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Thursday 6 March, 2008
Gameplay
So far the game has been pretty interesting. I mean, who knew that the pockets of a trucker's outfit could hold multiple firearms, meat hooks, portable TVs, typewriters, wrenches, hammers, drip stands, meat cleavers, katanas, crates, tablelamps, energy drinks, health drinks, first aid kits, and other various weapons, consumables, and key items. It seems like there's an infinite amount of inventory space and it seems kind of ridiculous what your character can have on his person. Aside from that, I have found that for at least the early parts of the game, it is pretty easy to get around using only your fists as weapons. I even managed to beat the first boss with just fists though i did get hit a few times. The firearms seems pretty easy to shoot since holding the R shoulder button automatically targets an enemy for you and the melee weapons work pretty much the same way, though some get thrown an break while others have mini health bars and break when damaged too much.
The game has very few human characters. At this point in the game, there are only four characters other than the main character and they seem to go off and disappear soon after you talk to them with the exception of the creepy little girl that you see quite often comparatively. That said, the characters of this game seem to be varied to say the least, consisting of the trucker main character, the cult leader and her severely burned daughter, a nurse, and a doctor/cult member. As far as i can tell, all of them look like they're hiding something and will probably end up trying to kill me though the little girl seems to just be messing with everyone.
Design
The levels of the game are varied to an extent, with a few examples being the hospital, the sanitarium, a theater, and a motel, though they all have an Otherworld version. As can be inferred about my previous statements about the Otherworld, it is esentially the normal world painted in blood and gore. As frightening as it could be (and is) after a time, the sense dull and it the mind becomes accustomed to it. It loses the effect of being frightening since all of the Otherworld versions of Silent Hill's locations is similar to each other and lack a sense of originality between them all. It would be understandable if each one had something to give each location a unique fearfullness but I feel that this is lacking from said locations.
The reward structure is pretty interesting, mainly because if you beat the game, you esentially unlock God Mode by gaining the ability to equip a pair of gloves that one-shot most enemies and can finish off bosses after a few hits. The main reward structure that was apparently a basic fundament of the Silent Hill series was to have alternate endings and the same goes for this game. Unfortunately the game forces one ending on you while the others can only be obtained after beating the game once. This seems to weaken the effect alternate endings would normally have and makes them seem rather trivial in comparison with other rewards. The only rewards that seem to have some sort of value are the awrads given to the character after performing certain feats such as killing a majority of the enemies with bare fists or collecting over three hundred of the items in the game. These effectively reward the player's performance and at the same time give the game much more replay value than simply the possibility of a second ending scene.
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