Silent Hill (Spoilers, All Series)

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Marc
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Re: Silent Hill

Post by Marc »

Just done the Underpass in SH3. Ugh, struggling with this one. Grey corridors and spinning bug thingss everywhere. Not fun.
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BIL
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Re: Silent Hill

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In total honesty (not meaning to lead you on), I thought SH3 really picked up once you reach the office building. I know the early going post-mall can seem interminable (subway, underpass, sewers, etc), but there's some pretty intense atmosphere in there. Fond memories of demoing it for friends the next day, and everyone nervously cracking up at one particular t-junction where Yamaoka had concocted a fucking unholy sound, heralding some monsters lurking nearby. This was when the series was considered the cutting edge of its self-declared "TERROR HORROR" niche opposite RE and Fatal Frame, good ol' early 00s JP horror heyday...

SH3 was actually the first of the JP quartet I played, so I definitely get the grey corridor thing.

This is making me want to revisit, haha. The dogs' mournful distant howling is giving me chills just remembering it. Had the privilege of playing all four SHs while caretaking a literal ruined house, post-Hurricane Ivan... had some pretty intense dreams around then. Even MGS3 got creepy at points. :mrgreen: I'm always a little charitable towards more recent horror games, as none of them have the ultimate ambient weapon at their disposal:
Spoiler
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drauch
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Re: Silent Hill

Post by drauch »

Keep at it, Marc. It ties the first three games together nicely and has some real eerie shit, like the subway BIL mentioned.

Origins was the last one I've been interested in, as it seemed to go back to the classic style. Not the case though? Sound off, SH doods.
Last edited by drauch on Mon Oct 18, 2021 3:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Silent Hill

Post by BareKnuckleRoo »

Marc wrote:Just done the Underpass in SH3. Ugh, struggling with this one. Grey corridors and spinning bug thingss everywhere. Not fun.
It's deliberately meant to be claustrophobic, and there's at least one room that's deliberately made as an empty dead end filled with Pendulums (the spinning bug things). The trick is to just run from them, they're a massive headache to actually fight and rarely if ever worth it. Just follow standard labyrinth rules such as hugging the right hand wall and following each path and you'll be out soon enough, the Pendulums sound more scary than they are actually threatening. And BIL is right, the section afterwards gets pretty interesting (and you'll soon look forward to making sense of what's going on).
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Re: Silent Hill

Post by trap15 »

Y'all are getting me in the mood to re-play at least 1 and 2 again! It's been nearly a decade probably, but those games really stick in my head, absolute masterpieces. Maybe I'll find some time around spooky day to give them some love.
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Re: Silent Hill

Post by EmperorIng »

Same, it's been a few years but I am starting to itch to replay 1. I had SH3 set up as the pc version with all the HD patches and it looked incredible, but now I can't find the damn exe, I bet my shitty Windows firewall deleted it, fuck this OS.
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Re: Silent Hill

Post by Klatrymadon »

Same here, I recently bought a US copy of SH1, and have had a US copy of 2 sitting on the shelf for a couple of years now. Never played the latter, and it's been probably two decades since I played the original. Well overdue a deep dive!

Edit: five minutes in and I've already seen 'camera work' unlike anything in any other game. It really must have been two decades since I last played it because I don't remember what it sounds like at all. This is blowing my mind.
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Marc
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Re: Silent Hill

Post by Marc »

Gave up on 3 at the first boss. Just wasn't engaging me at all. Doesn't have the bizzarre, jarring oddness of the original, or the haunting melancholy of the second. Too many grey corridors, too many aggravating enemies, non of which carry the threat or meanace of the original creature designs, and it felt like it had far more aimless wandering.

I started Tormented Souls last night. Only 1.5 hours in, but already it's apparent that i's a blatant love letter to old-school survival horror. Not asimgle original thing about it, but it's already very promising regardless.
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Re: Silent Hill

Post by Klatrymadon »

I'm about halfway through SH2 now and was thinking about how it reminds me of Solaris more than anything from the horror canon, with its manifestations of doppelgangers and various other abstractions produced seemingly by the environment itself, and their relationship to the protagonist's sense of guilt, etc. Was it ever talked about by anyone from Team Silent as an influence?
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Re: Silent Hill

Post by BIL »

I could swear I'd seen Solaris mentioned by SH devs, but I may be mixing up their bits and pieces of translated commentary with forum discussions from years past.

In any case, yeah, I always felt there was a definite resonance with SH2, and I've seen others note the same. :smile:

There's a small but substantial sample of the KCET guys' influences in the JP-only Lost Memories mook (a bible of sorts for SH1-3, though as was always their wont, it's very much hands-off WRT definitive answers. dudes knew how to not harsh that mellow :mrgreen:)

EDIT: Oh FML - should've said, spoiler warning! Don't read Lost Memories until you're done with the games. Here's the link to the "inspirational works" page, for future reference:
Spoiler
Although Solaris isn't mentioned, neither are a few works I know were directly referenced by the games, like Session 9 (in SH3), so I wouldn't rule it out.

