With our Nintendo crew and in house Silent Hill guy at CES, it was up to me to take on the chills in Konami's newest title in the franchise, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories. Released for the Wii on December 8th, and upcoming for the PS2 and PSP in a week, Shattered Memories puts players in the middle of a dark and twisted psychological tale. While not without its flaws, Shattered
Memories is an impressive title that deserves your attention.

Thrills, Chills, and Spills

Part of the hype surrounding Silent Hill: Shattered Memories was that Climax Studios had created sort of a re-imagining of the original Silent Hill game that was so popular on the PSX. Having not played any Silent Hill game to this point, I can't really comment on how much that is true, but the consensus I'm seeing online suggests it's a very faint re-imagining indeed. Be that as it may, Shattered Memories is complete and competent enough to stand on its own two feet.

With that said, the story begins with an opening cutscene of a home video depicting Harry Mason and daughter Cheryl enjoying life. Then, we're shown a psychologist who is about to meet a new patient -- you. In addition to the Silent Hill hype aforementioned, another gameplay element that Climax was pushing with Shattered Memories was a game that "plays you as much as you play it." In other words, after different points in the (relatively) short story, players will have to answer a few character profile questions. Depending on your answer, the game changes, even if only marginally, to create a modified experience. This certainly encourages replay value because different answers give you the opportunity to visit different parts of town, solve other puzzles, and alter your experience in the Nightmare sequences (although not enough to make them fun). I haven't completely explored this avenue of the game, but from what I have experienced and read, you'll want to play the game at least a couple of times to get the full extent of the experience.

The experience itself is a combination of third person exploration and basic puzzle solving and run-for-your-life sequences. I found the former to be much more enjoyable. The adventure begins with exploration and the overall point is to explore Silent Hill and its hellish mysteries to discover the whereabouts of your daughter Cheryl. After a car wreck on a cold, icy and snowy night, Harry Mason regains consciousness to find his young daughter missing. Armed with your flashlight and cell phone, Harry sets out to explore the snowed in town.

The atmosphere that Climax has created here is chilling in itself. I was impressed at how quickly I cared about my character, Harry, and his daughter Cheryl. I also got the sense that I wasn't going to be able to defend myself very well and that supernatural thrills awaited me. While nothing in Shattered Memories scared me to the degree of parts of Condemned: Criminal Origins, there were plenty of uneasy moments and intense scenes.

There's a lot that goes into making Shattered Memories as spooky as it is. You can start with the graphics which offer up the cold and uninviting town in great detail. The lighting effects for the flashlight are impressive and smooth, and believable, too. I thought the voice acting was great as well, and the piano music by the series' long time composer, Akira Yamaoka. I also liked how Climax Studios integrated Harry's cell phone into the game world. The cell phone is used in several ways to add some uneasiness to the experience. Besides the eerie nature of an unknown phone call or the distortion the phone emits from your Wiimote when strong supernatural elements are near, the phone's camera is also used to see into another world, revealing (shattered..yeah I went there) memories. You could see it as kind of a gimmick or just something creepy, and for me it was much more the latter.

Exploring the city is quite interesting in itself. Puzzle solving is kept straight-forward and uncomplicated, which felt a bit contrived by it didn't bother me much. For example, if you need a key, you'll generally find it hidden in the same room or a neighboring one. Clues come from bizarre voicemails on your phone or objects within the gameworld. Many of these puzzles contribute to what is overall a pretty nice Wii motion control scheme, too. From doing basic actions like sliding a bolt to unlock a door to turning a pop can upside down to spill out a padlock key, the motion controls are used nicely in Shattered Memories.

In fact, the entire experience is actually quite good except for one major element: the Nightmares. The Nightmare sequences are like the action in this otherwise puzzle-adventure game. During these distinct times, players must run away from faceless monsters that can track you by sight, smell, and sound. The idea during these sequences is to run from point A to point B, but the location of B is never clear. The Hints from the Pause Menu suggest that, should you become lost, use the GPS (or Map) on your phone to locate the blue triangle. I've yet to see one of these, forcing me to run circles in these large areas of town, all the while trying to escape from these annoyingly persistent creatures. You can't kill the creatures, all you can do is try to avoid them for a while and keep them at bay by throwing them off your back, knocking over in game objects, and using a flare if you're lucky enough to find one. None of these tactics work all that well however, and Harry can only take so much of a beating before death which means the entire Nightmare sequence starts over from square one.

The idea here is to instill fear in the player as he rushes through door after door, climbing over walls and hiding when possible to find the exit. The map is just shy of being absolutely useless during these times, and its not tremendously useful otherwise. The map is extremely basic and fails because you cannot use it while running, and, even worse, it doesn't show you routes that are impassable or where buildings are. Worst yet, when in hiding, players cannot access their cell phone to view the map either. When in the middle of a Nightmare sequence, it's hard to find a moment to safely stop and look at the map without just zooming to full screen, which pauses the game. Further still is dealing with the monsters themselves. You cannot completely avoid them, and when they pounce on Harry, you have to move the Nunchuk and Wiimote in such a way as to throw them off of you. So if they
are hanging on your left side, you have to swipe from right to left, but it doesn't work all that well and it usually takes a couple-three tries to work. It isn't long before Harry is limping from damage and then dead.

You can imagine the frustration of being hounded by these annoying monsters while running around in circles, trying to figure out where the exit is. Not to mention using typical inconsistent Wii motion controls to throw them off of you. These sequences were meant to be scary, and they certainly could have been, but the level of frustration triumphs. Fortunately, entering Nightmares is obvious so you can at least prepare yourself for the upcoming headache. Now obviously, had these been done better, I would have loved to have seen these sequences as a more fluid part of the adventure experience -- that would have been awesome.

The Nightmares are the worst part of Shattered Memories, but if you can get through those, there's a really great game here. While fairly short, around six hours, there is reason to come back for more.

To the summary...