Silent Hill: Origins

"Bite Sized Silent Hill is a tasty morsel with a slightly hard shell."

Silent Hill: 0rigins went through some murky waters while it was in development. Originally being handled by a team of developers from the US branch of Climax, the generic look of the game and monsters, along side the ripped off Resident Evil 4 control scheme didn't exactly win over long time Silent Hill residents. The game hit a black out, obscuring gamers from the fact that the development was moved over to the UK branch of Climax, who re-envisioned the game to what hit store shelves earlier this week. The final result is what long time fans should definitely appreciate over all, but doesn't do much to try and achieve the legendary status that the original and second game of the series had prior.

The game begins with Travis O' Grady, who's established at the beginning as a truck driver who seems fairly content with his life style. His driving his rig down a very familiar road, when a very familiar girl runs out in front of his truck in a very familiar fashion. Afraid he may have hurt the girl, he gets out of the truck and heads toward Silent Hill to try and find her.

From here, there are two important stories we're supposed to follow. The first is the titular "origins" so to speak of Silent Hill, which turns out to be slightly misleading. Without spoiling it, the story still doesn't give us as much insight into the town as we're lead to believe, but it does help clear things from the original game up to a much cleaner point than the third and fourth game had attempted to do. The second story, and the one that is mainly at the forefront of the game, is that of Travis and his journey. Fans of the series know that, with the exceptions of first and fourth game, a journey into Silent Hill is a special journey, filled with just as much self realization as it is absolute terror. It's not a complex outlook that the second game made famous, as the game practically explains what's going on with our hero within the first hour. This would be fine as the game is supposed to serve as an origin story, but this is the story that we spend most of our time with, and a tad bit more mystique could have helped driven the point home better.

On the other hand, the narrative flow is much better than it has been in the past. From the beginning, it's very easy to see the game was not developed by a Japanese developer, and that's not a bad thing. The voice acting has significantly improved. It ranges from passable to very good, a far cry from the emotionless and spaced out readings from the original casting studio. Beyond that, the writing makes much more sense and just overall follows a better flow than previous entries in the series, helping make the emotional impact of scenes that much better. All in all, it rounds out to a nice package that rounds the less complicated overall story into an engaging tale.

Similar to the narrative flow, the gameplay retooled slightly as well, all for the better. When you first look at the game, it seems similar to any other Silent Hill title, and certainly a long way off to the RE4 looking game that we were originally planned to receive. The first and most important difference, is that Travis actually feels natural to control. He stops and turns on a dime, making navigating the game world a breeze. Fans of the clunky, slightly realistic controls from the previous entries might be a tad put off at first, but overall it helped make the game less of a chore to play.

The only gripe on the control side I have is a familiar mechanic where when you run for a certain distance, Travis loses stamina and runs slower... The issue being that he becomes WAY TOO Slow, even compared to previous entries. Sometimes, I even swore it was slower than the basic walk. Stopping and starting, especially if you're running from a fight, certainly helps to break up the faster pace of the game.

Thankfully, combat has been significantly improved in this Silent Hill as well. Aiming still sucks, especially in low light, but Travis is an acceptable melee fighter. You can pick up a ton of melee weapons in this game, all with their own durability. If you're smart, you won't need to use them much, so you should have plenty by the end of the game to last you. It especially helps conserve your ammo, which lets you take out bosses from a distance. You can also scroll through your melee and firearms separately from the game's d-pad, making going into the menu a necessity only for when you want to reload without having to sit through a reload animation.

The only real gripe I have is the uneven difficulty of the game. There aren't nearly enough health items in the game, and Travis seems to be a bit of a weakling. Often times you'll be running past normal enemies because you're close to dead and there's no health pick ups to be found. It's ok if you face a boss though, as I'm fairly sure that none of the bosses ever even hit me. At all. So really, the only thing you have to worry about is being picked off by a random enemy when you're low on health in a hallway. In the end, I never died myself, but there were plenty of close calls.

There's not much to say about the graphics or music. It's Silent hill. On PSP. It looks and sounds amazing. The textures are very low res, which may be a little off putting with the slightly high poly count, but anybody who plays there PSP consistently should be used to this by now. Round this out with a another amazing sound track from Akira Yamaoka, the game is up to snuff with every Silent Hill game yet.

The last bit is that the game is short. Really, really short. Like, I beat this game in 3 and a half hours on my first play through and went out of my way to explore most of the town short. I assume that it was because this is a portable game, so a long and engaging experience seemed slightly unnecessary. Countering this, are XBox 360 Achievement like things called Accolades. They're fairly neat, unlocking for things like exploration, speed, killing enemies, keeping your flashlight off, and giving you awesome weapons and costumes. Rounding out with 3 endings (including the return of the UFO ending), the game has a fair bit of replay value. For the game being 10 dollars per hour of your time the first time around, it's actually a pretty good package.

Silent Hill: 0rigins is far from being a mediocre game. Anything that feels slightly sub par, be it the length, the story or the gameplay, is held together tightly by a lot of nifty new ideas that make it a worthy entry into the series. It might not be an amazing game, but it's certainly been the best game we've had since fairly generic 3 and the "Is this even a part of the series?" 4. And for 30 dollars, it's certainly worth a look. Just remember to follow the directions when you turn on the game for the optimal experience.

8/10

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 11/12/07

Game Release: Silent Hill: Origins (US, 11/06/07)