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Re: Silent Hill

Post by Klatrymadon »

Thanks, BIL - will give that a read when I've finished! I'm at what I think is the final boss now, and there has been at least one more on-the-nose Solaris reference:
Spoiler
The water dripping from the ceilings like rain in the hotel and the shifting, nonsensical geography, which were the main 'tells' that something wasn't right at the end of the Tarkovsky film.
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Re: Silent Hill

Post by Blinge »

SH2 remake coming
It's going to be fucking terrible.

new SH film coming out
It's going to be fucking terrible.

Film is the real reason they're talking about game development again, they just want to generate buzz for the movie. I think Konami even admitted it.

They're farming out development of new shitty SH games to obscure studios in eastern europe again? :lol:

Honestly it wouldn't surprise me if Konami are employing a studio located in Donetsk to make it.
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Marc
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Re: Silent Hill

Post by Marc »

I dunno, Bloober were responsible for Observer right? That was pretty neat. Well, up until I rembered i dont like walking sims and binned it, but it had atmosphere in spades. Cautiously optimistic.
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Re: Silent Hill

Post by Lander »

And the SH-brand skateboards, for when you need to pull a Christ Air in a time of existential crisis. I'm not kidding.

I'm in the cautious camp - Bloober have a handle on atmosphere and presentation, but their work has largely been chase horror rather than survival horror, so it remains to be seen whether they'll be able to do it justice. Fingers crossed.

As an aside, RE3 really poisoned the well for this recent wave of horror remakes. Practically speaking it serves as a good what-not-to-do exemplar for other studios, which is good, but the free and easy excitement of the RE2make hype cycle has been replaced with trepidation for the ultimate fate of both this and RE4.
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Re: Silent Hill

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Lander wrote:As an aside, RE3 really poisoned the well for this recent wave of horror remakes. Practically speaking it serves as a good what-not-to-do exemplar for other studios, which is good, but the free and easy excitement of the RE2make hype cycle has been replaced with trepidation for the ultimate fate of both this and RE4.
Huh? I don't see this at all. Only complaints I saw with RE3 were the length and the missing clocktower area. RE3 remake was titties.
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Re: Silent Hill

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drauch wrote:Huh? I don't see this at all. Only complaints I saw with RE3 were the length and the missing clocktower area. RE3 remake was titties.
In rough order of appearance:
Spoiler
  • Linearization of the original open / branching structure
  • Replacing Nemesis' exclusive weapon drops with pistol parts and ammo
  • Moving the iconic "I'll give you STARS" line to a throwaway chase bark that can be cancelled if you get hit
  • Replacing the park with a Drain Deimos lair for the sake of a one-off body horror mechanic
  • Reducing Nemesis to a series of setpieces after the initial excellent city section
  • Converting the RPD revisit into a sectioned off Carlos-only sequence
  • Nemesis is a dog now
  • Replacing the clock tower with an extended hospital section culminating in a janky redo of No Way Out mode from the 2make DLC
  • Replacing Dead Factory with the same clinical lab from 2make and (continuing the theme of reusing the underwhelming DLC) filling it with those rubbish white head zombies
  • Replacing the scary industrial railgun emplacement with a futuristic hand-held superweapon
  • Giving Jill the adamantium skeleton necessary to heft and fire the railgun without imploding, shifting her away from badass mortal survivalist and toward anime superhero
  • Replacing the aforementioned STARS line with forgettable MCU-tier shit talk
  • No post-game Mercenaries mode despite the increased action focus making it a perfect fit
It's a fine game in its own right with great presentation, but a terrible remake.
2make balanced its cuts and tweaks well enough to hold up, but 3 is barely recognizable. Seeing the same happen to RE4 or SH2 would be seriously wack.
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Re: Silent Hill

Post by BIL »

At this point, the only thing that'd move the needle (and by that I mean my massive slumbering nerdboner) one nanometer over zero is an original game involving a hearty chunk of former KCET personnel. Owaku on scenario, Ito on art direction, Yuri on CG, Yamaoka on audio... or even just long-absent Toyama. Or similarly hungry and motivated new blood.

KCET Silent Hill was always a happy accident of East meets West. Japanese horror fans and artists immersed in Western media, producing something not quite either. As has been shown over and over since, it's not something that can be faked. A solid decade-and-a-half of outsourcings to the lowest NA/EU bidder has simply burnt me out. And that's fine; the four KCET titles remain as absorbing as they ever were, being for the most part pitch-perfect examples of surrealist psycho-horror.

Not to tongue Nihon's balls too aggressively. I realise the rot had well and truly set in at Konami as early as 2002, when some beancounting assholes decided to give SH3 and SH4 progressively dwindling dev time, shoving both out the door half-complete. But then that's also a good argument to remake those games. Not SH1 or SH2, which were given the appropriate resources, and remain nigh-on perfect horror productions.

Wasn't there another SH title in development involving the "Higurashi" author? I don't know the series at all, I just remember a lot of weebs raving about it circa 2007. I'd have no more faith in that, frankly, but Konami doing the series the grand favour of developing a new game on its native soil after a practical two-decade exodus would at least be noteworthy.

