(This is a Mid-Point Spoiler free review for the XBox 360. I have not finished the game as of yet)
Lemme get this part out now: It's as good as Silent Hill 3.
Glitches:
There are glitches in the maps - like light coming from under the walls in underground places that are suppose to be solid. The lip movements on a few characters don't budge at all - on one cut scene I had to repeat 8 times, I theorized he was just as tired of repeating the lines as I was of hearing them.
The sound editor must have been dazed from working with Akira Yamaoka because the problem of the monster's noise in both your ears when you've moved pretty far away from it is one my boys had to fix in Eternal Damnation. If a couple of modders can catch and fix that, how did this glitch get thru? I had to turn down the volume after I found a monster in a room and walked away (sniggering that it had no arms and therefore couldn't work the dooknob). I was down the hall and in another room and I could STILL HEAR IT loudly over anything else I should have been hearing.
I have to turn on subtitles because the voices tend to get really low, even when they're dialed up and the music and sound effects are down.
And the occasional object not meshing with the floor and floating a bit above.
Onto the good technical parts:
The lighting is superb, the BG sounds exquisite and unnerving, and the textures sometimes have you looking for things that aren't there.
Voice acting is AWESOME. Not one annoying voice in the entire batch. In fact, the voice actress for the mother is very clever in that they apparently couldn't get the upper lip to move very well - so she talked like that. The effect is good and ages her a bit more.
Story:
The character is Alex Shepard. He's returned from the war to check in with his family and the lil bro is missing.
Actually everyone is missing. He finds his mother - half missing (the brain's MIA), the local judge - who goes missing, and a few other people walking around going "What the Fuck is happening?" or "Oh Shit, IT'S happening!"
Of course Type 2 disappears before you can throttle the conspiracy out of them and if any Type 1s become Types 2, the same applies. At one point, Silent Hill kicks in the door and curb-stomps your ass just when you realize a Type 1 has been a Type 2 all this time.
I'm not making that up.
That's also where I called it a night. 2 major boss fights and now Silent Hill has arrived.
The game does not take place in Silent Hill initially. This is great! So far it's pretty much calved off from the Alessya storyline because there was more going on in Silent Hill 1 than just a little girl getting burned and tortured in order to summon half her soul back to allow her to give birth to a god.
Like that all of that was taking place on sacred ground during a time when someone was experimenting with drugs on the local flora. Silent Hill experienced a trifecta of FAIL and hasn't been the same since.
So this will not rehash the same old story to you. So far, I'm liking this a lot.
Gameplay:
The character is a good fighter. He can duck, dodge, roll, and even block. This is evened out to normal Silent Hill standards by the fact that there is VERY little health in the game and your item inventory screen - while pretty - is fucking crap.
The Left Shoulder is pressed and HELD to bring up your inventory screen. If you have anything highlighted in your inventory, you have the option of A - use, B - Back, and (R) which means push in the right analog stick to view/examine an item.
Wow. You can rotate it and get a good solid 360 look at it.
And if you let go of the Left Should button - you just used the fucking item.
Yeah.
That A is really just there as a suggestion, I guess. You don't even have to be examining the item for this to happen.
While the Health Drinks and Med Kits were safely ensconced away from all this and you just had to hit Y or X to use them, the equivalent of the ampule is not so lucky.
While fumbling for a health drink during a fight, Kevin accidentally used 2 of these and they are very rare in the game. I'm past the 2nd boss and have only found 3 total.
We actually restarted completely at one point.
Guns...
To fight you hold down the Left Trigger button (yes, right under the inventory screen button I was just bitching about), and Press A for quick attacks or hold down X until there's a shaking in the controller for strong, powerful, slow attacks.
Until you get to Guns.
Then it's hold Left Trigger for attack mode and hit Right Trigger to shoot. If you hit A, you butt stroke or pistol whip them.
And Right Shoulder is the WEAPONS inventory screen so try not to switch to your knife while you're sighting some horrible shambling thing down the road that likes to punch you in the face with its chest.
B is for dodge. Practice this. Lots.
Oh and you hit Start to get the Journal that contains the Clues (this guy doesn't take notes or news clippings) photos, drawings, and the combat manual. If you'd swap this with the Item Inventory screen, that'd be 1/5 of my trouble with this game gone.
Your weapons do not diminish, thankfully, and if you get a better knife or a better shotgun - it auto replaces the older crap.
Monsters
Holy Fuck Jesus they do not disappoint. And rightfully, each initial monster gets its own cutscene when it makes its grand entrance the first time.
They did pull from the movie. Now before you get miffed, hear me out on why this is a GOOD thing.
Silent Hill: The Movie was made by fans. So they took concepts and truths that had always been there and actually implemented them better. Case in point: The nurses attraction to light in the movie. Never fucking worked in the games, did it? Oh we were TOLD that it was best to walk quietly with your light off; but I don't recall this working for anyone except Heather who had to throw down beef jerky to get some dogs to chew on that instead of her boots, with her in them.
Also they pulled the nurses from the movie. HAWT. And fucking vicious! My God, the first one we ran into in Silent Hill killed me 5 times. I went to start dinner while Kevin ranted and raised his blood pressure trying to get past her. She made up for ALL the nurses in all the others. And she didn't cheat. She used actual fighting moves.
