Welcome to Silent Hill. The Welcome Center is located at the next exit. Oh wait, that road just ends and casts you off into a firey pit of oblivion. NEVERMIND.
So last weekend, we here at Ms. Game and Watch had the...experience...of playing through Silent Hill: Homecoming. I'd like to just present a few (hopefully) non-spoilerish things about the game. LT is here, offering her own insights as well. Her comments are in green.
-Silent Hill has finally gotten another POC. Did it really have to take putting this game into the hands of an American developer to get a black man in Silent Hill? Guess so. You're right. For a game series that clearly takes place in somewhat-present America, colored folks were conspicuously missing in this series. However, I would posit that out of all survival horror games you can think of, how many franchises can boast multiple plots inextricably tied to themes of motherhood and feminine protective forces (i.e. the town's "God" and that whole ball of crazy).
-Without giving too much away, I'll say that the bosses were a disappointment. If you don't read up on the boss analysis online or become a meticulous clue-hunter in the game it will be really hard for you to see the connections between the bosses and the things they are supposed to represent-- and even then some things about the bosses will still just not make sense. In some cases it seemed the developers were going for "what looks cool" or "WWSD (What would Saw do?)". I agree, the bosses looked "cool" but fed into my main criticism of this game, and that is relying too much on a 'monster hunter' angle (rargh! rust, dried blood and pointy shear-things!) instead of the deliciously addictive eerieness (why is there no sound? who keeps leaving these pages from a diary? why is that doll sitting on the steps with its hands fol--) that pervades the best survival horror games and --for me-- the best horror films.
-Silent Hill: Homecoming has too many characters. I'm not saying that the cast can't expand, but the game has to expand to fit the cast. How many characters have there been in the previous installments? Usually the cast is kept small for a reason. SH:H just can't accommodate the cast that it has--about double that of the usual number in Silent Hill titles and the game is only 8-9 hours long. If you haven't played it yet, expect to be confused at some points and uninformed at most points. The supporting characters tend to be a let down. You will learn more about the supporting characters from the manual in the game case than you will from the game itself. It was kind of like a creepier version of "Our Town", except with more murder and occult activity.
-This game is not scary. At the very least it is not scary in the same way as other Silent Hill titles. At all. I actually think that it lost some of the aesthetic in the transfer to an American Developer. And again, I'd like to rehash what I said earlier about what really scares us--what can make a game 'pull it off' well: everyone's different and is scared by different things but there will always be those most primal of fears that exists in all of us. Until now, I've thought the series did a sometimes so-so and sometimes spectacular job of toeing the line-- of putting a player inside the game. That is to say, few have experienced the shame and self-hatred of spousal murder and certainly very few of us know what it's like to be the "good" half of a particularly unlucky girl with a crazy mother, drawn back to an evil place for evil purposes. I'll even argue the game doesn't want to bring you right there, at the line. The game wants to pull you in like an invisible hand but drop you at the very edge of where you as a player end and where the mindset and emotions of the protagonist begin. And there you are, with a letter from a dead (maybe she isn't?) wife in a depressing town or on the rooftop fighting something that doesn't even look human, under the control of who you think is just an evil bitch with no eyebrows, your father's corpse still bleeding on your bed, since you didn't have the time to bury him properly. I'll ask: is it really so unfair to compare Homecoming to games past? Partially yes, partially no. Silent Hill 3 shouldn't have been compared to Silent Hill 2; Silent Hill 4 shouldn't be compared to any other game since blah blah blah. It's part of a franchise, Konami signed off on it and considers it canon. Of course I'll compare it to its predecessors. On the other hand, so many things changed when developers changed that it borders on an Apples/Oranges comparison, in which case it's best to quarantine this game and rate it as its own island of a game. What to do, what to do. I'll try to do both, but when I do, I can't help but feel like A) I'm lying to myself and B) There really was something lost in the change of hands.
-The transformation effects are awesome and I'm glad that they carried over the transformation styles from the movie.
-Pyramid Head looks fantastic! However, PH wasn't utilized very well in the main game. Agreed, and this was one of the most disappointing things in the game. This is also a move that I promised myself I wouldn't compare to the "orginial" apperance, that of SH2. I had read comments on forums saying things like 'don't worry there's a reason for PH to be in this game and it fits' so I contented myself with knowing the designers and writers would not stray too far in PH's role, appearance or meaning. That being said, I wish now for a "new" Pyramid Head that isn't Pyramid Head. It's hard to wish for abstracts to materialize in games, I know but the original reaction we all had to PH in the game... that's something that can be re-created, folks! Whatever he symbolizes, whatever he did and whatever was controlling him... this can be replicated! I'm not saying it's as easy a formula as pulling one of humanity's more negative emotions and personifying it in a weird-looking mask with a humanoid appearance but that same response is something I think is an endless, blank book. Pyramid Head is the first page.
