Needless to say, Shattered Memories is the Silent Hill equivalent of Resident Evil 4. By this I mean the game itself is good but it plays nothing like the previous games in the series, which is bound to make fans feel violated. Newcomers to the series with no emotional ties to the previous story or characters will easily get into the new format Shattered Memories offers. The characters are all very different compared to their original designs. While Harry remains a caring father, he’s lost his more courageous attitude and has been “nerded” up a bit in the sense that he’s quite not as headstrong as he was in the original Silent Hill. Other characters, like Cybil, change depending on how you play the game- more on that later though.

The city’s layout is completely different as well. The heavy fog as been replaced with pure darkness (which I will get into more later on too) and large walls of ice block paths over the town “breaking away” from the rest of the world. The classic Silent Hill feeling has been replaced with a more sudden panic feeling over paranoia, dread, and disgust. Personally, the shift in atmosphere works well but I can already tell that fans will be displeased with it.

The major difference between the “classic” Silent Hill and this revision is the gameplay itself. The gameplay has been stripped completely clean and rebuilt from the ground up. Combat is no longer an aspect of the game. While it is true that it wasn’t a main aspect to begin with with the series, in Shattered Memories it’s almost nonexistent. Enemies are not killable, therefore, you’re forced to simply run for your life. This is where the previously mentioned “sudden panic” comes from. You’re constantly being chased throughout multiple scenarios where the game guides you by lighting up the path. (However, it also has fake paths that will lead you in circles or dead ends.)

You can hide in some lockers or in other places similar to Clock Tower or Haunting Ground and wait for enemies to pass you by. You can also push over bookshelves to give yourself some time to get away as it barricades the trail behind you. You can also use the Wiimote and Nunchuck to shake the enemies off of you if they jump on you or push enemies back with flares over using a weapon.

The idea of needing to survive based on basic instincts is defiantly in Shattered Memories. Harry isn’t a trained professional; he has no training with firearms so it makes sense that he doesn’t know how to use them and as I mentioned, in Shattered Memories they dropped his original Silent Hill attitude. He’s just your basic average father looking for his daughter. They made him a more vulnerable character who is suffering from confusion while trying to swallow panic from his missing daughter, leaving you to question his sanity as the story progresses. (It’s very different from the original.)

Exploitation seems to be the main focus of the game. Shattered Memories contains a psychological log that is suppose to make the game read your actions and monitor how you react to situations as well as what you pay attention to. The game is then suppose to morph to fit around your psychological profile. Though I haven’t had a chance to fully test it out since I will need to play a second game and play it differently to compare my two experiences. It’s obvious that some items were placed within the levels to catch the player’s eyes. Most of them, you can tell just by looking at them what type of person it will imply you are.

Frankly, I’m highly interested in this feature. Especially when the therapist that you go to see (and is a bit of a narrator to the game) has you do little tests and exercises, like coloring my picture.

So it’s easy to say that Shattered Memories is a psychological horror game. Yet even with that, I can see debates even over that. I say this because the Silent Hill series has always been known as a psychological game due to it’s atmosphere. It always contained very grotesque scenery that players found disturbing. Characters suffered from mental illnesses and struggles which the game would reflect back to the player via the town itself. However, Shattered Memories isn’t quite like this…. It seems to focus more on actual psychology (i.e: you feel this way because of this, you act this way because of that, you’re this type of person, etc…) over just disturbing the player.

The atmosphere to the game itself is alright. The pure blackness that surrounds you doesn’t really eat away at you as the fog use to since enemies do not hide out in it. You have no true reason to be afraid of the dark, but I will say it does add onto the feeling of being alone and helpless. After all, you’re limited visually only by what your flashlight, or other light sources around you, reveal to you.

However, the random moments when Harry picks up on events from the past can be creepy due to how disturbing they can be. Throughout the levels, his phone will pick up static and the flashlight will flicker. When you find the source of the memory (similar to Fatal Frame’s ghosts), you will uncover a bit more of the hellish past that the inhabitants of Silent Hill have.

Overall, as the game stands – as a revision to the series – it’s quite good. Everything works well and they’ve put quite a bit of thought into it. There’s plenty to investigate and test out, especially with the phone.

When I was first given the ability to use the phone, I tested out calling ‘911′ for help. Sure enough, I was connected to the Silent Hill police department but the receptionist couldn’t hear me due to static. I then found a phone number on a billboard and tried calling that. Sure enough, I got an ad for whatever it was advertising. To me, small little details like that mean a lot. It shows (to me at least) that the developers are trying to immerse the player into the world by making the gains of sand in your sandbox come together to give you a feeling of being there. I wouldn’t be surprised if fans of The Path find at least this part of Shatters Memories to be enjoyable purely for the exploring.

It isn’t a bad looking game either. I was impressed with the surprisingly good lighting effects of the flashlight. The way the light fades in the distance and reflects off of objects in the environment were very well done. The environments themselves are interesting and detailed with plenty of reasons for you to take the time to fully look around them.

Then of course, Akira Yamaoka finished its soundtrack before leaving Konami. Though personally, I prefer his work from previous Silent Hill titles over Shattered Memories. Don’t get me wrong; the soundtrack is enjoyable but I just seem to find myself enjoying songs from the other games a bit more.

The bottom line is that it’s a solid, enjoyable game. It takes a very interesting and unique approach to horror by revealing to us our inner selves over trying to scare us with a disoriented world. It may not be terrifying or the greatest horror game out there, but it certain will not disappoint if you’re willing to play with an open mind.

I wouldn’t be surprised if hardcore fans end up hating it since it feels nothing like a Silent Hill game. (Something I can sympathize with.) Perhaps it would have been better to make this a stand alone game not tied to the Silent Hill universe in order to break away biasness of the fanbase but even with how it is, it’s a very good game.