[Dracko]

It's ambitious as all Hell and I'm both worried and excited by how well they can pull it off. In any case, it could be the freshest reimagining of the Silent Hill franchise since The Room, and going by the encounter events shown, could also mean a lot of great things for the survival horror genre.

Those events are shown about seven minutes in: The town warps dynamically and your only option is to outrun your enemies, without letting them catch you and pile you down. There is no way of combating them at all.



The psychological profiling aspect of the game is another intriguing take, but it's going to be tough as Hell to make sure it's subtle without becoming frustratingly so. I wonder if they actually had a shrink on hand.

[sharc]

is it pointlessly cynical of me to think that showing the town's transition in the first ten minutes is laying all your cards out way too early?

i'm equal parts excited and apprehensive about this. in some ways it looks so intuitive; the car alarm that points you to the exit in that one area after the diner out is a nice bit of level design, and using the faux iphone (ifauxn?) for all the menu stuff is just neat as hell. but then you get stuff like the monsters being introduced in a cutscene (didn't see it in this video, but that's how the e3 playthrough went) and your first in-game encounter with them pausing for a text box popup. dunno what to make of it yet.

[glossolalia]

yeah the helpful hints box! that pops up at the first enemy encounter is awful, and the morphing with the ice motif just looks cheesy to me there, but the controls are cool and i'm really interested to see how the psychological profiling plays into it.

[zombieman000]

[glossolalia]

you know what's scarier than ice or rust? LAVA

[Dracko]

Scaling over walls is pretty subversive of typical survival-horror tropes imho and I hope that was deliberate.

[analogos]

I'm not quite convinced they've got the presentation/delivery down, though it's partly based on small things that might only linger really early on in the game. Or they could just be in the demo.

Still.

The "Psychology Warning" before the title screen is really tacky, first off.

I think placing you in this chair in first person and sitting a psychiatrist in front of you just to have you interact with a menu really misses an opportunity. It gives way too distinct a feeling of just manipulating the game's mechanics (switching flags on and off), for one thing. It kind of contradicts the immersion they're trying to convince us the scene is for in the first place. Also, I'm not sure it's to anyone's benefit to take exactly the sort of criteria on which the game plans on basing its judgments of the player and throwing them in their face right off the bat. I'm just gonna be sitting around expecting something to reflect my answer about making friends or infidelity or whatever, and I can't imagine it'll be too Chilling when I notice it. More likely it'll just feel like a wink or a gimmick. Of course, the game could be accounting for this and be more subversive than I think, but I doubt it.

And yeah, the pop-ups are pretty terrible. The way they talk about normally somewhat esoteric aspects of the game world in a matter-of-factly distant game narrator voice really seems to undermine a lot of how you're supposed to feel about interacting with this shit in the first place. "There is a layer of reality that cannot be seen with the naked eye. Something is odd about the swing in this playground. Try photographing it with the cellphone." Harry already reacts to shit in real-time with voice acting. Why can't they just direct the player's motivation in that direction using the character's own motivation instead of talking about it like a New Game System and using a text box? I hope the other instances of that feature don't just have the phenomenon in question be a clearly visible static version of what the actual image is anyway. It should just be the swing swinging and you should be compelled to find out if it is indeed anything at all. Sometimes it will be and sometimes it won't.

And then we have text boxes explaining the relationship between locked doors and keys. So yeah. I dunno.

[P1d40n3]

I like the blue outline around things you can go through.

The ice transition I think will be better when it's on your tv, and you get the audio to boot. but I would really like to see it on a more powerful console.

Those text boxes scream of 'We need these for the casual audience!' to me. But I would like to think that they are temporary placeholders, and that the devs don't think that low of the players.
_________________

[sharc]

[P1d40n3]

[Cossix]

Not being able to fight back is probably kind of a big deal that they feel the need to explain to players I guess. Hopefully it'll be like some games and you can turn the whole hint system off.

[negativedge]

I do find it a little stupid that he keeps emphasizing that they are doing everything in order to keep the player immersed and in control and then there's like OH HEY GIANT BOX THAT FREEZES THE GAME AND TELLS ME HOW TO PLAY

Really though, I love everything about this game that I've seen so far except maybe the fact that it is a Silent Hill title. I don't think they have strong enough art direction for SH, and I'd like to see people with this kind of talent and vision do their own thing anyway.

