Posts Tagged ‘ Silent Hill ’

Silent Hill Homecoming – “The Chasm”

While playing “Homecoming”, it becomes instantly clear what the designers at Double Helix were thinking before creating the game – here is “Silent Hill”, a saga known for its great ambiance, twisted aesthetic and psychological horror; unfortunately, it’s marred by clunky gameplay, poor combat systems, impenetrable storylines and complex puzzles. As a consequence, they thought – we can fix the latter while maintaining the “good” portions of “Silent Hill” – their sin was in not understanding that there was a connection between those two halves. Of course, what followed next is completely logical, considering the basis of their reasoning – they looked for the best example they could find in terms of the genre, namely “Resident Evil 4”, and adapted some of its core mechanics to the artistic and narrative content which constituted the core of the “Silent Hill” experience. Thus, “Silent Hill Homecoming” is the product of that line of thinking. The enjoyment, or lack thereof, that you can extract from this episode in the series is directly proportional to your acceptance of Double Helix’s vision. If you don’t understand (or simply don’t care about) the fundamental differences between the conceptual nature of the “Resident Evil” and “Silent Hill” series, then “Homecoming” is surely a great horror game for you. It’s not scary, but it’s entertaining. But if you’ve been reading the preamble to this review [pt1, pt2], and understand that which separates both series, than you will arrive at the same conclusion as I have: “Homecoming” is a “Silent Hill” game destined to fall.

The first big departure for the series (even when considering “0rigins”) is that for once, you play a hero type. Meet Alex Shepherd, a war veteran with the combat skills to back up his military credentials; he swings the knife like a fast forwarded Steven Seagal, dodges attacks like a “Tekken” character, lunges the axe while jumping in the air (for extra attack power), and he can accurately shoot with any gun, even when the target is several yards away – just like your everyday action hero. At the helm of this mini-superman, combat is hectic and frantic, and for once in a “Silent Hill” pretty challenging, just like you’d expect in a modern action game. Needless to say, this breaks up any psychological horror mood the game’s aesthetic might provoke unto the player. With its focusing on action instead of adventure, a “Silent Hill” game could never work, but “Homecoming” goes further and consistently avoids exploration, featuring a 100% linear level design flow, and any sort of puzzle which might make you scratch your head for more than a minute. But it goes deeper.

Alex enters his hometown in the hope of coming back to his family after the war, only to find out that his father and baby brother went missing. Fearing for his brother, he starts looking for him in Shepherd’s Glen, until he is finally lead into the dark halls of Silent Hill. Though it winks at “Jacob’s Ladder” (as previous “Silent Hills” had), the storyline develops in an awfully linear form, and even the final plot twists can be predictable and dull. More importantly, the surrealist framing is missing. Characters act out as expected from a Hollywood movie, their psychological profiles being simple and borderline archetypal, their lines featuring no literal nuances, cryptic messages or unsettling tones which is odd and above all, incoherent with the otherwise surreal scenario that surrounds them. There are also no freakish events, apart from those which we already take for granted in a “Silent Hill”: a mist covers the whole vale, monsters lurk in every corner, day can suddenly turn to night; but nothing which could catch you off-guard. Plot events and locations tend to mimic western horror movies, like “Night of the Living Dead”, “Assault on Precinct 13”, and much to my dismay, even torture movies such as “Hostel”. The lack of the bizarre and the psychological mind games of yore, in favor of a gory and gruesome experience feels, pardon my bluntness, like an artistic rape to “Silent Hill”.

