Silent Hill: Shattered Memories -- Initial Impression.

This entry is a bit late as I've been messing around with Silent Hill: Shattered Dreams for a couple of days. This is the first Silent Hill game for the Wii and it has been published by Konami with development by Climax Studios. This is Climax's second trip into Silent Hill following the very play it safe Silent Hill: Origins for the PlayStation Portable. Shattered Memories however could be classified as anything but play it safe. Shattered Memories is a rather bold re-imagining of the original Silent Hill, and even that description seems to be stretching it. We've all seen games with warnings about extreme violence and gore. Shattered Memories is the first game I've seen with a psychology warning. A warning about how the game plays you as much as you play it. What this really amounts to is the game will unfold differently based on your choices and actions. So far from what I've seen the game is wholly original except for character names being used here and there. Harry, Cybil, Lisa, Dahlia and the like all show up in name, but they're so far removed from the originals in design and purpose that they might have been better served without the Silent Hill connections. I'm sure you've all heard about the other major bold design decision made by Climax, the removal of combat. There isn't any combat in the game. Instead of combat, we have chase sequences where you have to run a gauntlet to escape. The rest of the game features the standard exploration and puzzle elements. From the time I've spent with the game so far I can say it's an ugly game graphically. There isn't anything that comes off as good in that regard. The controls are functional for exploration and puzzle solving. They get in the way for the chase sequences. The story is slow going. There are definately some interesting moments here and there, but I need to see where it goes. I understand that horror is entirely subjective, but Shattered Memories hasn't even remotely approached being scary as of yet. I'm really hoping the story and the puzzles can pull this game out of the fire because I'm not sure the other aspects will save it at this point.