Silent Hill: Shattered Memories

[UnSub]

One thing I think Yahtzee didn't mention is about surprising (rather than just startling) the player with a twist that they'll care about. Dead Space did startles well, but there was no twist - it was pretty obvious what was going on - plus it was hard to attach to poor old Isaac. SH2, on the other hand, had a twist right at the end of the game that made you re-evaluate the main character and how you thought about him. Fatal Frame had the ending where despite finding your brother, he elected to stay to do the right thing.

It's easy enough to get a jump scare - put a spring-loaded cat in a cupboard and have it leap out when the player gets close enough. But those don't make memorable experiences.

 

[reg42]

I think Yahtzee would enjoy the Penumbra games.
Admittedly, I'm only a bit into the first one, but it's pants-shittingly excellent so far.

 

[Jonsbax]

One thing I think Yahtzee didn't mention is about surprising (rather than just startling) the player with a twist that they'll care about.

Yahtzee was talking about things that were wrong about SH:SM, and I swear to god this is one of the last things that the game didn't pull off. Loved the ending!

 

[AgentNein]

Yeah, I think you might be getting a bit jaded on the horror aspect, sir. I've been playing horror games for some years and the Raw Shocks in SM still made me as tense as crap.

Yes, the "this is safe, this is not safe" aspect did lessen the blow a bit, but here's another thought on the subject: always being in danger in older SH games kinda wears a bit thin after a while, because you're always expecting things to shamble about after you no matter the situation. Being suddenly thrust into Frosty Land at the drop of a hat forces you to abandon any kind of pretense of exploration and switch right to "scamper off" mode, offering a more jarring shift of mood than "mist to rust", at least for me.

See, for me the 'enemies everywhere' approach of past SH games had the effect of being completely emotionally overwhelming for me. In a good way? At times I was compelled to set that fucking game (any of the first three or four) down for a spell (maybe a couple of days) just to breath a bit of relief, and for me that spells success for horror (I might add it takes me years to even work up the nerve to play through them again).

With that said, I feel like Climax made an admirable attempt at giving us something new in the franchise. Kudos guys, one hopes you learn from your mistakes and give us a true classic next time around (the hope being Konami keeps you blokes on the boat). Shattered Memories was horror. Subtle horror but horror nonetheless (I'm of the school of thought that 'psychological thriller' is a marketing term used to disguise horror from those who think that horror is teen aimed slasher flicks and torture porn). And as a horror fan (of all it's veins) I dug what they did right.

 

[MpSai]

I dunno, what still bothers me most about this game is that it was more like a cheap knock off of Alan Wake than a Silent Hill game. I never once got the impression that the town was influencing events, that it mattered that the story was taking place in Silent Hill. I felt like it could have happened in any setting and the story would be exactly the same, so why is it even a Silent Hill game?

It needs the mythos, a main character named Harry Mason doesn't make it Silent Hill.

 

[Cyglor]

I've been a lurker at the threshold long enough. I figure it's time I crossed it and posted something.

The Silent Hill series is definitely my favorite video game series. I like all the games for different reasons. Silent Hill 2 is easily my top favorite, as it's the one I bought and played through first and it made my blood run cold pretty much right from the off. That said, one of the biggest scares that I received from any of the SH games was in SH3. The bit is closer to the end of the game, in the nightmare hospital, with the room that locks you in and you get to watch through the large mirror as the reflected room oozes up with blood, which finally leaks into your side of the room. I can remember frantically mashing my 'x' button against the door as I tried to get the thing to open.

It was just a room filling up with blood, but it was patiently slow, and relentless. Just watching it happen, I knew something nasty would happen if I didn't get my crap together and do something. I'm pretty sure someone mentioned this moment already, but I'll be damned if I didn't spatter my pants and take a long break from the game after that. That scene, more than almost any other, reminded me that for all the creepy, twitchy things you came across in Silent Hill, the town itself was a horror that was so much more absolute. Now, I've yet to get through Shattered Memories, but something tells me that I won't be spackling any more pairs of pantaloons to moments like that.

Anecdote time! I first played Shattered Memories when I went to go visit my Mum for New Year's. She and my Step Dad had just purchased a Wii for Christmas, so I brought my copy of Shattered Memories with me to show them. I hyped the game up, telling them about the psychoanalysis the game makes, and the changes to the gameplay that follow. So we all sat down to watch the game go on. The graphics were great, the controls weren't bad (having free reign of the flashlight had a lot of potential for comedy).