Ah, days of nerdfighting youth! I heard the other day, somebody asked Masahiro Ito what SH3's Numb Bodies "represented" or "symbolised," and he replied with customary Japanese deference "They're just creatures; sorry!" :lol: :cool: Man, I remember the nerdfights that raged over SH2's TRUE & HONEST REAL ENDING and whether Valtiel was RED GOD XUCHILBARA or YELLOW GOD LOBSEL VIITH etc etc. Truly asking the big questions :shock:

I see similar today with FromSoft fans, Miyazaki and co being yet more Nihons with impeccable sense for Western horror/fantasy lore. This one motherfucker made this 30minute video on "WHAT DARK SOULS 2 REALLY MEAN, DEFINITIVE" - then the DLC came out with its new ending and completely buttfucked everything he'd said, right down to the core - so he made another video, about what it all really really meant. Image

I would jump right back into the nerdfight if something similarly oneiric and unknowable as SH3/4, let alone SH1/2 came along, but Origins, Homecoming, Shattered Memories, Downpour? Yeah no. Bought and played 'em all, gave 'em all the same patience I did KCET's. All squarely in that depressing "DURR, IN SH, MONSTERS SYMBOLISE THINGS AND TEH TOWN PUNISH U, ALSO ORDER SEVERAL TONS OF RUSTY FENCE AND RAZOR WIRE" reductionist territory, the doldrums upper management left the series in circa 2006.

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Re: Silent Hill

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Lander wrote:It's a fine game in its own right with great presentation, but a terrible remake.
2make balanced its cuts and tweaks well enough to hold up, but 3 is barely recognizable. Seeing the same happen to RE4 or SH2 would be seriously wack.
All fair points!

Honestly, when I go into a remake, movie or otherwise, I want it to be loads different--otherwise I don't see the point. From the recent RE4 footage it does appear to be shifting towards a darker tone, channeling some of those original demos. Dunno about the killer dolls and hookman, but I'm all for that. I want two experiences that are loads different, rather than just a spruced up game that I already adore.

RE3 remake missing some of the scenes or cut down is a bummer; I do lament that fact. I thought it kept the tone, feel, and overall gameplay with the more action-oriented (and accessible to probably most) over-the-shoulder view, so I was quite happy with the result. A far cry from something like the Tomb Raider reboot, which sucked every aspect of the originals dry, emphasizing action over exploration and shoehorning in trending survival mechanics and character-leveling. It's a fine line to get it right; there should be changes, but not too many.

But quite possible I'm also more forgiving, since I've either hated or been lukewarm towards everything after RE4.
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Re: Silent Hill

Post by Blinge »

BIL wrote: I see similar today with FromSoft fans, Miyazaki and co being yet more Nihons with impeccable sense for Western horror/fantasy lore. This one motherfucker made this 30minute video on "WHAT DARK SOULS 2 REALLY MEAN, DEFINITIVE" - then the DLC came out with its new ending and completely buttfucked everything he'd said, right down to the core - so he made another video, about what it all really really meant. Image
just.. beautiful :mrgreen:
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Re: Silent Hill

Post by EmperorIng »

EmperorIng wrote:Same, it's been a few years but I am starting to itch to replay 1. I had SH3 set up as the pc version with all the HD patches and it looked incredible, but now I can't find the damn exe, I bet my shitty Windows firewall deleted it, fuck this OS.
Hey, one year later, and I finally did go through the game and replay it with the HD mods etc. And this time I found out that my avast antivirus, which I should HONESTLY just get rid of (right?), was deleting the file to run the mods surreptitiously without telling me.

To be honest, some of my initial playthrough thoughts echo what some people said at the top of this page. But my second time around I think I enjoyed it more than the first, I was able to enjoy much more the game knowing its limitations (linearity, some balance issues). The world is still beautiful and the characters are still top notch. And in HD it's just gorgeous all around even when smashing fat american incels into the ground with a pipe:
Example 01
Example 02: the chuds strike back

One thing I will gripe in SH3 is the puzzle difficulty. Wanting to have a challenge I set this playthrough to maximum puzzle difficulty and man are they bullshit - if not flat out bugged. Either the clues suck and are poorly written (the hospital keypad puzzle, lmao ur face is the keypad get it), or just give flat out misinfo (the morgue puzzle, which I am certain literally gets the clue tags mixed up and they never bothered to fix it). I had to get a guide for most of them. The few I did manage to solve I felt pretty smart, to be sure, but in trying to be "hard" they sadly just ended up being stupid.

I am definitely going to download the SH2 hd mods and play through that too, it's been about 4 years since my first playthroughs so I have forgotten a lot of the game, which is about as good as you can hope for for experiencing them again!
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Re: Silent Hill

Post by Air Master Burst »

I'm still balls deep in the remake of RE2 and enjoying it a lot, so I haven't actually made it to 3 yet. Honestly though, the original RE3 kinda felt more like an expansion pack to RE2 than a full-fledged sequel anyway, so this seems super fitting.

None of the issues listed above (except the lack of Mercenaries and the STARS one-liner change) seem like bad things to me at all. The multiple choice crap was always pretty half baked, and the park and dead factory were both lame as shit anyway. And heck, I LIKE it when RE does goofy anime superhero shit, so I think I might be their target audience for the remake of 3.

Then again, I also sincerely believe the DMX music mod I installed for Mr. X is more fitting than the original RE2 music, so I might not view these games the same way as most people.

