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Silent Hill: Shattered Memories

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This game changes more than I thought! In that trailer compared to the walkthrough, you still meet a cop in the dinner but this one appears to be a friendly cop as apposed to the angry unhelpful one!

Guess maybe if you tick the profile box 'been unfaithful' or something, the game treats you more harshly throughout!

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That trailer and those gameplay videos just got me all excited about this again :D

 

I really love how this seems alot more open than other games in the series but the one thing I'd criticise it for is for not keeping the 'rusty' feel of previous installments.

 

But who knows, this might work just as well.::shrug:

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Have been watching a few vids of this on Gametrailers, absolutely loving what I've seen so far. :awesome:

This game will definitely help me to forget about the disappointment of no Fatal Frame 4.

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That trailer and those gameplay videos just got me all excited about this again :D

 

I really love how this seems alot more open than other games in the series but the one thing I'd criticise it for is for not keeping the 'rusty' feel of previous installments.

 

But who knows, this might work just as well.::shrug:

 

Yeah, I liked the rusty vision of hell, it looked a lot scarier than this frozen one. I especially liked the way it was portrayed in the film.

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IGN - Roundtable

Harry Mason's having a bad, bad day. Again. And you're going to love it.

 

We sat down with Konomi producer Tomm Hulett and Sam Barlow, Climax Group's (Overloard: Dark Legacy) lead designer for Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, the franchises first bite on the Wii, and peeled back a few layers of the madness. First and foremost: it's all about your demons... you, the gamer.

 

Shattered Memories is a re-imagining of the first Silent Hill from 1999, and Barlow wanted to bring the gameplay and the story forward to better reflect how gamers play ten years after the original. As such, they've kept the core emotional story - Harry searching for his missing daughter - and crafted a new, contemporary story around it, relevant to today's audience. Longtime fans will recognize a few returning characters, but don't expect the same motives and interactions as before.

 

That, in part, is due to the all-knowing, all-seeing Psych Profile system that follows your every move. The game opens with a flash-forward to a psychologist's office where you fill out a questionnaire, giving you a base profile to start from. That alone changes the world around you once you reach the Hill; you might run into a female cop who's openly hostile to you if you admitted to a little infidelity on the form. From there, everything you see and do in the game continues to evolve your environment. If you've had a drinking problem, where another play sees soda cans, you'll see beer bottles. Keep checking out the girly posters scattered around town, and that cop might also sport some cleavage... and the monsters crawling out of the darkness take on grotesquely female traits.

 

Moreover, you'll return to the psychologist's office throughout the game for more and deeper tests. Barlow stayed light on specifics, but indicated they would take a more advanced tone than the questionnaire, such as Rorschach-like tests. Barlow and game director Mark Simmons brought in composer Akira Yamaoka and University of England psychologists to consult on the game, and actually went into therapy themselves as part of the research process.

 

Also of utmost important to their design philosophy: maintaining the suspense. To that end, they've focused on keeping players immersed at all times. Menus are accessed from your all-purpose cell phone, which also gives you critical clues and messages from your missing daughter. Cell phone voices come through the Wiimote speaker. Clues to items with an emotional resonance - revealed with your camera phone - will all be visual (a flicker of your flashlight) or audible (the classic radio static).

 

Another big choice was to move away from what Barlow and Hulett called the "action-horror" genre and get Silent Hill back to real survival horror. That means Harry's only weapons are his wits, and you can expect nightmare sequences where you're simply running for your life. Evasion and escape is the name of the game. Harry can knock stuff over to hinder his pursuers, and if he picks up a few precious flares, he can drop one at a choke point to bar their way completely. Until the flare dies, or the beasties figure a way around it. And they will. Once those creatures have your scent, they're very reluctant to let you go.

 

Neither Barlow nor Hulett would confirm the inclusion of boss battles in the game, suggesting that players would instead face something more like boss situations... moments of high dramatic tension that make you call on all your skills to survive.

 

Silent Hill: Shattered Memories has been clocked at 6 to 9 hours, but replayability on this one is going to be high. Barlow and Climax have designed from the ground up, with Climax's in-house engine, to please and defy Hill devotees' own memories of the franchise and create an entirely new and memorable experience. We're expecting great things when it releases this Fall.

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Dissapointed with the length at 6-9hrs! Even if there is somewhat of a replayablity factor.

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Dissapointed with the length at 6-9hrs! Even if there is somewhat of a replayablity factor.