The hole shouldn’t go any deeper, but it does. The overall quality aesthetic work of Team Silent is nowhere to be found. This sad fact is reflected in all details: character design and animations are technically incompetent and artistically poor, even by non-Silent Hill standards; monster design is uninspired and inconsistent, not to mention deprived of any subtle symbolism or allegoric relationship with characters; Akira Yamaoka’s soundtrack is not only one of his less virtuous, as it’s squandered away by a poor sound mix and downright lame directing that consistently mishandles the moods each track is meant to provoke. To end this spiral of mediocrity, the art design team, for some random reason, opted to use as reference the conceptual art of the movie, instead of that from previous games. Why would that be a problem you might ask. Not only does the idea seem ill-fated (the art design of the game based on the movie based on the game), as it misses an important principle of artistic design, which lies in the bond between a work’s concept and its execution. Let me exemplify: unlike the games, one of the major themes in the movie was a fire which had burnt the whole town to the ground. All of the art design motif’s reflected this theme: the fog was dark-grey instead of milky white, and very ash-y looking; metallic surfaces bore fiery and vibrant red hues, in opposition with the brownish rust of the game; the transition to the otherworld used an effect where the scenario peeled away, just like paint does in a fire. In “Homecoming” there is no fire theme, and as such, those references make absolutely no sense. Not to mention all of the less appropriate elements which were already present in the movie (such as the overly sexual nurses), now inexplicably ported into a “Silent Hill” game.

Every fear a “Silent Hill” fan might have concerning a new game is now fully realized in “Homecoming”. It’s a meager, unsatisfying attempt of a western developer at reinterpreting a Japanese series, without any imagination or artistry to even mimic what made the originals groundbreaking at the time. It’s a simpler, more linear and completely mainstream game, which lacks identity and any redeeming quality. Even Climax, when designing “0rigins”, despite all its flaws, did a better job. “Homecoming” lays at the bottom of an endless pit, to where it drove one of the most precious and visionary works ever to appear in the videogame medium. There is no light at the end of this chasm… “Silent Hill” is officially dead.

Overall: 1/5

2008
10/29
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“The Essence of Fear – a Prelude to Silent Hill Homecoming pt.2”

“Silent Hill” is often compared with its older sibling “Resident Evil”, from whence it drew inspiration, just as “Resident Evil” itself once borrowed from “Alone in the Dark”. Both however, presented a unique approach to the same set of interaction mechanics, using them in favor of their own designer philosophies. Unlike “Resident Evil”, the “Silent Hill” franchise wasn’t designed in reference to western horror, instead opting to uphold the cultural and aesthetic differences which make Japanese horror unique. Hideo Nakata and Ryoshi Kurosawa are some of the more obvious references on that front, as “Silent Hill” adopts the same flavor for the supernatural, psychological and aesthetic elements which made those movies unique in their genre. Which is not to say that “Silent Hill” doesn’t look up to western art, as there are numerous references to western authors, the most notable being “Silent Hill 2” – an obvious homage to David Lynch. But in “Silent Hill”, there are no B-movie references, no action game moods or easy scares – it’s all about anticipation, tension build up and psychological horror.

Like in any Japanese horror flick, “Silent Hill’s” main characters aren’t heroes, but ordinary people. In the first game, for instance, you play as a household father, Harry Mason, who is in desperate search for his missing daughter. He walks in a clumsy way, runs slowly and with considerable effort, panting heavily after any physical strain. He can’t shoot straight, or defend himself with a knife – he’s an average guy, just like you and me. If you manage to identify with him, it’s normal that you should feel afraid because he’s helpless towards the oppressive environment which surrounds him. Monsters abound in “Silent Hill”, allegoric figures which seem to be wrought by the deep corners of a Freudian nightmare, meshes of twisted sexual tendencies, perverted desires and bottled up hatreds, all molded into bizarre corpses of flesh and blood. They move in disturbing fashion, clumsily trotting, slithering like reptiles, or simply crawling in strange manners; the sounds they make are equally unsettling, screeching and growling in ways you simply have never heard anywhere else before. When you meet these macabre creations, you’ll try to figure out ‘what’ they are, how they move and, most importantly, how to avoid them. But even when forced to fight these monsters, “Silent Hill” never seems to focus on actual combat elements, such as quick reflexes, special moves or tactical positioning, instead opting to explore how these creatures make you feel through their aesthetic elements, behaviors and inherent symbolic nature. Combat is clunky and definitely not fun, and rightfully so, because its meant to make you feel uncomfortable. Most times, when trying to survive attacks, you simply shoot with whatever weapon you can find and hope to live through it, a fundamental difference from “Resident Evil”, where the focus is on the adrenaline rush of killing of monsters with powerful weapons. And though weapons do exist in “Silent Hill”, they are usually underpowered (there are one or two unfortunate exceptions), going from metal pipes to world war II carbines, none of which work particularly well in the hands of “Silent Hill’s” weak main characters.

