Silent Hill: Shattered Memories -- Final Opinion.

I have completed Silent Hill: Shattered Memories through three of its five endings. The game provides a major twist your first time through that actually provides some weight, and the story is stronger the second time through the game because of it. However the story doesn't really ever approach being good. It probably would have had there been no connections to Silent Hill, however flimsy. In fact, the whole of the game is pretty much just messing with the Silent Hill fan, playing off their experiences and expectations. Normally that can be great, and it's even been used within the Silent Hill series. Just see the opening sequences of Silent Hill 2 and it's long walk without combat for an example of playing against expectations effectively. Overall the story ultimately fails for me. I will say that Shattered Memories' UFO ending is well worth the effort though. The puzzles are another area in which Climax failed. There are only a handful of real puzzles in the game. They're too few and far between. Most of them aren't even puzzles. They're just finding the key to the door and they all involve the Wii Remote. Need to open the back door to a ranger station, just use the Wii Remote to open the first aid kit on the wall. A first aid kit that happens to have a glowing white arrow pointing down over it in case you didn't notice it in the fifteen square foot room. Everything in the game you can interact with has a glowing white arrow pointing to it. You can see them from a great distance away. So there isn't any exploration at all really. You're just walking from one telegraphed hotspot to the next. It's not like you could explore anyway. This version of Silent Hill is beyond linear. You're literally corralled through the entire game. I found this version of Silent Hill to be boring and ugly. I'm not talking about the graphic capabilities of the Wii here, I'm talking about the aesthetic design of the town. It is just so utterly devoid of anything of interest or note. It's so boring and plain as to be criminal. So you have very few real puzzles and no exploration at all through the supposed exploration segments. The chase sequences can't be summed up in one word. You need a few words. And those words are shitty. They are awful. They are hideous. They are an exercise in tedium. And the biggest offense is they aren't scary. They are as poorly handled as could be. Initially you're just running from point A to point B, occasionally picking up a flare to ward off the pursuing creature. Later you're running from point A to point B through a looping maze. You just run and avoid the creatures while picking paths until you find the right way through. It's made worse by crappy controls. Especially in the Wii Remote waggle needed to shake off the creatures. The control is just unresponsive and unpredictable. Every Silent Hill game in the series has been scary. The first three had this omnipresent sense of fear and dread. The other entries at least had their moments. Shattered Memories has nothing. I understand horror is highly subjective, but it was so bad that I didn't even get the sense they were even trying to scare me. I went through an entire game of Silent Hill without the slightest inkling of fear, or tension, or creepiness. And that in my opinion is criminal. As I stated in my initial impression the graphics for the game are awful. Nothing looks good. We're talking a step or two above House of the Dead levels, but without that game's charm. The voice work isn't awful, but it isn't exactly good either. It doesn't sound professional. It sounds like they are voiced by team members. The music is from Akira Yamaoka and is up to his usual Silent Hill standards. Although it's probably his most ambient score. It's very subdued. And as I've already mentioned, the story and puzzles failed. The chase sequences outright suck. I have a feeling this might be the final nail in the coffin of Silent Hill. And if this is what it's come to, then good riddance. I'm giving Silent Hill: Shattered Memories a 5.