 

I think this is my only gripe with the game... but yeah, looks to have a good deal of replayability.

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So ridiculous, lol.

 

:heh:

 

I mean, Silent Hill is known for it's fantastic imagery... this is just way too poor. =/

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Conveys the meaning of the title nicely. Frozen girl. If she falls of swing, she'll shatter and I'm guessing the girl has something to do with the story, i.e. a memory. So yeh, conveys the title well. I like it anyway. Very out there. Don't think many would try something like this for a retail release.

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I'm liking the box art. Its not mindblowing, but i like it. No idea how it compares to the others though.

 

Has this got a Euro release yet?

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Mmmm, that boxart is creepy and lovely. I have a question regarding boxart, I hope it is not a stupid question. When boxart like this is released what kind of time frame are we looking at for the games release. A month? 2 perhaps or more? Is there a hard and fast rule regarding this or should I not get my hopes up too early at this stage of the game?

Thanks in advance for your help.

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Mmmm, that boxart is creepy and lovely. I have a question regarding boxart, I hope it is not a stupid question. When boxart like this is released what kind of time frame are we looking at for the games release. A month? 2 perhaps or more? Is there a hard and fast rule regarding this or should I not get my hopes up too early at this stage of the game?

Thanks in advance for your help.

 

Hmm. It's a very good question, actually. Thinking about it, there isn't really a rule, but it IS a good sign for the game's release when a final box art does get released. Obviously there are exceptions... Darkside Chronicles box art was released a few weeks back and I still believe that's a 2010 game. All I can say for Silent Hill is that this is a strong indication that it won't get delayed til next year, but I could end up eating my words very shortly (hope not).

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Dissapointed with the length at 6-9hrs! Even if there is somewhat of a replayablity factor.

 

I'm pretty sure all the old games are that length??

 

I remember the first survival horror game I ever thought was "long" was RE4.

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I'm pretty sure all the old games are that length??

 

I remember the first survival horror game I ever thought was "long" was RE4.

 

Funny you should say that, birthday boy. Hand on heart, this morning I finally completed the original Resident Evil (GCN) for the first time, after having bought it back in early 2006. I never really got into it, but my anticipation for this Silent Hill actually made me determined to go back and finish it over this summer. My total game time as 13 hours 9 minutes, but with my playthrough spanning over several years, I kind of lost perspective of whether the game felt 'long' or not :heh:

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What? You guys aren't being sarcastic about the box art? Dear lord.

 

Apparently not, I find it horrid.

Not that it indicates anything about game.

 

Also, I need a release date!

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Apparently not, I find it horrid.

Not that it indicates anything about game.

 

Also, I need a release date!

 

That sure is some horrible box-art right there.

 

 

Ah... the comfortable embrace of sanity.

 

It's even worst than the cover for the original!

 

986390021-00.jpg

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GamesCon Trailer and Screens

 

GC 09 IGN Preview:

Konami wants you to know that its disturbing new Wii game, in development by Climax Studios (Overlord: Dark Legend), is watching you. Not only that, but it's analyzing your every move, every last subtle nuance of the decisions you make and the way you play. And all the while the frighteningly dark title is reacting to your actions, switching things up, changing the way characters behave, the way monsters look, and perhaps even the way your main character and his daughter develop. Why all the dynamics? Because the studio wants to remove any air of predictability from the experience as it crafts a new take on the Silent Hill franchise that, if successful, will both shock and scare you even as it leaves you guessing.

 

The publisher released a semi-new trailer of Shattered Memories, set to debut for Wii later this year in America, at the Gamescom event in Cologne, Germany this week. What exactly does semi-new mean? "We noticed that in Germany they've always gotten E3 assets, which is kind of boring. So we took our E3 trailer and used the psych profile to change all of it," producer Tom Hulett recently explained to me. "So it'll be similar, but you'll kind of get a feel for what can change as you play through the game." Thus, if you want to see some subtle changes that become apparent when you're looking for them, go ahead and re-watch the E3 trailer and then take a look at the new one from Germany. Or, of course, you could just watch the exclusive walkthroughs provided in today's story, specially crafted by Konami to demonstrate the very same feature.

 

 

Check out our first playthrough here, and then click over to page2 and see the game's major changes.

