Silent Hill wrap-up
May. 23rd, 2012 11:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
indigozealSo it's not exactly a secret that Silent Hill didn't work for me. I really wish it did, since it's loved by so many folks in the gaming community whom I respect and whose work I love. The game just does too much wrong; it seems like a cult title with a few good features and unexploited potential rather than a great classic that founded one of survival horror's cornerstone series.
One of the biggest letdowns for me was the story, which is disappointingly literal and almost as incoherent as that of Clock Tower: The Struggle Within. There's also very little psychological about it: the town is literally being devoured by darkness because demon cult. There's nothing symbolic, thematic, or really horribly relevant in the characterization: Lisa's just a scared chick hiding in the hospital; Michael Kaufmann is just a gruff doctor (and on-the-side drug dealer) who's wandering around town on his own tangentally-connected agenda. Harry and Cybil have no depth beyond their initial characterizations throughout the entire game, and there's no greater significance to any of the events that would seem to hint at a deeper meaning behind proceedings. Why does Harry keep flashing in and out of conferences with Lisa which are arranged suspiciously like a psychiatric consultation? Why is Lisa seemingly trapped in her little hospital examination room, and why does she appear only in the dark otherworld? Why does Harry's daughter appear as an adolescent in the flesh when he claims that she's just seven years old? Because fuck you, that's why. Well, the last question does get an explanation, kinda - Cheryl's possessed by a demon and had her soul rent in two because something something ritual (it was gone over, but I didn't care enough to remember it well).
See, I'd glimpsed a couple Shattered Memories stills of Harry confronting a teary older Cheryl from which, given the series' reputation for psychological horror, I'd gotten a couple ideas about the story in my head - perhaps something horrible had happened between them, and Harry was mentally blocking it and had reverted the relationship to the time when Cheryl was still a "good daughter" and things were still OK between them. I don't know; something where the lead character's mindset had an impact on his surroundings, where the characters' emotions and relationships shaped the plot. I mean, I'm complaining a great deal about the "demon child" plot point here even though I've little problem with its presence in, say, Clock Tower, but I think that's an issue of execution - it's perhaps more effective and satisfying for the audience to take a genre story and elevate it with sharp execution and a few smart ideas than it is to promise psychodrama and fall back on hollow bugaboo in the end.
ETA: This document gives an excellent, intelligent summary of the goings-on (WARNING: stupidly-placed Silent Hill 2 spoiler in the closing paragraphs), but my complaints still stand. That the nature of the town's transformation is influenced by Alessa's interests and the events and figures central to her mental scarring is self-evident; too much of the rest, though, is explained by hokum or not explained at all. (I did not understand before reading the nature of the sigils, Alessa's hand in creating them, or that Alessa had a destructive agenda of her own all throughout the game, points which are crucial to understanding the overall plot but which aren't laid out well in any capacity.)
Other complaints:
- The type of ending you get depends on whether or not you do a lengthy, obtuse sidequest in one of the most enemy-infested areas of the game - in complete darkness, I might add - that has seemingly very little relevance to anything going on and ends on a big shrug (the protagonist literally says, "Well, I guess I've wasted my time"). Oh, and it eats up most of your ammo just before one of the toughest areas of the game.
- The bosses are weirdly designed. I've mentioned the one-hit kill boss with unreliable hit detection before. There's another that's just a back-and-forth slugfest so easy and devoid of the need for strategy it seems utterly pointless, and there's another face-off where any offensive action whatsoever will trigger a ranged one-hit kill attack that's hellish to dodge. You're actually not supposed to go through with this fight at all, but the method of short-circuiting the encounter is so obtuse that I can't imagine anyone intuiting it the first go, so someone playing blind is guaranteed to have to deal with this ridiculous battle at least once. (I discovered the short-circuit only after running to a guide for some hint on how to survive.) The final boss is a giant pterodactyl demon - what an appropriate capper on the whole experience - that packs a lightning attack you can't block that's also one-hit kill. Er...? GameFAQs offered the only way to triumph: you're supposed to head to your status menu as soon as the lightning connects and immediately use a healing item; even though you'll continue to get fried, you'll count as "healed" for the duration of the attack, and you won't take damage. Well, I might be exaggerating with the "only way to triumph" part; according to one FAQ, there's some controller voodoo you can pull to avoid the otherwise unblockable attacks (which I tried and couldn't get to work, but). Either way, though, the game is purposefully designed so that the only way to victory is to cheap the CPU and take advantage of glitches. Huh?
