematic tie if you wanted to stretch the imagination. Yep, that's pretty much what we're looking at here.
If you still need to see more gameplay out of this game before making a decision, here it is. There's nothing to shock or surprise for people who've been paying attention and I can't see anybody changing their mind about it over this one.
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All the Silent Hill games after 4 just kind of lost their way. 4 wasn't great, but then 5 (or Homecoming...I guess) was stupid beyond reason. It was like a dumbed down premise of the original game with nothing new to add to survival horror games in general, let alone make me want to stay enticed with the cliched and borderline ridiculous plot. This just looks like more of the same nonsense.
I've been looking forward to this game coming out for sometime now, I would have liked to have cone around in october Halloween but so long as they have spent the time polishing it I'm sure it will be worth the wait
Can't wait for this. Silent Hill 1 and 2 are some of my fav games of all time. Whenever people start up the "Are video games art?" discussion, I just think of those 2 games--They prove that video games can be art. Finally, I can use my Wii for stuff other than VC releases and Tales of Monkey Island.
Imo this looks kinda lame. I think that the no weapon mechanic is nifty, but my main concern is that it will become agonizingly and painfully boring and irritating. I mean there needs to be some mechanic for destruction of enemy's otherwise it's basically running around trying to dodge and push away enemy's while looking for your daughter and collecting clues for 6 hours or so . .. BORING!
I'm not sure I like the emphasis on Lisa I'm seeing here. I dug her on her own just as a tragic denizen of the town, not as some potential beau of Harry's.
The point though is to make you feel powerless, and how better to do that than to give you no option but to run? The original version had fighting, but it was so clumsy and awkward that it pretty much accomplished the same goal. Doing so in this day and age would only make people unhappy.
Although a combat system with the Wii would automatically be clumsy and awkward anyway OH ZING.
The music and the creatures gangbanging Harry got tired real quick.
@Pixelated Lilac: I only liked Dahlia's hair in the illustration. The whole sexualized thing only seem to me less silly than the attempts at symbolic reading in that article. :P
The trailer is pretty cool, the music is crappy (at least the singing) but i like trailers like this that show what the gameplay is like and in large chunks. Like how you can put your shoulder into doors and run into them to get through quick, and the control of the flashlight looks solid.
the guys that latch onto Harry look kinda bland though
should be an interesting game, i loved the 1st silent hill
Wow...that showed all of one monster from the game.
I hope it's more interesting than that.
And the original Silent Hill theme better be in there somewhere!
That song was nowhere near as good.
If I let go of nostolgia and just look at it as a game...music worked for me. Not sure why.
But going back into nostolgia mode, original song was better because it was creepy.
Whatever. Nine times out of ten I turn the music off with games since most hit you over the head with it and play it way too loud compared to the rest of a game's volume. I like my Silent Hill silent, other than the sound effects.
No music, crackling radio, whispers and shuffling surrounding you but you can't see anyone...ah, that's the stuff.
There are ways to gimp the combat without removing it altogether or making it "clunky". Make it moderately effective for those "OMG PANIC" moments, but not effective for repeated long term use. This can be done by limiting ammo to a few very powerful rounds for a panic instakill and/or inflating resistance to bullets while being conservative with ammo caches. As for melee, make them... consumable. Make that bat break down or the axe snap in half after awhile.
Maybe not terrific ideas, but I don't design games for a living. I'm sure pros could come up with something. It sounds like they're just removing that element to focus on other ways to propel the player through the environments, but as thatguyukno said, it looks rather dull in its implementation.
While I don't like the combo of the two (video and song) the song actually fits perfectly with the rest of the silent hill games since they each have that same type of theme song and intro movie. So it's not anything to not be expected. Game looks amazing though. Can't wait to dust off the wii.
As far as combat, there isn't many games (at least of that genre) that remove it all together. Everyone is so use to picking up a gun and shooting something that they automatically think that this approach is gimmicky and boring. Only other survival horror game that I can think of that didn't focus on combat was Clock Tower. Meh, maybe it will suck, but I'd feel foolish to write it off because its not norm.
@Pixelated Lilac: Oh snap, thats Dahlia!? I was wondering who that girl was that looked a lot like Heather. But I guess I'm not surprised considering thats her mother. She doesn't give off that creepy vibe she did in the first game when she looks like that.
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Contest:
4:40 PM on 12.02.2009
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The point though is to make you feel powerless, and how better to do that than to give you no option but to run? The original version had fighting, but it was so clumsy and awkward that it pretty much accomplished the same goal. Doing so in this day and age would only make people unhappy.
Although a combat system with the Wii would automatically be clumsy and awkward anyway OH ZING.
Really though this looks good.
@Pixelated Lilac: I only liked Dahlia's hair in the illustration. The whole sexualized thing only seem to me less silly than the attempts at symbolic reading in that article. :P
the guys that latch onto Harry look kinda bland though
should be an interesting game, i loved the 1st silent hill
I hope it's more interesting than that.
And the original Silent Hill theme better be in there somewhere!
That song was nowhere near as good.
But going back into nostolgia mode, original song was better because it was creepy.
Whatever. Nine times out of ten I turn the music off with games since most hit you over the head with it and play it way too loud compared to the rest of a game's volume. I like my Silent Hill silent, other than the sound effects.
No music, crackling radio, whispers and shuffling surrounding you but you can't see anyone...ah, that's the stuff.
There are ways to gimp the combat without removing it altogether or making it "clunky". Make it moderately effective for those "OMG PANIC" moments, but not effective for repeated long term use. This can be done by limiting ammo to a few very powerful rounds for a panic instakill and/or inflating resistance to bullets while being conservative with ammo caches. As for melee, make them... consumable. Make that bat break down or the axe snap in half after awhile.
Maybe not terrific ideas, but I don't design games for a living. I'm sure pros could come up with something. It sounds like they're just removing that element to focus on other ways to propel the player through the environments, but as thatguyukno said, it looks rather dull in its implementation.
@Pixelated Lilac: Oh snap, thats Dahlia!? I was wondering who that girl was that looked a lot like Heather. But I guess I'm not surprised considering thats her mother. She doesn't give off that creepy vibe she did in the first game when she looks like that.