Silent Hill: Shattered Memories released on December 8, 2009 for the Nintendo Wii and I'm just now getting around to playing it. But since the day it came out I've been interested in the concept: a complete revitalizing of the franchise by going back to the beginning, stripping away all the excess, and borrowing concepts from the surprisingly good feature film, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories looked like a winner. Or at least a Silent Hill game that looked decent, and we haven't been able to say that since 2001's Silent Hill 2.
Silent Hill: Shattered Memories retells the story of the original Silent Hill game with Harry Mason searching for his daughter, Cheryl, in the eerie ghost town of Silent Hill. Now details are fuzzy, as I played that original so many years ago, but if memory serves me right Shattered Memories takes the simple setup of the original title and runs with it, weaving its own take on the events of that story. Therefore, don't feel like you can skip out on this one because you played the original. You'll be doing a huge disservice to Climax Group's work on the title.
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The first major difference between Shattered Memories and previous Silent Hill titles is that when shit goes down, you can't really defend yourself with pipes or guns. The only option in Shattered Memories is to run like hell to escape the nightmare. And this makes sense, Harry Mason is no cop or the likes, he's just a dad looking for his daughter. So when Silent Hill gets "infected" by Old Man Winter and begins to frost over, signaling little naked ghouls to begin pouring out of the wood-work, you better be ready to hold down that "Z" button to sprint.
Now while the idea of these "run like hell" sequences is admirable, as they definitely succeed in getting the adrenaline pumping and scaring the piss out of you, they also get old and tedious rather quickly. One reason for this is your lack of directions to the exit. How the game signals the player to the sequence's end is by doorways with a dark blue tint around the door frame which works well enough until there are multiple paths available to take. Couple that with the fact that bringing up your GPS on your phone leaves you completely open to attacks and, in all honesty, is a dumb thing to try when you're being chased by little naked gremlins and these sequences become a literal nightmare to navigate. So therefore, what ends up happening is I get turned around in a maze of blue tinted doorways and have no idea which way was the right direction out of the nightmare which usually ends in the little demons butt-humping my corpse.
But luckily, these chase sequences are but a small part of what Silent Hill: Shattered Memories has to offer. The majority of the game takes place in a quiet, desolate town where your goal is to figure out what happened to your daughter and learn the secret history of Silent Hill through text messages and voicemails you pick up along the way. And these parts were fantastic for two reasons.
Firstly, Shattered Memories makes great use of the Wii-mote which simulates Henry's lone tool in this operation - his flashlight. With the flashlight you're able to do, well, flashlight-y things, but luckily for you, Silent Hill is a very rundown town with almost not power coursing through it. Therefore, you get a lot of use out of the flashlight. Couple that with the fact that the shadowing in this game is phenomenal and really pushes the Wii to its limits and you got one killer gimmick. And I know what you're thinking, "that can't be very far, it's a Wii," but I'm telling you, at times Shattered Memories can be confused for a Xbox 360 or PS3 title. It makes that good of use of the Wii's shading tech.
Secondly, for the first time ever, the puzzles of a Silent Hill game actually make contextual sense. No longer are you on a wild goose chase for the lockshop key, only to stumble upon it six hours later while randomly searching a pew at the town church. Shattered Memories' puzzles might be tricky at times, but once you figure them out you'll be slapping your forehead for not having solved them sooner. The puzzles also make for a cool use of the Wii-mote, having you perform literal actions like pulling off a lock from a cabinet and swinging the doors open to get inside, for example. It's just a great way to pull the player into the experience, making you feel like their living the experience.
Overall, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories is a definite improvement over the last few Silent Hill offerings. It might not be perfect, but it's a fantastic new foundation for this limping franchise that can only be improved upon. Essentially, Shattered Memories is just what this series needed, a kick in the pants to remind it of its once former glory.