Now, my Mum is not a fan of horror. She's not cool with being scared, and when I'd played other Silent Hill games in the past she has, at times, asked me to turn them off. I was so looking forward to that happening again. I so wanted SHSM to be scary. It was certainly spooky, with the ghosts you can only see with the camera phone, and the tromp through the forest. But it wasn't scary. My Mum even laughed when the 'threat' appeared and said it looked like I was being dogpiled by really unattractive naked people (This did make me try to shake them off harder, mind you).

With the game being almost first-person like that, a slow, relentless threat like a room filling up with blood, would be terrifying. The 'trapped in the drowning car' sequence was leaning in the right direction, mind you. But if it was blood the car was filling with, I'd be out buying pants just now instead of wasting everyone's time with a long post like this one.

TL;DR: SHSM was fun and spooky, but not scary enough to scare my Mum.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

Anyone who knows me (which is none of you guys) knows that I LOVE spooky games. I've had great moments in a number of games and series, from this little gem [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeons_of_Daggorath] to the first Silent Hill, through Thief and System Shock 2, to Undying and FEAR, then Doom 3 and STALKER. Good horror-based gameplay is hard to get right- while Call of Cthulhu ended up turning into a bland shooter for much of its run, I quit Penumbra because it couldn't quite manage the "release" part of "tension and release" critical for good suspenseful gameplay. (Seriously, I started to feel mentally fatigued keeping up the level of concentration that game demanded.)

From what I've heard and seen of SH:SM (how do we pronounce that? "Shush 'em"?) it seems to take the wrong lessons from the first three SH games (we do not talk about "The Room"), trying to make it about ugly monsters rather than the feeling of an entire, malevolent city wanting to see you suffer and die. (Harkening to one of the more discomfiting lines of Thief: Deadly Shadows- "The Cradle remembers you now.") It's one thing to kill monsters, sure, but when an entire freaking SUBURB wants to make you a greasy smear on one of its broken sidewalks... what hope have you got of beating that[/url] to death with a length of pipe? But I agree that it was a step in a new and interesting direction, and hopefully the next iteration brings more good ol' fashioned nightmare fuel [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HighOctaneNightmareFuel].

[small]And hopefully it'll come out on the PC. Come on, people, I'm desperate here! I'm actually reduced to replaying FEAR 2 for something even remotely tension-producing![/small]

 

[Serenegoose]

I think Dead Space deserves more credit then it gets. Yes, it has cheap scares, yes it seems to emphasize combat more than evasion (a real shame but there you go). But it's full of atmosphere. The ship you're on literally seems to crawl and breath at times. I think the problem with the story was that they made the character a silent protagonist that we were supposed to "feel" for. Sadly I really couldn't. They should've given him a dialogue. :\

See, I think the problem with going 'it loses out through having a silent protagonist' is inaccurate, because the game you could argue it's riffing off of hugely, System Shock, has a similarly silent protagonist. However, everything -that- protagonist felt was genuinely related to you - dead space has Nicole, and I'm not actually in love with a girl called Nicole who's on a spaceship, so unfortunately I didn't get the connection. On the other hand, call me a gullible fool, and you will, but I liked Kendra. That would have been -much- more fertile ground to farm, and to call on another case of silent protagonism, Gordon Freeman gets the same thing with Alyx, which works a lot better. The point with a silent protagonist is not so we relate to them, it's so we experience the game -as- them. We relate to ourselves just fine.... mostly. But yes, I think Dead space deserves a ton more credit than it gets. I finished it for the first time yesterday, and it is the -only- horror game I've ever finished. Perhaps this is what biases it for me, but it's the only one that to me has been just tense -enough- that I find it effective without being so tense that I just can't handle playing it.

This was a great article though, Yahtzee. I'd really like to hear your take on how you could have done your Chzo mythos games better. Maybe you've done that already and I've just not seen it? I don't know, but it would be an interesting read.

 

[smorgasbord_of_pie]

Well, allow me to brighten your day sir: Trilby's Notes scared the SHIT out of me. Especially when SPOILER you walk through the screen transition and come out the other side wearing the welding mask and apron for a moment. SPOILER

 

[Javert.]

I like the game because it has some neat ideas that show promise but I agree the implementation is off. I think they should have one or two of hunter type enemies in each environment. By limiting the number of enemies it would allow for you to explore without completely focus on stealth all of the time but it would also make you cautious of your surroundings always aware something is tracking you down and attempting not to do anything to attract the creatures you can't fight. If you get found you need to get away as fast as you can, using something to distract the creature and hide saving your skin so you continue pursuing your objective.

