Reviewed! Silent Hill: Shattered Memories

I picked up this latest installment of Silent Hill for the Nintendo Wii and the experience has been true to the series and overall fun. You begin the game as Harry Mason, your car crashes during a fierce blizzard and leaves you stranded on the outskirts of a familiar town, the town of Silent Hill. Your memory of it all is foggy and your a little disoriented but one thing you do know is your daughter is now missing. With flashlight in hand you stumble unknowingly into town to search for her. If you have played other Silent Hill games you will definitely see some familiar faces, places and monsters, but if you are just picking the series up you will have no problems fitting right in. The game takes away long loading times by providing the player with a seamless environment to play in. Huge plus.

Controlling Mason is simple and the use of his flashlight is attached to the Wii remote via Nunchuk. You will want to shine that light of yours everywhere you can because the game's environment looks amazing. From the falling snow to the sometimes chilling scenes you may find in the darkness, everything is beautifully modeled and is backed with some pretty good voice acting as well.

The game play of the game is short. Like 5 hours to beat; short but one thing that will keep you coming back is the way you interact with the world. You will find yourself seated in an armchair discussing your morality and sexuality and the likes with a therapist. You answers and your actions can effectively change things like the dialogue between characters you meet, down to what kind of clothing they will be wearing. Another thing is the addition of multiple endings. Based on your choices and the evaluations you get the game reacts differently. Also some areas that may be locked the first time through become available and the monsters you encounter will evolve differently based on you, the player. So while the game itself may be a short journey, there is always reason to play again.

The game keeps a haunting sense about it, keeping faith with the other games in the franchise with gruesome monsters chasing after you to dark corners and passageways. One thing you will note is that there is no weaponry in Shattered Memories. Which should be scary in itself, being defenseless against the demons inhabiting the town. But the game lets you know when these things are happening. One minute your walking down a dark street then the next the whole scene begins to ice over, letting you know the baddies are out. You shake them off to escape and desperately make your way to the safety zone. While an intuitive feature of Shattered Dreams it feels like things could have been scarier had you not known the monsters were coming.

So overall Silent Hill: Shattered memories is a fantastic looking game, feels like it was made for the Nintendo Wii and offers a fresh new game play experience. If your looking to hack and slash your way through the game look elsewhere but if your looking for a genuine fright fest of a game this one is for you.