Silent Hill: Shattered Memories playthrough pt. 2: Urrrrgh...?

Hot motion sickness update: For the last session, I sat almost as far away from the TV as the controller cord would reach, and it seemed to improve matters, at least initially; I didn't feel ill during gameplay, but it did kick in after I stopped, and though I didn't have to go lie down, I was still feeling nauseous three hours later. My last session with the game was a bit more intriguing, so I'm motivated to keep at it, but it's not practical for me to keep on wrecking my evenings by continuing to play, so we'll see where it goes.

Upon loading the game, I made a new discovery: the "save anywhere" system doesn't work as advertised. I'd made my save after meeting Fargo Cybil and making a few phone calls, but my loaded game flung me back before the Cybil cutscene, leaving me to have to go through the tedious phone call rigmarole all over again. If technical limitations won't let me save anywhere, fine, but don't pretend I can save anywhere when I can't.

The Otherworld actually made its appearance in my last session, and...man, is gameplay lazy in this title. Harry's in an iced-in area; your suggested route and exits glow blue. Child mannequins patrol the area and attempt to latch on to Harry. Harry's job is to run at a constant mad dash through the area and, if a monster grabs him, press X to not die. If he's caught too many times, not even X will save him, but he'll just instantly start over at the beginning of the level, so who cares. No fighting, no exploration, no staring at disturbing imagery; with a good run, the first Otherworld section is over in three minutes. That's it - just a series of quick copypaste QTEs. It was something to do besides yell "Cheryl" constantly (which is actually mapped to a button early in the game, and which I felt compelled to do a couple times in each new area just to stay in character), but, brother, not much more.

More successful was the game's second therapy session, where Vince McMahon had me color in a house, and due to the presence of only kindergarten colors in his Crayolas, I made it purple & blue with a pink mailbox. Then, in the very next cutscene, Harry found himself in the usual broken-down, grimy-filtered Silent Hill milieu, only before a screaming-bright purple & blue house with a pink mailbox. I laughed out loud at that one.

(The Vince McMahon thing is getting distracting, by the way. I hope they justify it by having Kaufmann run over someone with a car soon.)

That house was supposed to be Harry's house, by the way, but when he got there, he discovered that it was actually home to a different family. This Harry has a few screws loose; not only does he forget until he speaks to Fargo Cybil that he has a smartphone by which he could've called for help when he discovered that his daughter was missing, but he also forgets that, wait, he's not on vacation in this town, he actually lives in Silent Hill. I suppose they're trying to play up an "is Harry nuts, or is it Silent Hill???" angle, but the way he's acting, the scales are tipped to, no, he really is nuts. Which kind of saps the tension out of the story, in a way: why should I hurry to find Cheryl, because who knows if Harry even has a daughter in the first place, really. (I do wonder what's going on here, though - just in a more-abstract, less-urgent sense.)

I do have to say that the game looks great for a PS2 game. I know that it was originally a Wii title, so it comes from a system with (a little) more processing power, but they did a great job with the port visually. I'll also reiterate that it does really nail that "walking through a snowy night" feel. On the other hand: I suppose all the snow piled up in the roads is a more realistic obstacle than abrupt hell-chasms, but at some point - c'mon, Mason, just climb over the damn piles. You've climbed like 20 head-high fences two hours into this jaunt; it's not like you're gonna fall through heavy piled-up snow, despite what anyone on the dev team thinks.

Anyhow: I'm currently stuck. I'm in this little snowed-in outdoor area with about four locations, but it all just leads in one big loop, and I can't figure out where to go. Furthermore, I've triggered all sort of phone messages and whatnot through exploration, but I haven't had a cutscene in about an hour's worth of gameplay, so I'm nervous as to where the save system is gonna dump me next time I fire up the console. We'll see, I guess.

I'm gonna play my next session right before bed, so even if I get motion sick, I can just sleep it off. Wish me luck.
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