[glossolalia]

[Cossix]

[P1d40n3]

If you wanna fight the invincible monsters, you should die. It's that simple.

Maybe redesign the enemies so that they look more 'invincible'?
_________________

[Legal Step]

I want to have games that I want to play on my Wii.
_________________

[wourme]

I don't want to see any videos because I'm getting this for sure and want to be surprised. All I had to hear was that it's by the same people as Origins, but the part about not being able to fight makes this even more exciting to me.

I'd also like to see these guys work on something that's not connected with any existing franchise.

[Baines]

[negativedge]

[P1d40n3]

[glossolalia]

even if the player does initially think, "hey maybe i can kill those guys," he'll accept the truth of the phone call after he confronts them once or twice and dies. this is what game design should be about: giving the player subtle, contextually appropriate hints and then letting him sort it out for himself, through some trial and error if need be - certainly a little trial and error is preferable to undermining what should be a very tense and involving moment with a pop-up help window.

edit: or uh, what those guys said

[sharc]

it's true that games have conditioned us to ignore npc warnings and fight anyway, and that there are players that when given the slightest bit of leeway will take a pipe and slowly bludgeon everything in a five mile radius to death if it lets them wander around in peace.

i can't think of any time there was disconnect like that in a game where the player doesn't have a weapon, though. or even an attack button. actually i can't think of any other action games that don't give you any way at all to fight. the only way it looks like this would come off as misleading or disingenuous is if they do give you a stabbin' tool but still don't let you kill anything off on account of immortal or infinitely respawning monsters. so long as harry stays unarmed there's no mixed messages

still raises the question of how will they do bosses. will it suddenly become a normal action game in boss arenas, or will fights revolve around environmental damage? or hey wouldn't it lovely if we get a game that doesn't feel the need to shoehorn in bosses when they clash with the game's theme and mechanics. spoiler: we probably won't

[parker]

I hope there's no fighting at all, an action game where you're never given any weapons. This looks sort of like what I imagine when I think of what a modern adventure game would be like, if adventure game designers weren't crawled so far up the asshole bone of Lucas arts decayed remains. Too bad if they couldn't pick up any ideas from Farenheit they're probably too far gone to see this as anything but a shitty action game instead of a (possibly) good adventure game.
_________________

[Dark Age Iron Savior]

Some very interesting ideas, and I'm reserving some faith in the tutorial popups being easily disabled, but I'm going to go on record as stating that removing all combat from a game where you're a fully capable adult and you're being chased by monsters is stupid. It's the same objection I have to Penumbra: Black Plague.

I mean, I imagine there might be some token judo throw when a monster grabs you from behind and you have to shake the wii remote, but I think it's backing away from a far more interesting challenge when you just remove weapons/fighting altogether.

I mean, the consensus around here is usually "who cares what other gamers will like, I want this". I don't care if it confuses and frustrates the average gamer, I want someone to try invincible monsters and combat. Even if I can't kill anything, let me smash chairs and pots over heads to stun them, let me set them on fire so that they run dangerously around but stop following me directly, let me stab them so they rear back.

on a semi-separate note, you know what? Remember back in SH2, when Pyramid Head was doing whatever he felt like to other monsters? I'd like to see someone try and reinterpret that, update the classic FPS concept of monsters fighting other monsters. Imagine a game where every enemy is far too powerful to be destroyed by the player, but can be lured into conflict with other enemies. Like, maybe you stab a monster and it starts trailing blood, and this attracts other enemies, who grab it and tear it apart, distracting them from you.

Urgh. I need to go back to bed.

[internisus]

Okay. There are definitely some things I could nit-pick and express skepticism about; the only one which I actually want to is that I would prefer the dynamic transition to nightmare to be slower so as to savor the tension of that change.

In general though, this is a game that I have been waiting for a long time. I like this guy a lot, and I am very excited by the things that he says.

[Faithless]

This game controlled VERY well, especially for a Wii game. I was surprised.
_________________
my website

[chevluh]

Disappointed by the transitions. I mean, sure, they're impressive and all, but one of the niftiest things in the first SH for me is you didn't see the world change, you merely noticed it had changed. Brought that creepy unknow quality to the mechanism.

[internisus]

[wourme]

It really is something. After you get to the end, details and lines throughout the game suddenly take on new meaning. Unfortunately, you can't even begin to analyze the story without revealing things that shouldn't be revealed to anyone who hasn't played yet. If anyone wants to talk about the plot, it's going to require a thread marked clearly for spoilers, I think.