I also think we were distracted by her rack.
The light trick DOES work but don't get too close. He did just get out of the military so I suspect he's copping a feel when we get in arm's length because they activate.
The rest of monsters are fucking bad ass.
Harsh
Brutal
Make you miss the first one that's going to still give you nightmares even though it's a low monster on the totem pole.
oh .. and they don't fall for the light trick.
I know, I know, I said they imported it over and it was working, but so far I found it works only on creatures that are at rest already. Nurses tend to find a light source and zonk out like a cat in the sunshine.
And one monster will grab you and sever you from your pelvis, holding you in 2 bits for a second before spiking your torso like a football in the end zone.
Wow.
There are moments when the screen is going to ask you to hit a button. I know, it's like that damn Simon Sez crap that's popping up all over the place, but at least the buttons it wants you to hit make sense so it hasn't annoyed me yet. Sure it changes from a flashing A to a flashing X but that's because it goes from "QUICK, DAMAGE NOW - LOTS!" to "HIT HARDER! HARDER! JEEZUS CARPAL TUNNEL IS THE LEAST OF YOUR WORRIES, IT'S GETTING BACK UP!!"
POINT OF SPIFFINESS!
If you are in a room where you can stand still, double click on the right analog stick for a 360 FIRST PERSON POV. Yes. You can't move in this, but you can look a little harder now for things and take in more atmosphere. And you can rotate completely around.
POINT OF INTEREST!
You have to pick and choose your questions to people.
POINT OF ANNOYANCE!
Character finds hidden deep in the bowels of the earth a tunnel that dead ends into a small room. There is a storm drain trap and a desk with a metal fan. There's a type writer on the desk with paper in it and someone's half way thru typing on it.
HE DOES NOT SAY ONE DAMN THING. You can't read it, you can't pick it up. It just SITS there. This will drive Res Evil fans nuts. But it aggravates me that this would fall well into the catagory of "LOOK - A CLUE!" and he's acting like he's seen this sort of thing all the time.
All in all, this is a HIGH RECOMMEND. Especially after that drivel of 0rigins. Sorry, I recently finished 0rigins and ... wha-?
It bothers me that I wrote a better ending and posted it in a forum that they thanked in their credits.
Face it, for me 0rigins was a Silent Hill biscuit. While Silent Hill 4 was more Chicken than Beef compared to the Trilogy - it still had some meat on it.
Continuing with the meat analogy because I'm at 22 hours no sleep: Silent Hill5 is pork chops. And I make good pork chops.
Lemme get this part out now: It's as good as Silent Hill 3.
Glitches:
There are glitches in the maps - like light coming from under the walls in underground places that are suppose to be solid. The lip movements on a few characters don't budge at all - on one cut scene I had to repeat 8 times, I theorized he was just as tired of repeating the lines as I was of hearing them.
The sound editor must have been dazed from working with Akira Yamaoka because the problem of the monster's noise in both your ears when you've moved pretty far away from it is one my boys had to fix in Eternal Damnation. If a couple of modders can catch and fix that, how did this glitch get thru? I had to turn down the volume after I found a monster in a room and walked away (sniggering that it had no arms and therefore couldn't work the dooknob). I was down the hall and in another room and I could STILL HEAR IT loudly over anything else I should have been hearing.
I have to turn on subtitles because the voices tend to get really low, even when they're dialed up and the music and sound effects are down.
And the occasional object not meshing with the floor and floating a bit above.
Onto the good technical parts:
The lighting is superb, the BG sounds exquisite and unnerving, and the textures sometimes have you looking for things that aren't there.
Voice acting is AWESOME. Not one annoying voice in the entire batch. In fact, the voice actress for the mother is very clever in that they apparently couldn't get the upper lip to move very well - so she talked like that. The effect is good and ages her a bit more.
Story:
The character is Alex Shepard. He's returned from the war to check in with his family and the lil bro is missing.
Actually everyone is missing. He finds his mother - half missing (the brain's MIA), the local judge - who goes missing, and a few other people walking around going "What the Fuck is happening?" or "Oh Shit, IT'S happening!"
Of course Type 2 disappears before you can throttle the conspiracy out of them and if any Type 1s become Types 2, the same applies. At one point, Silent Hill kicks in the door and curb-stomps your ass just when you realize a Type 1 has been a Type 2 all this time.
I'm not making that up.
That's also where I called it a night. 2 major boss fights and now Silent Hill has arrived.
The game does not take place in Silent Hill initially. This is great! So far it's pretty much calved off from the Alessya storyline because there was more going on in Silent Hill 1 than just a little girl getting burned and tortured in order to summon half her soul back to allow her to give birth to a god.
Like that all of that was taking place on sacred ground during a time when someone was experimenting with drugs on the local flora. Silent Hill experienced a trifecta of FAIL and hasn't been the same since.
So this will not rehash the same old story to you. So far, I'm liking this a lot.
Gameplay:
The character is a good fighter. He can duck, dodge, roll, and even block. This is evened out to normal Silent Hill standards by the fact that there is VERY little health in the game and your item inventory screen - while pretty - is fucking crap.