By controlling how different creatures track you, the developer could make for some extremely tense situations. For example you're in an area with sharp objects scattered everywhere and a hunter that tracks you by smelling blood. You come into the area and get a very small cut in a cutscene so that the hunter is already tracking you although it doesn't have a great grasp of your position. Now as the hunter approaches you, you need to move a little quicker to avoid it, but if you move carelessly it gets a better idea of your position so it can come at you faster and with more accuracy and it is harder to get away from it.

Other advantages to this system would be a set way to make the town more dangerous, after meeting some hunters they escape into the town so it becomes more dangerous to move around. It also meshes perfectly with subtle psychological horror, now you're always keeping track of noises and small movements as a survival instinct so little things like random creeks and small movements by apparitions or whatever will cause you to react, even better your startled reaction may attract the hunter making them have an effect on gameplay. The gore is easily supplied by giving the hunters gruesome kill animations and letting them make examples out of NPCs and even other hunters.

Well this is much longer than I intended to post I just think the idea of not being able has so much potential I would hate to see it go to waste, and this implementation has so many cool possibilities I could go on forever I already gained about 5 ideas for hunters and their environments since starting this post. Now if only I could actually program

 

[Helmutye]

Personally I think horror works much better as a component of a game rather than the entire idea behind a game. Whenever I've played a game that was labeled as "Horror" I've always ended up being disappointed. No matter how scary it may be, a game that tells you it's going to be scary will have a hard time surprising you.

My favorite horror scenes are always in games or movies where the focus of the game is elsewhere and you end up having to deal with the scary situation as kind of an aside. Take, for example, the scary bits in the Thief games. To this day I still get chills when I think about the second level in Thief: The Dark Project. You are trying to infiltrate a prison by sneaking through the abandoned mines underneath it, but you end up finding out that they are not completely abandoned. There are a whole bunch of zombies roaming around down there, and they make the creepiest zombie sounds I've ever heard. Some of my friends missed out on the game because that level was too scary for them to get through.

There is also a level in the third Thief game (which is kind of a crummy game, actually, but this particular level is really good) called The Shalebridge Cradle. It takes place in this scary old orphanage/insane asylum and it uses some really nasty tricks to unnerve you. For those who haven't played the Thief games, sound is extremely important. The designers spent a lot of time making the sound really good, and you get used to relying on it to tell you where the guards are, what kind of flooring they are walking over, and what lies up ahead because you spend most of the game wedged in some dark corner unable to see a whole lot. But in The Shalebridge Cradle there are a whole bunch of phantom sounds all around, just quiet enough that they always sound distant and just different enough that it drives you crazy trying to figure out what they are. I don't want to do a SPOILER for the level, but the entire first section has absolutely zero enemies in it. However, until you figure that out you are constantly on edge and constantly hiding and waiting anxiously because of the phantom sounds. And of course once you get into the later areas of the level you start finding enemies, and they are the scariest enemies in the entire game. It is a marvelous level, and it kind of makes me wonder how it ended up in such a mediocre game.

These games have some very scary parts in them, but what makes those parts even scarier is that they are surrounded by non-horror sections. When the horror arrives it catches you off-balance. And then for the entire rest of the game you will be in a state of nervous suspense, afraid that the scary will come back...

 

[Clunks]

"Now, I don't say that as some kind of juvenile gorehound who can't get wood without seeing an open wound..."

Ugh...these are terrible times to be a gorehound. It's come to something truly dreadful when someone like Yahtzee, who clearly gets exactly the same kick as we do out of seeing that which bleeds bleed, feels he has to a) explain his position in such a defensive manner and b) try to distance himself from the rest of us.

I blame the whole "torture porn" thing. So a handful of guys make a handful of films about people getting tortured for protracted lengths of time, some smart-arse journalist jokingly coins a phrase, some less intelligent journalists start using it seriously and suddenly people genuinely believe that gore is the cause of sexual excitement in its fans. Now the rest of us feel like we have to be on the defensive all the time just 'cause our favourite bit in Hellraiser is when the dude gets ripped apart by chains and hooks. It's ridiculous.

For the record, my favourite moment in Hellraiser is when the lead Cenobite says "we have such sights to show you," because next to his earlier line, "this isn't for your eyes," it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Just saying.