- The idea that running is the best defense against monsters is a complete crock, particularly in the later, monster-intensive, some-enemies-will-stick-with-you-for-blocks-and-others-can-run-faster-than-you sections of the game. Combat is the focus of Silent Hill, and it's so chokingly difficult and inescapable in certain areas that it's just not fun. That's a pity, because the popular image of Silent Hill combat, where avoidance instead of confrontation is the most viable option for survival, would have been genuinely distinctive and intriguing.
- Little is done with the setting. I play games in part to see imaginative new sights, and Silent Hill's dark Lovecraftian world of savage demon imagination consists of nothing but rust and chainlink. Despite taking place in a small town - one filled, to the artists' credit, with many detailed storefronts - Silent Hill's town map has precious little with which to interact; entire quarter-of-the-map-wide city blocks will be devoid of content. It's another wasted opportunity to exacerbate the horror through contrast with an everyday, mundane setting. (The quiet sanctuary from the horrors of outdoors of a run-of-the-mill house among the abandoned possessions of the family that once lived there is one of my most potent positive memories of the game.)
Where the game really does excel is its use of sound. The mechanic of faint radio static or a faraway bell alerting you to the presence of monsters somewhere in the nebulous vicinity really heightens the tension - you're know you're in danger but don't know exactly from where the threat will come - and forces you to be much more alert in your environment. Many enemies, particularly those making their debut appearance, will announce their presence through creepy new noises just beyond Harry's field of vision before slowly shambling into the light. Occasionally, when you enter a room, you'll hear sounds either intermittently or constantly that're never explained - droning chanting from above in the sewers; loud hammers of glass being shattered - that put you constantly ill at ease. And, of course, Akira Yamaoka's ambient music is distinctive, as you already know. Unfortunately, what's transpiring onscreen doesn't really live up to it.
Endgame rating: I took a few minutes over 10 hours to finish. I ran 14 km and walked 14 km, I got 174 out of 204 items, defeated 147 enemies by melee fighting and 26 by shooting, and got five big stars and three flat stars, whatever that means.
Silent Hill 2 is so well-regarded that I'll have to take a crack at it sometime, but the other installments (of the core 1-4 series, I mean) seem to deal heavily with the demon/drugs plotline, which interests me not in the slightest. I am, though, a bit weary at the moment of dreariness and death, so I think I'll postpone my revisit to Silent Hill till I've made a tour of a few happier worlds first.
But I do like this:
.
One of the biggest letdowns for me was the story, which is disappointingly literal and almost as incoherent as that of Clock Tower: The Struggle Within. There's also very little psychological about it: the town is literally being devoured by darkness because demon cult. There's nothing symbolic, thematic, or really horribly relevant in the characterization: Lisa's just a scared chick hiding in the hospital; Michael Kaufmann is just a gruff doctor (and on-the-side drug dealer) who's wandering around town on his own tangentally-connected agenda. Harry and Cybil have no depth beyond their initial characterizations throughout the entire game, and there's no greater significance to any of the events that would seem to hint at a deeper meaning behind proceedings. Why does Harry keep flashing in and out of conferences with Lisa which are arranged suspiciously like a psychiatric consultation? Why is Lisa seemingly trapped in her little hospital examination room, and why does she appear only in the dark otherworld? Why does Harry's daughter appear as an adolescent in the flesh when he claims that she's just seven years old? Because fuck you, that's why. Well, the last question does get an explanation, kinda - Cheryl's possessed by a demon and had her soul rent in two because something something ritual (it was gone over, but I didn't care enough to remember it well).
See, I'd glimpsed a couple Shattered Memories stills of Harry confronting a teary older Cheryl from which, given the series' reputation for psychological horror, I'd gotten a couple ideas about the story in my head - perhaps something horrible had happened between them, and Harry was mentally blocking it and had reverted the relationship to the time when Cheryl was still a "good daughter" and things were still OK between them. I don't know; something where the lead character's mindset had an impact on his surroundings, where the characters' emotions and relationships shaped the plot. I mean, I'm complaining a great deal about the "demon child" plot point here even though I've little problem with its presence in, say, Clock Tower, but I think that's an issue of execution - it's perhaps more effective and satisfying for the audience to take a genre story and elevate it with sharp execution and a few smart ideas than it is to promise psychodrama and fall back on hollow bugaboo in the end.
