I took a brief stab at some more Muramasa and got up to a new boss on each character, but man, those bosses are getting brutal.  I really do want to continue on and marvel more at the amazing art that game offers.  I might just put set it to easy mode just so I can go through and see everything.

Work on Lock’s Quest continues still, again 5 minutes at a time.

But the big one this week was Silent Hill: Shattered Memories.

I’ve already beaten a first play through.  The game seems fairly short (read concise), and I like that.  The old games used exploration of unknown areas and the constant threat of enemy attack as their main method of tension, and that was all well and good.  Compared to Shattered Memories which replaced that with the confusion and heart-pounding terror of the “escape sequences.”  In theory, that sounds awesome.  But I just found them to be too confusing for their own good.  I found I would have to make numerous attempts at the later stages just to feel out the plausible areas to run through to get to the goal.  My belief is that the terror in these instances is supposed to be fun, but I found it mostly tedious.  The exception to this being the next to last escape, which I will add in spoiler tags for those who don’t wish to ruin it.

In a way, though, I was also slightly disappointed.  Again, as the old games had a constant threat of attack and sudden transformation, Shattered Memories decision to do away with combat and focus on the escape meant the only enemies exist within those sequences.  Once I figured that out, I felt no tension at all during the exploration phases.  Only a deep tinge overshadowed by my desire to continue and find more “points of interest,” like the picture points or artifacts.

One great part of the game was the mechanics of the Wii remote.  I seriously cannot see why anyone would play this game on anything but the Wii.  The flashlight pointing is very intuitive (although the act of pushing a monster off me generally got me turned around longer than I would have liked because of it).  But more so, I was fascinated with the use of the Wii remote’s speaker to play audio clips, and at such a low volume as to require you to place it to your ear, effectively imitating the cell phone motion itself, bringing the player a real feeling of immersion from that simple act.

In all, however, I enjoyed this departure from the series I was used to.  And some final spoiler thoughts below.

And finally, to the point of all this.  The Silent Hill series is one of those gaming experiences that profoundly altered my perception of games.  Whereas I don’t experience much fear in so-called “horror films,” the Silent Hill games have never ceased to terrify me.  As much as I love my favorite of them all, SH2, I still find it difficult to sit down and play through it subsequent times because the atmosphere and plot are so well crafted.  I have no doubt that there will be some homage to the series, whether it be brief bits of interest or mechanic styles, to be found in my own work, especially my forthcoming metroidvania style, Scale.