ETA: If SH2 makes it actually fun to play without sacrificing too much atmosphere, I'll call it a win no matter what individual bits they end up cutting out. Same with RE4.
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Re: Silent Hill

Post by Lander »

BIL wrote:Ah, days of nerdfighting youth! I heard the other day, somebody asked Masahiro Ito what SH3's Numb Bodies "represented" or "symbolised," and he replied with customary Japanese deference "They're just creatures; sorry!" :lol: :cool: Man, I remember the nerdfights that raged over SH2's TRUE & HONEST REAL ENDING and whether Valtiel was RED GOD XUCHILBARA or YELLOW GOD LOBSEL VIITH etc etc. Truly asking the big questions :shock:

I see similar today with FromSoft fans, Miyazaki and co being yet more Nihons with impeccable sense for Western horror/fantasy lore. This one motherfucker made this 30minute video on "WHAT DARK SOULS 2 REALLY MEAN, DEFINITIVE" - then the DLC came out with its new ending and completely buttfucked everything he'd said, right down to the core - so he made another video, about what it all really really meant. Image
The arse-shattering power of fanatic fiction. If the information does not exist, it must be created!

I'm convinced that Lord Miyazaki Revered Be His Name Esq. is onto it at this point. The Elden Ring page on Steam regularly excretes nourishing little droplets of lore with enough substance to feed the curiosity, but too little to satisfy it; potent sustenance to trickle down the loremeister pyramid and eventually pop out somewhere as Content.
BIL wrote:All squarely in that depressing "DURR, IN SH, MONSTERS SYMBOLISE THINGS AND TEH TOWN PUNISH U, ALSO ORDER SEVERAL TONS OF RUSTY FENCE AND RAZOR WIRE" reductionist territory, the doldrums upper management left the series in circa 2006.
NOW HAVE A SICK KNIFE FIGHT WITH THIS METAPHOR :o
drauch wrote:Honestly, when I go into a remake, movie or otherwise, I want it to be loads different--otherwise I don't see the point. From the recent RE4 footage it does appear to be shifting towards a darker tone, channeling some of those original demos. Dunno about the killer dolls and hookman, but I'm all for that. I want two experiences that are loads different, rather than just a spruced up game that I already adore.
Capcom's own RE1 remake is my gold standard - cutting edge in technology, recognizable enough to evoke specific memories of the original experience, but with enough new or tweaked that it can still surprise and delight you along the way. In essence, additive rather than transformative.
drauch wrote:RE3 remake missing some of the scenes or cut down is a bummer; I do lament that fact. I thought it kept the tone, feel, and overall gameplay with the more action-oriented (and accessible to probably most) over-the-shoulder view, so I was quite happy with the result. A far cry from something like the Tomb Raider reboot, which sucked every aspect of the originals dry, emphasizing action over exploration and shoehorning in trending survival mechanics and character-leveling. It's a fine line to get it right; there should be changes, but not too many.

But quite possible I'm also more forgiving, since I've either hated or been lukewarm towards everything after RE4.
I think tone and feel are the big ticket items in this modern wave of remakes, with FF7 being the most extreme example yet. The thing being remade is the idea rather than the piece of software it coalesced into, which can result in something great but loses the ability to become definitive over the original work.

That last part is what separates remake and reimagining for me, since the idea of a remake carries with it the (perfectly reasonable) admission that the original was limited or otherwise flawed, and could be executed better with modern tech, whereas a reimagining is closer to the retelling of some source material without much regard for existing incarnations. I suppose the fuzz emerges when tech starts encompassing game design as well as the actual machinery that drives it, since studios have more extensive technical and creative ambitions these days, as well as (for better and worse) more standardized frameworks through which to realize them.

And indeed, TR a pretty poor example of a follow up. I found the pain and gore of the gritty survival stuff particularly distasteful, since poking Lara full of holes and watching her suffer was always an emergent bit of player sadism within a setting that actually resembled a Proper British take on the adventurous globetrotting of Indiana Jones. Moving the franchise culturally downstream of Uncharted was straight ingominy, seeing as the original TR was a standard setter that helped form that particular niche of video games.
Air Master Burst wrote:Honestly though, the original RE3 kinda felt more like an expansion pack to RE2 than a full-fledged sequel anyway, so this seems super fitting.
There's a ring of truth there since original RE3 started life as a gaiden game before escalating to full sequel, though projecting that forward to the relationship between the remakes I'd say it's more reflective of an increased action focus and slapdash approach to planning / production than it is the implementation itself.
Air Master Burst wrote:None of the issues listed above (except the lack of Mercenaries and the STARS one-liner change) seem like bad things to me at all. The multiple choice crap was always pretty half baked, and the park and dead factory were both lame as shit anyway.
I'll admit I almost second guessed myself making an argument for the park, since the worm boss isn't exactly a gameplay high point.

But even working under the view that those elements are weak, they're still structurally significant to RE3 as a campaign. A remake is an ideal opportunity to refine them into something strong, but instead they were tossed it in favour of smaller-scope replacements that slot neatly into the linearized structure, making the game world feel smaller and less interconnected as a result.
Air Master Burst wrote:And heck, I LIKE it when RE does goofy anime superhero shit, so I think I might be their target audience for the remake of 3.
It has its place - I enjoy some boulder punching and zombie rasslin' when the times call for it, but that stuff exists post escalation to global biological war where there's some tenuous precedent for super heroes fighting super baddies.

