Post by obscurehipster on May 4, 2012 11:49:06 GMT -5
ONE OF OBSCUREHIPSTER'S PLAGIARIZED ARTICLES:
Folks, I'm beginning to strongly consider the possibility that I am in fact involved in an abusive relationship with the Silent Hill series. At the beginning of said relationship, we traveled the world visiting new and exciting locales like Ashfield and Broms, we honeymooned at a lakeside hotel, and we got freaky with an abstract daddy's conspicuously vaginal mouth/leg/face hole thingymajig. All told, it was a pleasant 2 and 1/2 minutes, and hell we even vacationed at home once. But as the years dragged on like Joe Biden, we spoke less and less. I'm more forgiving than most when Silent Hill staggers through the door at 3AM reeking of scotch and shame and I'm also well aware that it has had flings with Double Helix and then Climax and in my opinion none of those pairings were completely disastrous. But each casual encounter cheapened the magic of the first four and there is simply no denying it, and now it is Vatra Studios turn to act as marriage counselor which is historic solely for the reason that it is a czechoslovakian studio that doesn't specialize in underage porn...that I'm aware of...and if you rule 34 that I will come to your house and defecate on your cat.
Off the bat, you will find the opening to Silent Hill Downpour a very familiar sight as in it plays out the same way as the first Silent Hill, Silent Hill the movie, Silent Hill Origins, and oddly enough Chappaquiddick the musical. Continuing in the tradition of the second and fourth Silent Hill titles, rather than fixating on convoluted occult minutia, Downpour instead focuses on one man's fantasmal odyssey through his own depraved and fractured subconscious. Admittedly that creative path is so well trodden at this point that it ought to be fucking paved but the game executes this with enough charm and competence to be forgiven for being so shamelessly god damn derivative, and if you are going to brazenly rip off something you may as well make it a work of staggering genius. Just ask Dennis Leary.
Given only a cursory appraisal, Downpour's collection of Freudian abominations from glowy eyed prisoners to possessed blow up dolls may seem a touch uninspired when compared with say lying figures, closers, and insane cancers. What you have to remember, however, is that Silent Hill the town doesn't generate these monsters but rather the fractured subconscious of the protagonist does. This is why the red pyramid, James' self concocted executioner whose sole function is to pursue and punish Mr. Sunderland and in so doing fulfilling his masochistic subconscious desires, should NOT be making unwarranted cameos in Silent Hill Homecoming, Silent Hill the movie, and Silent Hill on ice. Like the red pyramid, Murphy's monsters are perfectly appropriate for his unique self inflicted tourment and perhaps more to the point I think it is safe to say we are all wearied of burn victim nurses taking up half of the enemies in the game.
Discarding the bedraggled linearity of Homecoming after a glorified tutorial section the game immediately unfurls to a surprisingly new focus on what Silent Hill experts call claustrophobic exploration. In short, you find yourself once again in a semi-navigable open world of swirling fog and swarming monster hordes and by describing the map system as semi-navigable I mean the player would be better off consulting a fucking ouija board. You'll step down an alleyway that the map will suggest leads you to Safe Haven avenue only to find yourself three blocks away from Violated in Every Orifice Boulevard five seconds later. In many ways this can work counterintuitively towards the intended effect as the drab disorienting lifelessness of the open world sequences leaves you actively coveting rather than dreading the sublime delirium that is the otherworld, and in that sense the otherworld is the game's greatest strength and most fallible weakness.
The imagery is appalling as it is enthralling, the only problem it mostly consists of Murphy getting into a railroad car with a freshly lit rocket jammed up his ass which means you are blowing by at such a fevered pace you often miss out on the Jungian symbology on your first playthrough. Where as Team Silent dropped you into an interactive dante's inferno and dared the player to explore each circle, Downpour plays more like a horrific rollercoaster. Sound bad? To the shrieking elitist shitbags over at TwinPerfect maybe, but the on rails approach of Silent Hill Downpour works precisely because the games largest theme is incarceration and inevitability.
In short, Murphy is a prisoner, his entire life is on rails. It follows that his interactive LSD trips would be too. If I could nitpick for a moment, you think the designers for a game called Silent Hill Downpour would take a decent amount of care to make the rain not look like pixelated vaseline. But then again this is Konami we are talking about here, I doubt the budget Vatra had to work with was enough to buy everyone a Big Mac let alone a high tech water shader. All the same you wouldn't design a baseball game where the ball physics were touchier than George Michael's bathroom, unless of course you are MLB The Show 2012. Bottom line, pitch in a fucking dollar or two for water effects from this generation Konami, and so long as I have you on the line Revengance isn't a motherfucking word. Yours truly, obscurehipster.
But hey at least Murphy can whack a bitch a grand total of three fucking times with a baseball bat before it is reduced to cocktail toothpicks. Yeah there is a sound decision Vatra Studios, let's bring back the least popular feature from Silent Hill Origins, a game that was itself greeted with all the enthusiasm of a cancer diagnosis. What the fuck is next, a Metal Gear Solid game where you play as Raiden? A Mario game where you play as Toad? A show called the overthinker where a fat guy dresses up as a ninja and diddles himself for twenty god damn minutes instead of overthinking anything at all? Surely you fucking jest. In short, the combat is serviceable but nowhere near as robust and responsive as Homecoming. I've noted a lot of professional reviews hold the combat up as one of the games greatest failings and I think that has to be a world distance record of missing the fucking point. Whining about the combat in a game where running the fuck away is sort of the entire point is like complaining about the RTS elements in a fucking Street Fighter game. It has been said before by less attractive people but IGN...blow me.
If I had to assign an arbitrary ranking, and let's face it the entire professional game review system is predicated on this kind of gibbering frivolity, I'd have to say Silent Hill Downpour is much better than Homecoming, Shattered Memories, and Origins, but still not equal with the first four works of resplendent fucking brilliance. Given the reception for the game by the mainstream press I'd say that Konami failed to initiate the million dollar handshake with all the right palms but frankly I thoroughly enjoyed this entry in the Silent Hill franchise and I can't recommend it highly enough.