 

[Jhales]

Hm, there was this game that I haven't had the chance to play, but Anthony Burch talked about it once. It involved a scene where the player is trying to escape a hotel in which the town's inhabitance is trying to kill him. What makes it interesting is the fact that the player, for this level, has no weapons and must quickly run through doors, locking them, and try to push book shelves into the way of doors, or away from places to exit through.
I think that for a horror game to work, you need to be stripped of your reliable weapons, not all of them exactly, just the ones that could easily defeat your foes. I never understood how a game could be scary if you are blasting away the monsters with a shotgun or cut them to pieces with some kind of saw launcher. In that case, it seems like the monsters should be scared of you.

 

[Cyglor]

Hm, there was this game that I haven't had the chance to play, but Anthony Burch talked about it once. It involved a scene where the player is trying to escape a hotel in which the town's inhabitance is trying to kill him. What makes it interesting is the fact that the player, for this level, has no weapons and must quickly run through doors, locking them, and try to push book shelves into the way of doors, or away from places to exit through.

That game is: Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth

Pretty fun game, and that scene is butt-clenchingly nerve-wracking. By the time you escape the hotel proper, you are forced to leap an alleyway onto a rickety fire escape (all the while not looking down, because the protagonist is afraid of heights and will 'wig out' if you do) and then have to duck/run through a hallway to avoid being shot should you cross a window.

The following bits have you breaking into a police office and clubbing a police officer over the head with a crowbar, and finally navigating your way out of a mutant-fish-people-infested town.

If you can find it in a games shop, you'll likely find it for cheap. I recommend giving it a try, especially if you like the Cthulhu Mythos.

 

[RobinHood3000]

Regarding the last point about killing the player: it's my understanding that having the player die arbitrarily, with no clear connection to their actions and no opportunity to escape or avoid it, is considered unfair from a game design perspective. Granted, it may be that the horror genre should be an exception to fair play - it's not scary if you and the thing that might kill you are on even terms - but I thought it was worth pointing out that there are reasons why having the player flat-out die without warning and without quick-time events might be viewed as a poor design idea.

Then again, I'm not a fan of horror games (don't have the constitution for it), so take my thoughts on the subject as you will.

Personally I think horror works much better as a component of a game rather than the entire idea behind a game. Whenever I've played a game that was labeled as "Horror" I've always ended up being disappointed. No matter how scary it may be, a game that tells you it's going to be scary will have a hard time surprising you.

These games have some very scary parts in them, but what makes those parts even scarier is that they are surrounded by non-horror sections. When the horror arrives it catches you off-balance. And then for the entire rest of the game you will be in a state of nervous suspense, afraid that the scary will come back...

See, I disagree with that. I feel like too many games try too hard to blend genres and do too many things at once. On top of which, as someone who doesn't like or enjoy horror gameplay (Bioshock was a notable exception, and I still played on Easy), I would feel bad about spending my money on a game I wanted to play but was too chicken to finish. This is the reason I haven't gone back to Uncharted: Drake's Fortune.

 

[Mako SOLDIER]

I can't wait to see what you think of Alan Wake. From the sound of things so far it breaks a good few of your rules but is supposedly really rather scary and decently challenging if you play it on hard. Looking forward to it personally, just a few days to go...

 

[Mako SOLDIER]

Hm, there was this game that I haven't had the chance to play, but Anthony Burch talked about it once. It involved a scene where the player is trying to escape a hotel in which the town's inhabitance is trying to kill him. What makes it interesting is the fact that the player, for this level, has no weapons and must quickly run through doors, locking them, and try to push book shelves into the way of doors, or away from places to exit through.

That game is: Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth

Pretty fun game, and that scene is butt-clenchingly nerve-wracking. By the time you escape the hotel proper, you are forced to leap an alleyway onto a rickety fire escape (all the while not looking down, because the protagonist is afraid of heights and will 'wig out' if you do) and then have to duck/run through a hallway to avoid being shot should you cross a window.

The following bits have you breaking into a police office and clubbing a police officer over the head with a crowbar, and finally navigating your way out of a mutant-fish-people-infested town.

If you can find it in a games shop, you'll likely find it for cheap. I recommend giving it a try, especially if you like the Cthulhu Mythos.

Freakin' awesome game. The escape sequence is bloody hard though, and if I say 2 words you'll know what I find reaaally freaky: Flying Polyps. But then, I am a huge Lovecraft fan.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

Whats worse is when they ramp up the music. It'll be all silent and creepy, then the music starts to play and suddenly I realise "Oh, something scary is about to happen."

 

[FoolKiller]

Does no one remember Clock Tower on PlayStation?

It was scary as hell because the villain kept attacking you with giant scissors while you were trying to solve the puzzles. If you got caught there was a panic scene where you tried to escape and hide.