 

What, exactly, is the end goal to all of this psych profiling? According to Hulett, the series has always been about psychology. "So when you get to the end of the games, you look back and you think, 'Oh, I see. This monster looked like that. This happened and that happened, plot wise, and all of these things apply to the main character,'" said Hulett. "And we thought about how to make that interesting because returning fans will sit down, play it, and think that everything they see is going to apply to the main character somehow so they already know what to expect. So we turned it into a gameplay element and made it so that when you play the things you see are about [you]." The developer is, in a way, tailoring the experience directly for every individual and when you finally reach the end, it hopes that you will ask, what does that say about me?

 

Of course, there's also the replay value factor, not to be ignored. In addition to an experience that changes both subtly and dramatically as you play depending on your decisions, there are multiple endings to be had. Hulett wouldn't say just how many when pressed on the subject, but there are definitely more than two.

 

You start your psych profile at the psychologist's office. A well-groomed man pours a drink and asks you to answer a series of questions about your behavior -- have you ever cheated on your wife? Do you drink alcohol? -- the list goes on. And that's the base for the game's evaluation of you. The psychologist will return a couple more times throughout the adventure with different tests like the Rorschach, all of them designed to continue to the profile. "The quiz at the beginning isn't the only quiz," explained Hulett. "There are different activities. For instance, in one of them you're coloring. In another, you're arranging pictures. The psychiatrist's tests are there to be like, 'Hey, remember. We're inside your head.'"

 

How, exactly will your behavior change the gameplay world? Some of the tweaks will be so subtle that you probably won't even notice them. For example, a different shade of color or a changed lighting effect on the inside of a hallway. But others will be more noticeable. Shortly into the game, main character, Harry Mason, encounters a female police officer in a diner as he looks for his missing daughter. The police officer is short, angry, and more or less demands that he give up the search and return home. Had Mason's profile started differently, however, she might've been exceptionally nice to him, ready to lend a helpful hand.

 

You can also go to a bar, but I've always found myself at the diner due to my psych profile. "I've seen a lot of people online how to get certain things and they assume that if you say you like to drink and then look at all the beer in the room you'll get to the bar. But it's actually based on how outgoing you might be. So more outgoing people might end up a different place than the diner," said Hulett.

 

Konami also hopes the profile system will nurture uniquely assigned scares based on what it thinks will frighten you. For example, if you happen to be frightened by drunk people getting angry, said Hulett, the title might read that and attempt to scare you by calling upon something similar as a spook tactic. The title examines everything you do -- it isn't merely reading your top-line behaviors -- and can make changes based on that. So, if you spin around wildly by a loud noise rather than ignore it, there's a good chance Shattered Memories will cue up more traditional bangs and screams to keep your level of fear up. "It can tell if you're a careful person or if you're just kind of in it to see the story scenes. It can tell how you're playing," said Hulett.

 

The monsters, too, will change. I noticed that some fans on message boards were concerned that the shambling baddies in Shattered Memories all looked the same in early footage. According to Hulett, though, that's not at all the case because they will evolve into different forms based on your decisions and behaviors. "It's not like there's four monsters and you get one of them. They're constantly evolving and changing based on where your profile's out. We've actually shown a couple examples in the two trailers that you've seen so far," he clarified. "For example, Silent Hill's always had the sexual type monsters, so if you have a sexual profile, they might like more like Silent Hill 2 monsters than otherwise."

 

And your daughter, who has gone missing in the beginning of the game and only communicates to you by way of an iPhone like handheld, spouting warnings like, "You have to run, daddy!" When asked if she would also change and evolve throughout the story, Hulett paused a moment and finally offered, "Maybe. That's a loaded question. There's a lot to that one." So take what you will from that, but I'm sure there are a few surprises that lay in store. Harry himself will also change throughout the game, donning new clothing and, of course, changing his reasons for performing certain actions depending on your play choices.

 

Hulett said that while he's been playing the game for many months now, when he made the submission to the ratings board, he found things that he had never seen before. He concluded: "I just want to stress that the game is watching everything you do. It's not just taking that opening set of questions and building the game off that. And also that it doesn't put you on a track. You don't jump from the good track to the bad track to the sex track. It's all constantly evolving and changing."

 

GC 09 Playthrough 1

 

GC 09 Playthrough 2

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Going by those 18 mins alone... it's not gonna be better than 2 or 3.

 

It is the first few mins played with parts removed.

The 2nd video is the 2nd playable of the first mins to show the differences of gameplay.

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It is the first few mins played with parts removed.

The 2nd video is the 2nd playable of the first mins to show the differences of gameplay.

 

I got that. Still, the atmosphere is too sane, is what I meant. I'm pretty sure I'm gonna love it. Just not as much as 2.

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