As RE anime moments go, the 3make ender is fucking radical, but that doesn't make it fit any better in a time where Umbrella is ostensibly still in its covert tinkering phase. After the hype wears off, it comes off as incongruous that Leon is a few blocks over desparately trying to subdue a rampaging William Birkin with wimpy conventional guns.
Air Master Burst wrote:ETA
I'm curious, what's this an acronym of? Evidently not Estimated Time of Arrival.
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Re: Silent Hill

Post by Air Master Burst »

Lander wrote:It has its place - I enjoy some boulder punching and zombie rasslin' when the times call for it, but that stuff exists post escalation to global biological war where there's some tenuous precedent for super heroes fighting super baddies.

As RE anime moments go, the 3make ender is fucking radical, but that doesn't make it fit any better in a time where Umbrella is ostensibly still in its covert tinkering phase. After the hype wears off, it comes off as incongruous that Leon is a few blocks over desparately trying to subdue a rampaging William Birkin with wimpy conventional guns.
Basically everything made after RE3 is anime as fuck no matter where it lands in the timeline, and it wasn't a gradual change, either. Code Veronica begins with batshit Matrix insanity straight away in the opening cut scene, and it's set THREE MONTHS after RE2. RE1 remake and RE0 have a good bit of this as well (basically the entire Lisa Trevor thing, Opera Leech Marcus, copious goofy bullet time cut scenes, etc.).
Lander wrote:I'm curious, what's this an acronym of? Evidently not Estimated Time of Arrival.
Edited To Add. I always like to announce it for clarity, especially since the forum only notes it if someone else replies first.
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Re: Silent Hill

Post by Lander »

Air Master Burst wrote:Basically everything made after RE3 is anime as fuck no matter where it lands in the timeline, and it wasn't a gradual change, either. Code Veronica begins with batshit Matrix insanity straight away in the opening cut scene, and it's set THREE MONTHS after RE2. RE1 remake and RE0 have a good bit of this as well (basically the entire Lisa Trevor thing, Opera Leech Marcus, copious goofy bullet time cut scenes, etc.).
Sure it was - you just have to pretend CV wasn't going to be mainline before getting side-game'd in favour of 3, then 4>6 goes superspy, supersoldier, super world heroes :P

RE0 I can't argue against - that shit was maximum loopy as soon as the singing started, much to my chagrin. Though I thought Lisa was in-line with RE1's contemporary tone even with the Motherrr melodrama.
Air Master Burst wrote:Edited To Add. I always like to announce it for clarity, especially since the forum only notes it if someone else replies first.
Ah, gotcha. I assumed it was "getting back on topic" or similar.
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Re: Silent Hill

Post by Immryr »

using an acronym that only you know the meaning of doesn't really do much to add clarity :wink:
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Re: Silent Hill

Post by Air Master Burst »

Immryr wrote:using an acronym that only you know the meaning of doesn't really do much to add clarity :wink:
Back in the caveman days when message boards still ruled the earth it was a common one, but that was several internet epochs ago and I guess I shouldn't expect anyone to still understand a dead language.
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oh sweet silent times

Post by NYN »

Late as ever, it came to my attention that 3 games are "in production" now. One a saucy remake of 2. Well, huh.
Not surprised by the nerve, yet not angry. Need-to attitude in this gloriously bankrupt age. We all needs monehs. The great wheel DOTDOTDOT
"Tern tern tern the numbers"

I feel I can withhold any heartbeats to elevate this news. Whatever this becomes it will not be my Silent Hill. I mean I never played the ones that followed Team Silent, so I can keep it in this time, too. Original band members only.

Oh, and a new movie. By the same director who made the flatulent original. Sure he waited for this. Naah, thanks.

It is time to re-play.
"I've transmuted into a super being. I'll proof it by killing you." -NGIII ( words to kill by )
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BIL
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Re: Silent Hill

Post by BIL »

I'm very mildly interested in the SH2 remake, for one reason and one only; Masahiro Ito (OG art director, SH1-3) is apparently working on it. He's a cool guy and a huge part of the KCET games' style, so assuming the latest batch of contractors don't shit the bed, I might have a go. Will have to wait to hear from my trusted peeps, a very different but equally hardcore bunch to my men of Hard Gayming. Image

Also Yamaoka is back on sound, but frankly, he is a fucking chocolate fireguard when it comes to QA. Great music and sound direction, worthless otherwise. Really wish they could've tempted back either Keiichiro Toyama (series creator, flew the coop after SH1, created the Siren games which are very good), or Hiroyuki Owaku and Takayoshi Sato (SH2's writing team, basically, the latter also a goddamn CG wizard). Ah fuck, here I go assembling my never-gon-happen dream team again.

I had a thinkythunk about my last post ITT, re the outsources. It struck me that I was slightly uncharitable. Each had a kernel or two of genuine quality. Drowned out in a torrent of shit, yes, but it's worth noting. ("worth noting" and "worth nothing" are just a shot of H apart - coincidence, I think not!)