-The plot was safe. It was solid enough to make sense, but not solid enough to be satisfying to the die hard fans of Silent Hill. There isn't much there to analyze and what is there to analyze doesn't take much thought or research (and some of it will never make sense no matter how much you try). The first three games have much more interesting things going on, but SH:H will slightly satiate SH fans. It's like a SH snack. It's like a SH fruit roll-up instead of an SH submarine sandwich (with all its yummy layers, smothered in secret sauces, and pressed between two slices of pure mindfuck). This was like Silent Hill Bros. canned coffee, compared to the unique and not-for-everyone tastes of earlier Silent Hill Premium Roasted Spewing Twitching Blood in a Cup. It did the job, but wasn't as engaging and left a huge something-to-be-desired taste in the mouth. I despise number ratings, except for things like olympic events and earthquakes. Letter grades are the way to go, and I give this game a B. It didn't outright suck, but it didn't dazzle like I was hoping it would.
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Uh. That's all I have for now. I might come back with some boss analysis or some plot questions later. Chao. Goodnight my droogs. Sorry this wasn't the HORRORshow you were all after!
4 comments:
Having not finished the game yet, I still agree with a lot of what you're saying, but despite its shortcomings I think that this game is a step in a better direction after the mediocrity that was Silent Hill 4: The Room.
So far I have to argue that the game, while overall not as scary as, say, Silent Hill 2 (which took creepy foreboding to a whole new level), still managed to give me the creepy-crawlies more than once. I may just be more sensitive or something.
I think that it's too easy for us to keep comparing subsequent games to Silent Hill 2, though, which many consider the pinnacle of the series so far. It might be time to take them more on their own merits and see where they're going with it.
How were the controls? Having only played the second one for a couple hours I can say they were horrid. Did the American developers fix this? I think crappy controls are a huge barrier to immersion. They should be intuitive and effective, not cumbersome or confusing.
Also, can you speak to the game's move to a fully 3D environment. How does this impact the game?
Finally, from my observations the other day I concluded that I would like to see the next silent hill borrow from 3rd-person over the shoulder games like Gears of War. Say what you will about GoW's story and stereotypes but it has nailed controls and camera angles.
The controls were vastly improved in SH:H compared to past games, but some parts of the controls were troublesome. Overall, combat was much improved and movement was a good variation on 3D controls which, as a person who prefers 2D, wasn't too hard to get used to.
The worst parts of the controls were probably item management and shooting. The crosshair has to be manually controlled, though I would have liked to see this be something you could switch to semi-automatic if need be for those Silent Hill fans who aren't terribly used to controlling a gun in an FPS/over-the-shoulder interface.
Item management was a pain- the menu allows you to highlight items/weapons appearing on a wheel by moving the left joystick in the direction of the desired item/weapon. The problem arises when you exit out of the menu because any item/weapon you have highlighted when closing the menu becomes used/equipped (leads me to wonder why they bother having a use/equip button, then). This lead to the use of health items which weren't intended to be used- especially troublesome when in a part of the game which has low health items. I don't know why testers didn't catch this or think it was a bad idea.
The fully 3D environment was extremely cool and I'm glad the series has been able to move away from fixed camera angles with such success. However, some will be more successful at controlling the camera than others :-p It's great to finally be able to examine things in the environment at will, but I think it slightly detracts from the ability to focus on certain key things in the environment- when the camera was fixed you had a better idea of what you should be looking at or, rather, what the creators wanted you to look at. It brings more realism to the game at the expense of story-building when you no longer can focus the gamers' attention toward particular places, items, notes, etc. like you could with a fixed camera.
It has been frustrating to see the silent hill series follow the example set by the first game, as opposed to it's sequel.
Silent Hill 2 was such an evokative and compelling game because it didn't focus or explain on the town itself. The town served as a malevolent canvas for the mystery of Peter Sutherland's personal tragedy to unfold. Aside from the mention of some cultists, the causes of the thing that Silent Hill is are never really explored.
1 and 3 are effective games that continue to define the atmosphere of the setting, and have good stories, but lack the evocative, personal emotional punch that the second game had.
Ever entry in the series after that was something of a dissapointment. They felt more like valiant attempts to capitalize on once achived brilliance than successful recreations of it.
I'm not bashing Konami too hard on this, but they have lost something of what made the series special to begin with. Silent Hill isn't a special place because of dark gods, sacrifices and hospital beds. It is special because it turns an inanimate thing, a town, a set of buildings seperated by roads, a hospital, a shcool, and gives it a life, a manevolent personality that was such an effective and frightening antagonist that it rivaled the emotional impact of SHODAN.
I hope the series finds it's way again, like Peter slowly finding his way back through the town that was so special for him and Mary.
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