But the game goes deeper than fleshing out weird beings to attack you, choosing to instill fear mostly through the anticipation of events, rather than the events themselves (a characteristic Japanese take on depictions of violence and horror). For example, one of the first items you get is a radio which emits an eerie static whenever monsters lurk nearby. Immediately after a few encounters, you start dreading the sound, because you know what it means – danger. The association of this simple sound effect with the existence of an upcoming menace is a simple example of how elegantly “Silent Hill” designers make you fear the unknown. And “Silent Hill” is definitely unknown territory. Preferring a surreal conceptualization over the Hollywood-esque pseudo-realism of “Resident Evil”, the gameworld is never bound by the laws of physics – anything can happen in “Silent Hill”, and I do mean anything. You may walk through a road only to find it ends in a gigantic, bottomless pit; day may turn into night in a blink of an eye while the sound of a military siren is heard from afar; a strange and brooding mist covers all buildings. There simply aren’t reliable rules in this fantastic world, and even the trusty radio and flashlight may fail when you least expect for some unknown reason. Strange and unique events constantly mess with preconceptions: a dark ghost may appear running out of nowhere, screeching like a little child, impervious to your actions; a room may have a giant head lurking with its eyes squirming with spasms; a mocking talk-show host can be heard when you’re riding the elevator to a floor which doesn’t exist – the sense of being lost in an alternate dimension, a “Twilight Zone”, is always present, making you feel discomfort, and really fear the twisted and unexpected events that occur in the game-world. Even human characters talk in strange ways, babbling about doomsday and strange occult rituals in mostly incoherent discourses, their facial features and emotional expressions, while definitely human and intensely dramatic, feel awkward and freakish, as if they were part of a hazy dream or a dark nightmare [you can check out some of Takayoshi’s glorious CG work for Silent Hill 1 and 2, in his website here].

The overall ambiance of the environment is what really sells the eerie phenomena which occurs in the accursed town. The white grainy fog which never goes away, blocking out sunlight from every frame of the game; the industrialist metallic constructions and sounds from the otherworld, oppressive in their constant bleakness and brownish, rusty red hues, which seem straight out of depictions of purgatory. Even as an art work, “Silent Hill” excels brilliantly, thanks to its wealth of visual influences, of which Francis Bacon seems to be a primary figure. Every single sight, sound and interaction is meant to produce an undeniable sense of displeasure, whether in the form of grotesque fiends or bizarre locations. To put it simply, “Silent Hill” is aimed at messing with your mind’s inner workings, instilling an unsettling sense of fear and foreboding. The problem now, is that all of these aspects which make “Silent Hill’s” so interesting as horror games were built on a Japanese conceptual frame, which makes me look with skepticism to the departure of the series to American studios, that are bound to interpret “Silent Hill” in a different way than the original Team Silent… something I’ll get to in the upcoming review.

[Next up is the proper review to “Silent Hill Homecoming”. These two texts are far from exhaustive, as I never intended to create a detailed meta-review of survival horror; I simply tried to show, in a simple and easily comprehensible way, what distances “Silent Hill” from other survival horror games, such as the “Resident Evil” series. Hopefully, this preamble will make my judgment of “Homecoming” all the more transparent.]

2008
10/28
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“The Essence of Fear – a Prelude to Silent Hill Homecoming pt.1”

It’s been repeatedly said that the videogame medium presents the ideal tools to create a horror piece. Imposing fear, stress and panic, is always a matter of inducing what characters’ feel unto the audience, in essence channeling the experience from the stage unto the spectator’s mind. In videogames, identification of the player with the main character is simply much more powerful than in any other means, most of all due to the kinesthetic bond that relates player’s thoughts to the actions which characters perform. This relationship becomes particularly useful when conveying a character’s state of mind, as the interaction bond guarantees, to a certain extent, that the player will psychologically identify with, and thus, mimic the reactions of the main character, in the same way that the character responds to player’s input. The question however, is how to effectively channel that inherent power of interactivity in order to produce an emotional effect, and here, as always in art, there are as many approaches as there are cultural expressions and philosophies.

