Caltrops - Silent Hill: Shattered Memories





	[quote name="Rafiki"]They should have named it Boring, because that's what it is. I've never played any of the earlier Silent Hill games, so after I'm done describing Shattered Memories if the gameplay is identical to the earlier ones I'm going to need someone to explain why they were ever popular in the first place. Then if you liked them I'm going to passive-aggressively make fun of you by setting up a bunch of Caltrops Steam community events calling you a fag. In Shattered memories you run through a linear, completely empty segment of town until you reach the end. Then you solve a simple puzzle and are transported into the nightmare world. In the nightmare world, you run through a frozen replica of town being chased by demons made out of hamburger, constantly checking your map so you can know which way to go. You can't attack the meat demons, you can only run away and shake them off. When you get to the end, you solve a simple puzzle and are transported back to a different segment of the real world. Pretty sure it goes back and forth like this until the end of the game, but I stopped 6 or 7 hours into it. That's pretty much the entire game. To the game's credit, the story was just weird enough to keep me playing because I kind of wanted to see how it would turn out, but after the 7th hour of nothing happening it was too boring to continue and I figured there was no way the ending would be worth it. Since Shattered Memories is on the Wii it includes possibly the worst ideas for motion controls in the (short) history of motion controls. Picking up cans to tip them over to make a key fall out, unlatching a door, turning knobs, rolling down a car window with a rotating handle, pulling out nails to pry open a window. People actually sat down to discuss how to implement motion controls for this game and those were all ideas that made it into the "fun" column. They're also all things that require some degree of manual precision, which a plastic bar you hold in the palm of your hand doesn't offer. Playing this game is like running around with a plastic claw grabber in your hand. The game also claims to [sneer quotes]psychologically profile[sneer quotes] you while you're playing. It actually turns out to be one of the cleverest ideas in the game, but I don't think the implementation really works. At the start of the game you get some stupid quiz which asks you questions about things like alcohol consumption, how you would describe your personality, and relationship habits. I made myself out to be an alcoholic sex pervert because that's what I wanted to be when I grew up. When I played through the game, women were slutty looking and there seemed to be a lot of sexual imagery. Then I lost my savegame and when I started over I made myself out to be a sheltered weiner because that's what I grew up to be. There wasn't any change in the game, so I just assumed it was stupid. Seems fair. Turns out the way it "profiles" you is by whether or not you fixate on certain things in the environment, like used condoms or heartwarming family photographs. Problem is, there's a lot more sexual objects scattered around so the deck is kind of stacked against you. Plus, sexual things seem much more prominent. In the room of one building there's a pretty small family photograph sitting on a desk that doesn't really stand out as anything special, and then one room away is a gigantic bathroom wall scrawling about how a cheerleader was spitroasted by an entire football team. Kind of unfair to call me a pervert when you're the one shoving dicks in my face. Plus, the game doesn't really explain that that's how it works (thanks Gamefaqs [and I get that they didn't want people to cheat the system]), so I was just running around looking at everything because that's all there is to do.[/quote]