Origins: some of the the tracknames are fuckin ill. No this one is the worst of the batch by far, right from the concept. What improves a horror story? Explaining everything! Hey remember when the cult were a handful of hicks meeting in the back of a drugstore? Yeah now they have a James Bond villain lair with knockout gas. Fuck off.

(I wouldn't be so mean if OP was still visiting, he was always such a nice dude and liked the outsourcings. as random horror games reminiscent of KCET Silent Hill? serviceable! As genuine Silent Hills? They can taste mah fockin shoe tha wee fannehs

apologies in advance if you come back and see this bro, sorry for harshing your thread, it's all love I swear 3; turn love around though and you get WHITE HOT HATRED :shock: Image)

Homecoming: the material concerning mass psychosis, filial piety, and the ability of faith to do both profound good and terrible harm is quality, and in stronger hands, might've created something truly disturbing and heartbreaking. Unfortunately, the surrounding work is SH The Movie: The Game feat. Carl Winslow. Idiotic, cheap, chintzy and loud, just like the movie. "Order Soldiers?" Yeah get fucked.

The ending "twist" re LIL BRO is jaw-droppingly poor.
Spoiler
I remember pre-release, joking with MUH BOIS, "it better not be 'I killed him, in a markedly different fashion!' "
Shattered Memories: again, the concept of memory and the private dimension all parents keep from their children (well, sensible parents, anyway) is rich dark soil, and the main character's connection to his daughter is a merciful return to SH2's inexplicably never-revisited mundanity. I love the other three but I like my psychological horror quotidian, less Shoot The Baphomet. You know?

This gets the closest, by far, of the outsources to a decent non-KCET entry. The chase mechanic annoys many but tbh, I don't really care about SH gameplay as long as it's not godawful, ala a couple of boss fights across the four KCET games. The monster designs, or rather design, is weak, too, but serviceable. The environments, character models, and voice acting, I loved, and as said, it's the human element I treasure from old SH.

I only wish they hadn't gone with that stupid EVERYTHING U KNOW IS WRAWNG marketing gimmick. It's tritely immersion-breaking, and outside of the most oilslick-deep ShamaLamaDingDong twists - wow! this character who is nothing remotely like another character from SH1 besides their name and occupation turned out to be very different! amazing! - it has utter fuck-all to do with the story.

By that same token, it can be ignored, but why even graffiti a good story so? What was the point? Not a great SH, and cruelly saddled with a lame marketing gimmick, but forgiven that, it's the nearest these outsources got to KCET quality by miles.

Downpour: that setpiece in the theatre is absolutely ingenious. And yet again, the story has quality at its core - an unrepentant vigilante is a great concept for an SH protagonist, mercifully not another Jimmy knockoff ala Homecoming.

Unfortunately, in the most devastating bedshitting of these games yet, equivalent to a man explosively defecating down both his pants legs immediately after shaking his intended father-in-law's hand, they went with a multiple-choice protagonist. What the FUCK :lol: :lol: :lol:

Hey kids! Is Murphy

1) Jesus
2) Kinda ok I guess
3) Bit of a dick tbh
4) Hitler

???

Mind-blowing. How the fuck? A character study without a character. Oof.

Anyway I'm sure everything will suck. 3;
Last edited by BIL on Sun Mar 26, 2023 5:19 am, edited 1 time in total.
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NYN
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robbie rabbit killer the game

Post by NYN »

You made me happy with that post. :D Thanks.

I'm looking over the official shop as it is, and now, before the flood of new merch, I can't say I feel mundane pain about a defunct ip for many years. That Jasper T, I don't mind telling, I would wear it around my neck. And that with the hole in the chest, too! There is some blood on some of the keys.... motive is even cool. P-thing is tourism, though. Hey kiddies, any idea what v-games this merch salutes? No? You will, after the remake.
"I've transmuted into a super being. I'll proof it by killing you." -NGIII ( words to kill by )
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Re: Silent Hill

Post by BareKnuckleRoo »

birru wrote:Homecoming: the material concerning mass psychosis, filial piety, and the ability of faith to do both profound good and terrible harm is quality, and in stronger hands, might've created something truly disturbing and heartbreaking. Unfortunately, the surrounding work is SH The Movie: The Game feat. Carl Winslow. Idiotic, cheap, chintzy and loud, just like the movie. "Order Soldiers?" Yeah get fucked.
Silent Hill Homecoming gets a ton of hate, much of it rightly deserved. I don't think it's an unforgivably bad game, certainly not an unplayable one (as long as you don't trigger a softlock bug, I've run into this once in the church) but it obviously doesn't stand up to SH1 through 4.