I started a second run through the game to see how different it is when you make different choices. And it's pretty different. I think I understand why the game is relatively short--there must be a lot of content that you don't see when you play through once.

[Ymer]

[Toups]

wait, is this out or something?
_________________

[Dracko]

What do you think, Toups? :|
_________________

[Toups]

for some reason I got the idea that this game was out on january 5th. I guess I was thinking of Bayonetta...!

well, I must play it!
_________________

[wourme]

I'm about halfway through a second run. It's different enough to keep my interest the second time through--kind of like Shadow of Destiny (which this game has reminded me of since I first heard about it and still does now that I've played it). I'm surprised at some of the small details that are different that don't really seem to need to be. I think a lot of elements of the game must be randomized--some puzzles certainly are.

One interesting thing about this game is how some of the criticisms I've read don't really hold up when you see what they were trying to do--I mean, the cited "problems" do exist as described, but they actually make sense in context.

It's hard to predict how different the PS2 version of the game will feel. I haven't come across comments by anyone who has seen that version. Motion controls are used pretty extensively (and well), but I don't know how necessary they really are.

[Rud31]

I guess the PS2 version of this is out now. thinking of picking up that copy with the new Jak.
_________________
My Hawt Blog Vita Games

THERE ARE DEFINITELY WORSE VIDEO GAME PODCASTS

[Dark Age Iron Savior]

other night I had a MIND-BLOWINGLY BRILLIANT idea for a Silent Hill game based on the socio-economic madness going on in the US right now.

see, Silent Hill is like this New England town, right? Only there was this big drug cult and some murders and everybody left so it's a ghost town, and then all the looters went through and took everything that wasn't nailed down, right? But we gotta think about the way this country's headed - we want the stuff that isn't nailed down, all the buildings and the land and the convenient plumbing and stuff. What we do is we go all hippy, all mountain man, take a bunch of people over there and build a commune and live off the grid and shit. Don't pay no taxes or nothin'.

cue dozens of college students slowly descending into paranoid insanity


then I said "wait" and looked it up and remembered that the games indicate that Silent Hill is still basically a normal city and the games take place in the semi-alternate reality of the foggy silent hill (when not in otherworld)

although it is a ghost town in the movie....

[Rud31]

Watched a video of gameplay on youtube of the ps2 version!

Interesting things.

The Player Character Comments are fucking creepy as hell. Like masturbating in the closet of the middle school creepy. So not the good kind of creepy.

The Wobbling Wii Cursor (WWC) has been replace with a mouse pointer. I'm somewhat happy for this, but they could have chosen something that wasn't the pointer from Windows 95. I really hate WWC, and almost haven't boughten a wii just on that principle. Every time a friend turns on the wii and starts navigating with WWC it just looks so awkward and is always accompanied by "I haven't used this thing in a while."

I saw a puzzle where you literally unlocked a door and got a zelda sound. Not to go all action button, but shouldn't the fact the door now opens and I can continue in the game be all the reward I need? The fact that this is a horror game even more so makes it feel really out of place.

The textures are really low res, which leads to

Why the fuck does this game look like shit? Silent Hill 2 was released in 2001 and it looks fantastic! It was also released on the PS2. Why do all Wii games look worse than most PS2 games, and no where near as good as launch Gamecube games when the Wii IS a gamecube? As boojiboy said to me, most Simple 2000 series games take better screenshots.
_________________
My Hawt Blog Vita Games

THERE ARE DEFINITELY WORSE VIDEO GAME PODCASTS

[Rud31]

[glossolalia]

[Rud31]

okay so it looks better than Rogue Leader?
_________________
My Hawt Blog Vita Games

THERE ARE DEFINITELY WORSE VIDEO GAME PODCASTS

[glossolalia]

shadows get a little pixelated/moire-y sometimes, but yeah, i'd say so. especially considering that's real-time light. nice art design and it looks crisp without overdosing on normal and specular mapping like almost every 360/ps3 game. i think the whole ice world thing is pretty cheesy aesthetically, but the way the light warps around the ice is impressive.

edit: isn't low VRAM one of the biggest problems with the ps2, and that's why almost everything multiplatform looks blurrier on it than it did on the gc/xbox?