Let’s take a look at the “Resident Evil” series (“Biohazard” in Japan). In every single one of the main titles, you play as police officer trying to survive a zombie threat. No doubt inspired by Romero’s (re)invention of the zombie genre, which eventually lead to an onslaught of B-movie followings, it is not surprising that “Resident Evil” applies (successfully I might add), the conceptual grounds on which a vast majority of western horror genre movies are based (even though it is a Japanese creation). Notice, for example, how the main character is a police officer, which obviously means a strong and trained fighter, someone capable of defending himself and of fighting for good – a true American portrayal of a “hero”. The menace he must face is overwhelming, an invasion of zombies which he must escape and/or defeat. Each “Resident Evil” game is framed in a believable context, where the laws of physics and reality apply thoroughly – zombies are zombies only because of a scientifically generated virus that turns the dead into walking bags of flesh, they are not, in any way, a product of any supernatural or unknown phenomena. The realistic framing is intended to propose a “this could happen to you” scenario, and the virus plays as a mere macguffin, intended on justifying the existence of zombies and delivering some sort of overarching plot; at best, it provides a subtext on the danger of science and private companies producing biological weapons which we’re not capable of controlling. Naturally, zombies are just the tip of the iceberg, as the virus can also mutate deadly spiders, dogs, plants and crows, as well as spawning new species of monsters with little connection to the real world, such as the Tyrant.

Monsters are slowly shown to the player, starting with the more plausible (or the more culturally accepted) and gently building up to the nigh absurd, following the frog’s parable, as to ease in the player and not break the realistic framing. As a player, you fight these creatures, always in a stance of inferiority, both in numbers (there are a lot of zombies) as in sheer scale (the monsters are big), added to the fact that resources are low (ammo and health recovery), which obviously makes you ponder carefully about wasting any, again putting you in a stance of inferiority faced with the oppressive environment. This produces stress, both because your mind tells you that these monsters will kill you (as there are many of them and they are big and menacing looking), and also because fighting the monsters leads to hectic battles, which require quick reflexes (in order to dodge attacks) and precision (in order to save up bullets), all of which trigger adrenaline, which in turn causes a sense of vertigo. Adding to that, the game constantly ponds you with unpredictable events, such as the jumping of a ravaging dog through a window, providing a needed scare factor, which, once again, enhances a sense of distress.

Now, all of these elements provide stress, but the question is how well these American-movie inspired mechanisms work as to make you feel actual dread (which should be the purpose of a horror piece), and how well are they mapped onto a videogame. Firstly, the fact that you play a fearless hero seems as a bad choice to me. A physical and mentally strong character enhances a sense of invincibility and power over a dangerous environment, which is exactly the opposite of what you want the player to feel: hopelessness face danger. “Resident Evil” characters are always strong face adversity, whether during story sequences, where harsh dialogs show off their ability to keep it cool despite the situation, exuding their masculinity and heroic features, or during gameplay, where their combat-trained body produces movements which translate a sense of security and control that you just don’t want the player to feel. The possibility of using weapons, specially heavy weapons (as the grenade launcher and the RPG), adds to that effect, and breaks any notion of fragility that might be left – and if they look and act strong, then you as well, by identifying with the character, will perceive yourself as strong and fearless, and definitely not as fearful.

