To compliment Tim’s review of Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, I wanted to discuss some of the things that I saw differently.

While I share Tim’s enthusiasm for the game, there are elements of the gameplay and character monologues that I thought detracted from the experience as a whole. The “nightmare” sequences are some of the weakest parts of the game, especially given the getting lost scenarios and the fact that bringing up a map means you have to click the phone twice just to get back to the action. The game provides excellent checkpoints via the cellphone map, but the fact it takes a few seconds to exit out of that while the monsters are still chasing you just makes the experience frustrating. Combine that with awkward “shake off the monsters by flailing” controls and it dissolves the tension of the sequence. There are also a limited number of puzzles, and what are there seem a bit too simple and almost with no payoff.

This was a complicated puzzle. Find frog. Kill frog.

The nightmare scenes almost acted like interludes between what I was really interested in and served as a way to move your character large distances. Having played the game with my wife, it was the only part of the game where she handed me the controls having great difficulty finding her way and ultimately giving up on her own, solo playthrough.

Harry Mason is actually a very sympathetic character, as much as he acts like a reflection of your own personality to an exaggerated extent. The dialogue is delivered well and the character interactions are mostly believable if not a bit surreal. What is not believable is the juxtaposition between his genuine concern for his missing daughter and sometimes off putting observations about the world around him. Leering at objects will often lead to some snarky comment or quip which feels out of character and out of setting, even if it makes sense contextually. Having my Harry (the loving, lonely father) walk by a raunchy poster and go “Nice!” just after experiencing a terrifying hallucination is just weird. Combined with some parts in the game that, while a bit disturbing, end up feeling like spooky for spooky sake instead of actually adding to the story.

What a weird looking...wait. Is that me?

That said, the game does do something that no game I have played this year does: delivers a story from start to finish that is both malleable to the players choices and actually satisfying up to the end. There are a lot of abstractions, and the game will make you think sometimes “what if I had done it this way?” but most of the “ending” decisions that are being made are opaque enough that you are not constantly trying to go back to another save and do things differently. The game ends well no matter what you do. The story closes off in a way that makes sense and is actually a good story. Had I played it last year, it would be on my top of 2009 easily.

Silent Hill: Shattered Memories is developed by Climax Group and published by Konami. The game is available for Wii, PS2 and PSP (the latter two on January 19th) and rated Mature. Review based on copy rented and completed in approximately 10 hours.