It felt like it tried way too hard to trot out thematic elements of SH2 without understanding why they worked. Pyramid Head for instance shows up as a cameo a couple of times, but is entirely meaningless for Alex since his guilt is mostly misplaced. Alex might feel guilt, but he's not actually a murderer like James is (the death was accidental, whereas James definitely murdered Mary and the question up for interpretation is how sympathetic his motivations were). I wrote a long tl;dr rant years ago on GameFAQs about how Homecoming is such a weak entry, both in terms of gameplay and thematically, which might be of interest:

• The introduction dream sequence heals you at the end, but you carry any healing items with you, so performing well allows you to "start" the rest of the game with more healing items. You also encounter Judge Holloway and can talk to her in her office before heading home, and it's possible to talk to her after you've found the serum in one of the other rooms. At no point do you question her why an experimental drug's just laying around, nor can you ask her anything terribly meaningful about the state of the town. Contrast this to the earlier games; by the time you start picking up the various healing items or weapons laying inexplicably around, you've already encountered strange monsters in the "real" world. Harry chats with Cybil and is given a gun, James is warned by Angela, and Heather meets an actual monster in the mall before she starts finding gameplay items. It's easier to shrug off carting around all these healing items and weapons if you start doing so after you've actually met something threatening. But in SH:H, Alex has just woken up from a dream while hitchhiking with a trucker, and he's already running around with his combat knife out carrying multiple healing items. You literally can't put the knife away so you run into Judge Holloway and your mother running around your hometown with a knife in hand and get no comment on it! The dream sequence also doesn't play out like a true tutorial such as in SH3 where you can experiment and use your resources without losing them when you've completed it. These elements all contribute to SH:H feeling like it has a weird opening sequence.

• None of the character interactions feel terribly meaningful, even though you have limited dialogue options during some of them. Nobody you encounter provides any real information despite living in the town, and few actually comment on the weird shit you encounter until you meet up with Wheeler. For instance, Elle doesn't comment on the destroyed roads or the monsters despite a crashed policecar basically being directly in front of where she's stapling up pictures. Curtis actually does chat a bit about the weird shit, namely how all the clocks have stopped, but that's the extent of it from him. Wheeler is basically a breath of fresh air when he acknowledges the hostile monsters that have appeared, being the first character to do so after you've met Judge Holloway, your mother, Elle, Curtis, a vision of Josh in the hotel, the woman in the hotel room, and Sam Bartlett. Contrast this to all the other major games; you meet lots of people who are quick to admit weird stuff is going on; it doesn't go undiscussed the way it does for a lengthy stretch of Homecoming. You quickly encounter Cybil, Dahlia, Kaufman, and Lisa who all are aware weird stuff is afoot (Dahlia is a bit of a crackpot of course but by that point you can't deny she's aware of things, even if you don't know her connection yet). James starts off the game by getting warned by Angela of the town's danger, and discusses it later with Eddie and Maria in that he's afraid for Laura (he doesn't realize the town isn't manifesting anything dangerous for Laura). Heather runs into Claudia who makes religious ramblings that tells you she's well aware and probably responsible for what's going on, and later Douglas expresses his concern over what's happening after the Split Worm battle, having seen the monsters himself before Heather heads home on the subway, unaware her ordeal is far from over. Silent Hill: Homecoming, despite having a relatively huge cast of characters you interact with, takes so long to actually meet someone else who acknowledges the monsters that are clearly physically present that it feels very odd. The crashed cop car outside the police station and the monster dog elicits no comment from Elle whatsoever, despite it being only a few yards away.

• Characters are repeatedly killed off in cutscenes, only to be reintroduced as if they miraculously survived, without getting any comment from Alex. Wheeler being attacked by a Siam and then reappearing alive is at least sort of believable, but Elle disappears after screaming horrifically, leaving behind her radio in a massive pool of blood, with stains leading to an open sewer grate. Examining the blood makes Alex comment that he's not sure how anyone could survive that much blood loss, yet Alex doesn't express worry to Wheeler that Elle is hurt, or dead. Just that she's "disappeared". Wheeler pulls another disappearing act when he's grabbed by Asphyxia, only to be found alive (but not well) at the end of the game where, despite being stabbed by a dozen or so knives, he's miraculously fixable with a medkit. Wheeler is then nowhere to be seen in the good ending despite Elle being tasked with dragging him to safety. It's tough to swallow, honestly. If I had to point at what the worst part of the game's plot is, I'd say it's how many times NPCs are shown as having been attacked, only to then show up perfectly fine later without any kind of comment.

SH1's characters are introduced and interacted with much more believably, such as with Lisa's final scene, or where Cybil has been turned into a parasite host. The closest SH2 has to such a thing is with Laura, where she locks you in the hospital basement and a boss battle ensues. James makes no comment on this event to Laura when much later he finds her in the hotel, but at that point he's seen Maria die multiple times. It's clear supernatural stuff is going on that's tied to the characters' respective pasts, and it's much more plausible that James works out that Laura literally doesn't see any monsters (or he's too focused on meeting Mary in the hotel when he meets up with Laura again to comment on her having locked him in a room where monsters tried to kill him). SH3 has Douglas immediately commenting on the threat of monsters after fighting the first major boss, and multiple characters get killed or wounded, with no "just kidding" scenes occurring soon after.

• The melee weapons in the earlier games are better balanced and differentiated so that it feels like there's a real progression in terms of finding better tools as you progress. SH1 has multiple melee weapons, and the hammer in SH1 feels like a truly usable upgrade over the knife and pipe. SH2's three melee weapons serve distinct roles, SH3's melee weapons are all useful except for the exceptionally weak knife (the pipe deals slightly more damage per hit than the katana and lets you move when using it making it always effective on hitting jumping dogs, but it slower to use and recover when hitting at low stamina, making the katana better for when up close and trading hits while blocking, the maul is a specialty weapon for Slurpers but can also be made useful on other enemies with some effort). SH:H however gives you the best melee weapon at the start of the game, the knife. Unlike the earlier games, the knife is strong, with a full combo doing as much damage as the other weapons can, while stunlocking faster enemies like nurses effectively and letting you recover from attacks quickly so as to be ready to block. Your sidestepping speed sucks in SH:H, and the pipe's range is iffy especially on shorter enemies, and the axe is strong but very slow, making it risky to do full combos or charged hits, and ineffective on fast enemies.