The realistic framing is also a shot in the foot when it comes to a horror piece. Reality is where we live in, we take comfort in its predictable rules and trappings; by allowing the player to inhabit that conceptual space, designers are in fact giving you a lifeline, a mental state for you to go back to, that is, on a psychological level, pleasant and reassuring. You know what happens when you shoot a zombie, it bleeds and dies; you know what happens when you torch a living plant, it burns and dies; the sustaining of natural rules, which you expect to be applicable, does work well as game mechanic, but enhances the sense of comfort that breaks up fear. Aesthetic elements in “Resident Evil” also commit the same sin, by providing players known sensory stimuli, as dark alleys, haunting mansions, dark light contrasts (…), and soundtracks that privilege monster’s growling and screams, with scores that feature heavy bass lines and metallic high pitch tones. The problem with these elements is that, being archetypes, they follow tried and true formulas used to deliver suspenseful situations, having become banal and downtight clichéd in other mediums, which leads to predictability and familiarity with these references to anyone who has watched or read a horror piece before. Predictability and familiarity, which come from both “Resident Evil’s” aesthetic and its framing, remove the “unknown” factor from the picture. And we fear the unknown, for the existence of fear, biologically, comes from the very need to avoid unpredictability, because it is a synonym of danger, of something out of control, of something which you should avoid… of something you should fear.

Let me reassure you that I find “Resident Evil” a great game series (the first is still one of my personal favorites), and yet, it is hardly a game I would say can cause fear. Suspense and fright surely, and not by accident, as these are elements that date back to Hitchcock (again a western reference). But not fear. Modern American horror pieces (specially the B-movie kind) privilege a kind of experience where humor and frights go hand in hand, where cheesiness cohabits the gruesome and gory, where terror is a synonym of fun and popcorn. Games like the “Resident Evil” series, though they try to avoid some of these feelings, fail in perceiving how much they are embroiled in the concepts that they follow (just look back at the first “Resident Evil’s” initial FMV to understand where I’m going). Recently, “Resident Evil 4” came and become the “de facto” standard of the industry towards the genre, somehow representing the epitome of this formula. How on earth a flashy action-packed game, extremely entertaining to play, could be a true horror game is something that surpasses me; how most critics missed that fact by naming the game a “survival horror” also eludes me. “Resident Evil 4” is, even more than its predecessors, an action packed game with a horror scenario; just think about it, you change the setting, put in some machine guns and you get a “Gears of War”, which I don’t remember hearing anyone call it a horror title (I’m consciously exaggerating for the purpose of argument). I mean, just the fact that the game is entertaining begs the question if it’s really a horror game. These western ways of thinking about the horror genre are sound in terms of producing entertaining experiences, but, in my view (and this is only my view), they miss the core of the experience behind true horror pieces. Sadly, the wearing out of some traditional Japanese formulas (“Silent Hill”, “Project Zero”/”Fatal Frame” and even “Siren”), has led “Resident Evil 4” to the statute of reference in the genre, and that’s why games which try to mimic or reference its formula, fail in producing fear, games such as “Dead Rising” or more recently, “Dead Space” and… “Silent Hill Homecoming”.

[“The Essence of Fear” will be a two part article that will serve as a prelude to the review of “Silent Hill Homecoming”. Mainly it will allow for a setup on the reasons why “Silent Hill” was once the true capturing of fear in a videogame, and why today it is not. It also will be a nice way of comparing western and eastern notions of what a horror piece is, in a videogame context.]

 

2008
10/15
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Silent Hill 0rigins – “In my restless dreams, I see that town… Silent Hill. You promised you’d take me there again some day… but you never did.”

“Was it all just a dream?” Maybe “Silent Hill” was just that: a dream… a dream surrounded by the misty haze of a medium far too young and shallow to understand the true value behind Toyama’s masterpiece. Only by acknowledging this fact can one understand the often convoluted story behind the series. Had Konami Japan understood the (artistic and commercial) value of the series, I doubt they would have been so eager in wasting the series potential with such a lenient production policy (at least Sony understood, hiring Toyama for the later “Siren” series). So, what is the story behind Silent Hill? First, a revolutionary game, that is the epitome of psychological horror (SH1); then a game that builds on that basis and adds a twisted storyline and aesthetic that in my opinion are worthy of a David Lynch movie (SH2); an uninspired sequel that follows the event of the first chapter, but that still manages to retain the same level of dramatic efficiency and production quality of its predecessors (SH3); and finally, a deviation of the series, that not only was unable to take the series forward, as it also failed in replicating some of the more important standards fans came to expect (SH4). [And if you’re wondering why I don’t mention the movie, it’s because I don’t think it’s worth mentioning… at all.]