The Left Shoulder is pressed and HELD to bring up your inventory screen. If you have anything highlighted in your inventory, you have the option of A - use, B - Back, and (R) which means push in the right analog stick to view/examine an item.
Wow. You can rotate it and get a good solid 360 look at it.
And if you let go of the Left Should button - you just used the fucking item.
Yeah.
That A is really just there as a suggestion, I guess. You don't even have to be examining the item for this to happen.
While the Health Drinks and Med Kits were safely ensconced away from all this and you just had to hit Y or X to use them, the equivalent of the ampule is not so lucky.
While fumbling for a health drink during a fight, Kevin accidentally used 2 of these and they are very rare in the game. I'm past the 2nd boss and have only found 3 total.
We actually restarted completely at one point.
Guns...
To fight you hold down the Left Trigger button (yes, right under the inventory screen button I was just bitching about), and Press A for quick attacks or hold down X until there's a shaking in the controller for strong, powerful, slow attacks.
Until you get to Guns.
Then it's hold Left Trigger for attack mode and hit Right Trigger to shoot. If you hit A, you butt stroke or pistol whip them.
And Right Shoulder is the WEAPONS inventory screen so try not to switch to your knife while you're sighting some horrible shambling thing down the road that likes to punch you in the face with its chest.
B is for dodge. Practice this. Lots.
Oh and you hit Start to get the Journal that contains the Clues (this guy doesn't take notes or news clippings) photos, drawings, and the combat manual. If you'd swap this with the Item Inventory screen, that'd be 1/5 of my trouble with this game gone.
Your weapons do not diminish, thankfully, and if you get a better knife or a better shotgun - it auto replaces the older crap.
Monsters
Holy Fuck Jesus they do not disappoint. And rightfully, each initial monster gets its own cutscene when it makes its grand entrance the first time.
They did pull from the movie. Now before you get miffed, hear me out on why this is a GOOD thing.
Silent Hill: The Movie was made by fans. So they took concepts and truths that had always been there and actually implemented them better. Case in point: The nurses attraction to light in the movie. Never fucking worked in the games, did it? Oh we were TOLD that it was best to walk quietly with your light off; but I don't recall this working for anyone except Heather who had to throw down beef jerky to get some dogs to chew on that instead of her boots, with her in them.
Also they pulled the nurses from the movie. HAWT. And fucking vicious! My God, the first one we ran into in Silent Hill killed me 5 times. I went to start dinner while Kevin ranted and raised his blood pressure trying to get past her. She made up for ALL the nurses in all the others. And she didn't cheat. She used actual fighting moves.
I also think we were distracted by her rack.
The light trick DOES work but don't get too close. He did just get out of the military so I suspect he's copping a feel when we get in arm's length because they activate.
The rest of monsters are fucking bad ass.
Harsh
Brutal
Make you miss the first one that's going to still give you nightmares even though it's a low monster on the totem pole.
oh .. and they don't fall for the light trick.
I know, I know, I said they imported it over and it was working, but so far I found it works only on creatures that are at rest already. Nurses tend to find a light source and zonk out like a cat in the sunshine.
And one monster will grab you and sever you from your pelvis, holding you in 2 bits for a second before spiking your torso like a football in the end zone.
Wow.
There are moments when the screen is going to ask you to hit a button. I know, it's like that damn Simon Sez crap that's popping up all over the place, but at least the buttons it wants you to hit make sense so it hasn't annoyed me yet. Sure it changes from a flashing A to a flashing X but that's because it goes from "QUICK, DAMAGE NOW - LOTS!" to "HIT HARDER! HARDER! JEEZUS CARPAL TUNNEL IS THE LEAST OF YOUR WORRIES, IT'S GETTING BACK UP!!"
POINT OF SPIFFINESS!
If you are in a room where you can stand still, double click on the right analog stick for a 360 FIRST PERSON POV. Yes. You can't move in this, but you can look a little harder now for things and take in more atmosphere. And you can rotate completely around.
POINT OF INTEREST!
You have to pick and choose your questions to people.
POINT OF ANNOYANCE!
Character finds hidden deep in the bowels of the earth a tunnel that dead ends into a small room. There is a storm drain trap and a desk with a metal fan. There's a type writer on the desk with paper in it and someone's half way thru typing on it.
HE DOES NOT SAY ONE DAMN THING. You can't read it, you can't pick it up. It just SITS there. This will drive Res Evil fans nuts. But it aggravates me that this would fall well into the catagory of "LOOK - A CLUE!" and he's acting like he's seen this sort of thing all the time.
All in all, this is a HIGH RECOMMEND. Especially after that drivel of 0rigins. Sorry, I recently finished 0rigins and ... wha-?
It bothers me that I wrote a better ending and posted it in a forum that they thanked in their credits.
Face it, for me 0rigins was a Silent Hill biscuit. While Silent Hill 4 was more Chicken than Beef compared to the Trilogy - it still had some meat on it.
Continuing with the meat analogy because I'm at 22 hours no sleep: Silent Hill5 is pork chops. And I make good pork chops.
