Format: Wii
Developer: Climax Group
Publisher: Konami
Released: 5 March 2010
Score: 9/10
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Silent Hill: Shattered Memories
As Heavy Rain creator David Cage suggests that his forthcoming PS3 crime drama Heavy Rain “is not a video game anymore” and titles like Tale of Tales’ PC curio The Path push at the boundaries of what exactly defines a video game, expect player agency to be one of gaming’s hot topics this year. While some developers opt for a very reductive approach - one where the ultimate focus is on gameplay above anything else - other teams craft titles where the experience is more important than control or structure.
Silent Hill: Shattered Memories falls very much under the latter umbrella, likely being one of the most unconventional video game experiences you’ll have all year. Though Konami might like to pretend that this is a remake of the original game, only a few names and the eponymous hamlet remain the same. The rest is quite thrillingly different.
The player controls Harry Mason, stumbling out of the wreckage of his crashed car to search for his missing seven-year-old daughter in the eerily empty, snow-swept Silent Hill. The game adopts a third-person perspective akin to Resident Evil 4, as the player guides Harry with the nunchuk controller and his torch with the Wii remote. Context-sensitive actions are performed with the A button, whether it be climbing wire-mesh fences or vainly yelling Cheryl’s name into the squalls of snow and the pitch-black shadows of the dilapidated, abandoned buildings Harry explores.
The Z button sends Harry into a light jog, though most players will want to slow down and take in all they can of the detailed, disturbing locations, as glimpses of apparitions and the hiss of static crackling through the remote’s speaker ratchet up the tension. Though there’s a sense of creeping dread each time a door is nudged open into a new room or corridor, the intuitive controls make Silent Hill less of a chore to explore than in previous games - that run command easing the mild pain of admittedly infrequent backtracking.
In a further attempt to unnerve, the game’s locations change based on feedback given in therapy session interludes, where a psychiatrist aggressively asks rather probing personal questions of the player. Upon ignoring the ‘biology’ and ‘religious studies’ options when picking the ideal school day timetable, I found myself in a classroom surrounded by dissected frogs, with the blackboard bearing the legend “VIVISECTION = RESURRECTION”. A second playthrough emphasises just how significant player responses affect the experience, with new locations and different puzzles to solve.
A short while into proceedings, Harry obtains a phone, which adds some variety to his seemingly ineffectual investigations. There’s a handy map feature (which you can scribble notes on with the remote), which helps with pathfinding when a dead end is reached, and it can also be used to take photos and – naturally – make calls. As you progress, you’ll start receiving incoming calls and voicemails from the few characters you encounter, while the camera feature is used to reveal hidden messages; curiously static apparitions which transfer disturbing messages to Harry’s phone. These can be listened to via the remote’s speaker, and provide some welcome background detail into the town and its inhabitants. Phone numbers found on posters can be called, often just for flavour, but occasionally used to solve puzzles. While most of the game’s brainteasers are fairly simple, requiring little more than item manipulation, it’s refreshing to find someone making thoughtful use of the controllers’ motion-sensing capabilities.
At scripted moments, the exploratory sequences are rudely interrupted by a big freeze that makes the recent cold snap this country has suffered seem positively agreeable, as huge glaciers swallow buildings and cars whole. Screeching behind the ice are pale, scrawny, faceless monstrosities, who then chase Harry as he sprints through doors, vaulting walls and hurling obstacles into their path with a swipe of the nunchuk, or temporarily warding them off by lighting a conveniently discarded flare. The often circuitous routes to the way points during these sequences do too good a job at disorientating the player, while slowing down to check the map is simply not an option when you’re being tailed by these relentless pursuers, so invariably Harry will on occasion be caught. Initially, the motion controls don’t quite seem up to the job of throwing them off as they latch onto Harry’s shoulders and back, but you soon learn that powerful jerks of both controllers to the front or side work just fine. Finally, you’ll reach a safe room, and the slow-burn tension can start building all over again. While the sequences certainly help mix up the pace of the game, some will argue that by often wilfully pushing the player in the opposite direction to the waypoint, they’re a little too frustrating to be fun. Towards the end of the game, Climax remedies this somewhat by subtly introducing puzzle elements to the chases, with rooms looping until the player solves the riddle revealing the correct route.
By this stage, the relative normality of the early game has all but evaporated, as Harry’s journey gets progressively more hallucinatory and dreamlike, making it impossible to tell what’s real and what isn’t. Most memorably, this is manifested in a bravura first-person set-piece that even at this early stage of the year has to be one of the gaming highlights of 2010. Be warned that other reviews may well have spoiled the surprise: suffice to say it invokes a sense of genuine panic, and there’s a palpable sense of relief – in a good way – when it’s finally over.
It’s a brilliant moment that’s matched in quality terms by the game’s ending – where Climax brings all the plot threads together for a resolution that’s perhaps the least oblique and most affecting in a Silent Hill game to date, with a touching epilogue that even lends a significance to certain seemingly unimportant collectables. Meanwhile, the developer’s efforts in pushing the Wii shouldn't go unnoticed. The real-time shadows cast by torchlight do much to add to the game’s atmosphere, as does the near-invisible loading – one environment transitioning into another with only a brief hit to the frame-rate betraying the content being streamed through. Akira Yamaoka’s sparse and oddly beautiful score will likely induce plenty of goose bumps, while voice acting is strong, and character models well-animated.
That Shattered Memories represents such a departure for the series seems to have been a bone of contention with some US reviewers, who have complained that it doesn’t feel like a Silent Hill game. Perhaps Konami could have been braver and released it as brand new intellectual property, but the few strands of DNA it shares with its predecessors shouldn’t hold it back from the praise it undoubtedly deserves. Shattered Memories’ daring differences should be celebrated; it’s one of the most innovative and enjoyable survival horrors for many a year.
