Jill Valentine vs. Harry Mason
May. 17th, 2012 10:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
indigozealI've been starting to make my way through the first Silent Hill in earnest now, and playing it impresses upon me how well the premier installment of its primary rival, Resident Evil, eases the player into its gameplay mechanics. Your first encounter with an enemy is heavily signposted by plot, atmosphere, and cinematics and gives you a great deal of time to prepare; the enemy moves really slowly, and even if this meager encounter stymies you, you can retreat and (if you're Jill) have your partner handle it. Exploration henceforth is centered upon moving from room to room, near-always putting you in a limited arena. There are surprises with the Hunters coming out of short hallways, the dog corridor, etc., but you largely know the confines of your environment. The game establishes rules, lets you get a feel for them, and then builds upon them; it's not unchallenging, but it's fair.
In Silent Hill, your first encounter is with a jittery, fast-moving, flying-swooping pterodactyl thing. I attempted to fight it, but the spindly writer at my command was swiftly taken down in about three or so hits. Remembering Yahtzee's words about how combat in Silent Hill was supposed to be "awkward and ultimately not worth it," I reloaded and opted to make a run for it, only to find that the door to the cafe I was in was newly locked; this was a forced fight. (It didn't help that the command to ready your weapon in the PSOne Classics version is still mapped to a button that, on the PSP, doesn't actually exist, which led to a good five minutes of flailing about cluelessly and helplessly.)
These hard-to-target, mobile and nimble enemies are your first foes, which you'll encounter all throughout the open-world town. At least you're allowed to run away from them out on the streets - in fact, considering the limited ammo, that's the only thing you can do in most such fights - but I wish the very first enemy encounters were more on the "doable but costly and far better avoided" side of the scale instead of the "completely fucking unmanageable" one. The more open environment also brings up camera issues; whereas RE's confined spaces allowed the programmers carefully to compose and present the best vantage on the action, SH's open wandering means that your viewpoint's drawn up on the fly - and, very frequently, will be looking to the side or behind your hero when the sound effects are indicating there's something deadly right in front of him. It seems your survival hinges far more on chance than skill, which is perhaps more realistic but less-than-satisfying for a game.
(It's also irksome that you're given this whole town to explore and yet have next to nothing of it open to you, as nearly all buildings are locked; I wish there were more at which to look than draw distance.)
Making every damn little action a huge undertaking does, though, effectively emphasize the vulnerability of your character. I felt like a boss when I finally reached the one other open house on the map, about two blocks away from my starting position; as I scrounged around its dusty cupboards for spare ammo and sighed in relief at the existence within of a save device, it really seemed like I was hunkering down in an isolated safe spot to regroup and devise a plan of attack before I ventured out into the hostile open again. That said, it's a pain in the neck gameplaywise, and it's going to take considerably more testplaying before I'm confident enough to declare that they do have a place that they're going with this. The Silent Hill series has been so praised by so many respected personages that I don't doubt its overall worth, but so far, I think that it might have gotten off to a rocky start.
.
In Silent Hill, your first encounter is with a jittery, fast-moving, flying-swooping pterodactyl thing. I attempted to fight it, but the spindly writer at my command was swiftly taken down in about three or so hits. Remembering Yahtzee's words about how combat in Silent Hill was supposed to be "awkward and ultimately not worth it," I reloaded and opted to make a run for it, only to find that the door to the cafe I was in was newly locked; this was a forced fight. (It didn't help that the command to ready your weapon in the PSOne Classics version is still mapped to a button that, on the PSP, doesn't actually exist, which led to a good five minutes of flailing about cluelessly and helplessly.)
These hard-to-target, mobile and nimble enemies are your first foes, which you'll encounter all throughout the open-world town. At least you're allowed to run away from them out on the streets - in fact, considering the limited ammo, that's the only thing you can do in most such fights - but I wish the very first enemy encounters were more on the "doable but costly and far better avoided" side of the scale instead of the "completely fucking unmanageable" one. The more open environment also brings up camera issues; whereas RE's confined spaces allowed the programmers carefully to compose and present the best vantage on the action, SH's open wandering means that your viewpoint's drawn up on the fly - and, very frequently, will be looking to the side or behind your hero when the sound effects are indicating there's something deadly right in front of him. It seems your survival hinges far more on chance than skill, which is perhaps more realistic but less-than-satisfying for a game.
(It's also irksome that you're given this whole town to explore and yet have next to nothing of it open to you, as nearly all buildings are locked; I wish there were more at which to look than draw distance.)
Making every damn little action a huge undertaking does, though, effectively emphasize the vulnerability of your character. I felt like a boss when I finally reached the one other open house on the map, about two blocks away from my starting position; as I scrounged around its dusty cupboards for spare ammo and sighed in relief at the existence within of a save device, it really seemed like I was hunkering down in an isolated safe spot to regroup and devise a plan of attack before I ventured out into the hostile open again. That said, it's a pain in the neck gameplaywise, and it's going to take considerably more testplaying before I'm confident enough to declare that they do have a place that they're going with this. The Silent Hill series has been so praised by so many respected personages that I don't doubt its overall worth, but so far, I think that it might have gotten off to a rocky start.
.