ETA: This document gives an excellent, intelligent summary of the goings-on (WARNING: stupidly-placed Silent Hill 2 spoiler in the closing paragraphs), but my complaints still stand. That the nature of the town's transformation is influenced by Alessa's interests and the events and figures central to her mental scarring is self-evident; too much of the rest, though, is explained by hokum or not explained at all. (I did not understand before reading the nature of the sigils, Alessa's hand in creating them, or that Alessa had a destructive agenda of her own all throughout the game, points which are crucial to understanding the overall plot but which aren't laid out well in any capacity.)
Other complaints:
- The type of ending you get depends on whether or not you do a lengthy, obtuse sidequest in one of the most enemy-infested areas of the game - in complete darkness, I might add - that has seemingly very little relevance to anything going on and ends on a big shrug (the protagonist literally says, "Well, I guess I've wasted my time"). Oh, and it eats up most of your ammo just before one of the toughest areas of the game.
- The bosses are weirdly designed. I've mentioned the one-hit kill boss with unreliable hit detection before. There's another that's just a back-and-forth slugfest so easy and devoid of the need for strategy it seems utterly pointless, and there's another face-off where any offensive action whatsoever will trigger a ranged one-hit kill attack that's hellish to dodge. You're actually not supposed to go through with this fight at all, but the method of short-circuiting the encounter is so obtuse that I can't imagine anyone intuiting it the first go, so someone playing blind is guaranteed to have to deal with this ridiculous battle at least once. (I discovered the short-circuit only after running to a guide for some hint on how to survive.) The final boss is a giant pterodactyl demon - what an appropriate capper on the whole experience - that packs a lightning attack you can't block that's also one-hit kill. Er...? GameFAQs offered the only way to triumph: you're supposed to head to your status menu as soon as the lightning connects and immediately use a healing item; even though you'll continue to get fried, you'll count as "healed" for the duration of the attack, and you won't take damage. Well, I might be exaggerating with the "only way to triumph" part; according to one FAQ, there's some controller voodoo you can pull to avoid the otherwise unblockable attacks (which I tried and couldn't get to work, but). Either way, though, the game is purposefully designed so that the only way to victory is to cheap the CPU and take advantage of glitches. Huh?
- The idea that running is the best defense against monsters is a complete crock, particularly in the later, monster-intensive, some-enemies-will-stick-with-you-for-blocks-and-others-can-run-faster-than-you sections of the game. Combat is the focus of Silent Hill, and it's so chokingly difficult and inescapable in certain areas that it's just not fun. That's a pity, because the popular image of Silent Hill combat, where avoidance instead of confrontation is the most viable option for survival, would have been genuinely distinctive and intriguing.
- Little is done with the setting. I play games in part to see imaginative new sights, and Silent Hill's dark Lovecraftian world of savage demon imagination consists of nothing but rust and chainlink. Despite taking place in a small town - one filled, to the artists' credit, with many detailed storefronts - Silent Hill's town map has precious little with which to interact; entire quarter-of-the-map-wide city blocks will be devoid of content. It's another wasted opportunity to exacerbate the horror through contrast with an everyday, mundane setting. (The quiet sanctuary from the horrors of outdoors of a run-of-the-mill house among the abandoned possessions of the family that once lived there is one of my most potent positive memories of the game.)
Where the game really does excel is its use of sound. The mechanic of faint radio static or a faraway bell alerting you to the presence of monsters somewhere in the nebulous vicinity really heightens the tension - you're know you're in danger but don't know exactly from where the threat will come - and forces you to be much more alert in your environment. Many enemies, particularly those making their debut appearance, will announce their presence through creepy new noises just beyond Harry's field of vision before slowly shambling into the light. Occasionally, when you enter a room, you'll hear sounds either intermittently or constantly that're never explained - droning chanting from above in the sewers; loud hammers of glass being shattered - that put you constantly ill at ease. And, of course, Akira Yamaoka's ambient music is distinctive, as you already know. Unfortunately, what's transpiring onscreen doesn't really live up to it.
Endgame rating: I took a few minutes over 10 hours to finish. I ran 14 km and walked 14 km, I got 174 out of 204 items, defeated 147 enemies by melee fighting and 26 by shooting, and got five big stars and three flat stars, whatever that means.
Silent Hill 2 is so well-regarded that I'll have to take a crack at it sometime, but the other installments (of the core 1-4 series, I mean) seem to deal heavily with the demon/drugs plotline, which interests me not in the slightest. I am, though, a bit weary at the moment of dreariness and death, so I think I'll postpone my revisit to Silent Hill till I've made a tour of a few happier worlds first.
But I do like this:
.