• The guns are mostly useless in serious fights compared to earlier games. This is in part because of a deliberate lack of ammo capacity, but mostly because you can't block attacks with a gun equipped. The dodge button won't block hits with your gun raised and instead does a flimsy dodge roll which does nothing to deflect attacks that hit. It makes it extremely risky to use a gun on anything that you can't kill quick enough to prevent it from getting into melee range. This includes dogs, Siam, Scarlet, Asphyxia, and the annoying needlers who block gun attacks from the front (fortunately the shotgun and rifle seem to be capable of hitting them from the front with some reliability). If you could actually block as effectively with a gun as you can with a melee weapon (like in SH3) then guns wouldn't have felt as nerfed. Instead, SH:H has limited ammo reserves, no auto lock on aiming, no blocking allowed when using guns. You absolutely have to get good with melee to succeed, there's no freedom of how to tackle enemies like there was in the previous games, where effective melee and ranged strategies existed for almost everything. The most important thing I found was being aggressive about using the bigger guns on normal enemies, since the only bosses I found I could safely gun down were Sepulcher's first phase, and Amnion, who has a large arena and several attacks that give you opportunities to fire at them.

• Limited unlocks compared to the early games. There's only two bonus weapons, with the remaining options being cosmetic unlocks (costumes). No bullet adjust option, additional difficulties, blood amount, no option to disable the graphical noise filter, etc. No extra difficulty modes, no puzzle adjustments, etc. You're mostly encouraged to replay it to find all the collectable pictures.

• Puzzles are uninteresting. There are limited word puzzles in the game, and the one in the prison consists of solving three riddles that are common enough that you may well have heard of the answers before. The puzzles that were made specifically for the game and are unique consist of multiple wiring puzzles which are a trial and error solution, the relatively easy puzzles in the house, and the puzzle at the end of the game, which can be again does through trial and error due to how it works and how it has limited numbers of possible combinations instead of puzzles with a 4 digit code. There's one sneaky puzzle in the police garage where the number pad accepts many more digits than the correct answer which may throw players off, and it happens to be one that you don't need to solve to progress.

The earlier Silent Hill games, particularly 2 and 3 had very interesting wordplay puzzles made specifically for the game. Nothing like that to be found in Homecoming.

• The endings in Homecoming don't feel meaningful, mostly because they're disconnected from the game's events. Two of them outright say the game was just a long dream sequence. For example, the "good" ending has no mention of what happened to Wheeler at all (is he dead, did Elle manage to get him out). The "drowning" ending is an interesting and terrifying "what if Josh had survived" but renders the events of the game irrelevant. Same goes for the "hospital" ending, it turns the events of the game into a dream sequence or delusion and renders them irrelevant. The "pyramid head" ending is a cheap excuse to feature the classic SH2 enemy. Is Alex really a monster worthy of being sealed into such a thing because he's unable to forgive his father (or rather the voice in the empty confessional), or because he's too scared to put a bullet in his mother (which would be understandable; if you pick the "good" choice and examine her after he even wonders if he didn't do enough to try and save her)? Not attempting to save Wheeler is the only truly significantly evil moral choice here I think, and it's frankly a miracle anyone could survive that many knives jabbed that deeply into them. Having the town punish him to that extent for his choices is... hard to believe. Other than the joke UFO ending, only the "good" ending and the "pyramid head" ending actually makes the events you've been through meaningful.

Contrast this with SH1's endings where all of the endings make the game's events feel at least meaningful, aside from the Bad Ending where it's foreshadowed early on as a macabre possibility (and you're told in the rankings it's a bad ending, hinting at the existence of better ones). SH2's endings also all make the plot have impact, and don't remove any importance from the experience James have gone through. He either leaves town with Laura (whether he adopts her in this ending is debatable, Laura may still be mad about the whole killing Mary thing), is unable to let go of his desire for Maria as a surrogate Mary, can't bear to live any longer without Mary, or tries to resurrect Mary. All of these make sense in context (especially with how and don't remove any weight from the events of the game). SH3 only has one ending on a first playthrough, but the second still makes sense given the game's events. In the possessed ending, she stands over a dead Douglas with knife in hand, suggesting she gave in to her hatred and killed him for having helped unwittingly drag her into this mess and get her father killed. SH4's multiple endings all make sense as well and don't reduce the events to a mere dream sequence, aside from the bad ending where the protagonists end up dead.

It's also dumb because it's the only entry I know of where you can get the UFO ending on a first playthrough by accident, without doing anything too unusual: It's the only game where the UFO ending can be obtained by accident and doesn't require any unusual steps to obtain (does not shoot his mother, does not forgive his father, saves Wheeler). These are all reasonable things for a player to potentially select on a first playthrough, even if the first two are not presented as the "correct" things to do as per the good ending.
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