Alas, a prequel is made… by an outsider, U.K. based studio: Climax. Let me start by saying that I wouldn’t like to be in their shoes, having to uphold to so much, and with so little experience to do so. Just think about it: in case they didn’t stick to canon, they would be criticized for not maintaining the series core values, and if they opted for a strict following of the previous games, they would be criticized for not adding any value to the franchise. No win situation. Climax chose the second road, and “Silent Hill 0rigins” ends up looking like what you’ve come to expect of “Silent Hill”: the same foggy town, with its empty streets, hospital, motel, and creepy monsters wandering about, the same camera angles coupled with a noise filter, the same eerie soundtrack. But, sadly, as you explore the dreamy landscape, you’ll notice the subtle differences, and you’ll realize they were as important as everything else in creating the horror masterpiece devised by Keiichiro Toyama. Not that Climax doesn’t try hard to embody everything that is “Silent Hill”, they do, but the fact remains that a copycat is only as good as his ability to perceive what made the original work of art grand… and Climax doesn’t cut it.

“God is in the details.” Small details, the type of which you’d thought wouldn’t matter, but do. A simple example: a crucial aspect in any horror game is the surprise factor, the ability to catch the player off-guard (not necessarily to make him jump off his seat). In the first chapters of the franchise, there were a lot of unique scenes where the designers changed the field of play, messing with your head’s preconceptions. For instance: the brilliant cat-scene in “Silent Hill”, where you could hear a noise coming from a locker, and when you opened it, a cat sprung out, only to be killed by a demon-kid (or whatever you wanna call those things); later, when you entered the other-world, the scene would repeat, a noise coming from the locker, but only this time, when you got the nerve to open it, the entrails of the cat where laying there. These small episodes were crucial in placing the player in an uncomfortable place, where every move ended with unpredictable results. In “0rigins”, there isn’t anything like that, everything moves along smoothly and predictably: it’s all straight run o’ the mill, “Silent Hill” 101.

The one thing Climax missed that is sure to stick out as sore thumb is storytelling. The “Silent Hill” universe always inhabited the realm of the surreal, where ambiguity and mystery went hand in hand. “0rigins”, on the other hand, starts off with the worst of premises: to explain the events behind the first game. Now, you might not have noticed, but “explain” doesn’t really mix with “surreal”, “ambiguous” or “mysterious”. Besides that, “Silent Hill 3” had already “explained” the first “Silent Hill” for the average player, so why try and explain more? No good could ever come from that mindset. The result is sad, at best: scenes pan out in predictable ways, with none of the edginess, creepiness or surrealism you’d expect; dialogs are poorly written and straightforward (which is probably the worst adjective for a “Silent Hill” game). Everything is just so linear, shallow and… well, I’m gonna say it, “American”, that it manages to destroy any sense of strangeness that was still left in that world. Adding to that, all of the “explanations” in the game are completely unimportant, serving only as canon fodder for the overly zealous fan to devour.

On a design note, there are some very good aspects to Climax’s venture, that go as far as correcting some of the mistakes in the third and fourth chapter. A higher focus on puzzles and exploration, a better use of sound and especially, of Akira Yamaoka’s brilliant scores (what would “Silent Hill” be without them?), and a battle system that is, for the most part, able to walk the thin line between responsiveness and clunckiness, i.e. not responsive enough to allow the player to feel either overly confident about killing monsters, and not frustrating to the point of making him throw his console out the window.

The first two “Silent Hills” were some of the best games ever designed, and that is an admittedly hard lineage to uphold, and as expected, “0rigins” utterly fails in doing so. Yet, it does manage to copy most of the formula of the series, making it a very pleasing game for the hardcore fans, as long as they don’t expect to find herein the finer subtleties that made “Silent Hill” a grand masterpiece. “0rigins” is what it is: a mimic of a great work of art, that is as shallow and linear as the original was subtle and unique. The hard truth is that “Silent Hill” is growing stale and old, and the time will come when one must start wondering if we’ll ever see such joyous days as the ones in 1999, when “Silent Hill” first appeared… here’s hoping that it wasn’t all just a dream.

Overall: 2/5

2008
06/10
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