 Review By: Siou Choy |
Developer: | Climax Studios |
| Publisher: | Konami | |
| Genre: | Survival Horror | |
| ESRB: | Mature | |
| # Of Players: | 1 | |
| Online Play: | No | |
| Accessories: | Memory Card | |
| Buy Now: |   |
Then he runs into a burning house, presumably to rescue the ghost. Are there such local heroes anymore? Well, I'll give the benefit of the doubt and say it could happen. Would they be dumb enough to poke around the place without cries or apparent reason, in some odd assurance that there must be somebody trapped in there? Mmm...don't think so. Would they be insane enough to pick up a near charcoal-skinned corpse from out of a ritual magick circle? Uh...no.
The next thing you know, you're waking up outside on the front lawn, sans the victim you went in there to rescue, sans EMT, firefighter, or police presence, with no apparent symptoms of smoke inhalation or burns. Your first thought? Wander the town looking for a hospital, under the assumption that someone must have brought the charred corpse there while leaving you to fend for yourself. Uh-huh. Similar leaps in logic occur throughout the narrative of the game – so why exactly does Travis decide to wander his way from the hospital to the nuthouse? No clues or reason provided, you’re just kind of shunted there like a rat in a maze. Maybe he decided he was going nuts and wanted to check in, I don’t know. But the game provides no clear reason (ok, no reason period) for these bizarre “leaps of faith” in the proceedings.
Another change: they seem to be a bit more serious about the magick this time around. While such allusions are clearly faked, jumbled together and not quite right (as usual), the developers seem to have taken some cues from the likes of Eternal Darkness and Call of Cthulhu, and even to a lesser extent the Fatal Frame series, in this respect. I don't recall the first 2 entries being quite so ponderous and direct in this area, and we'll just conveniently forget all about the foul pile of excrement popularly referred to as Silent Hill 4: The Room. Unlike that steaming hunk of gaming detritus, Silent Hill: Origins is actually a good game, with atmosphere, plot, and scares (as opposed to boredom and nausea inducing gross-out), which places it more in line with earlier (and in relation to The Room, far, far superior) entries in the series.
The controls have been greatly improved upon over prior Silent Hill releases. Between the improved controls and Travis’ take no sh** pugilistic skills, gamers can feel far more confident than usual. This is aided further by the fact that (much like in real life) you can fight adversaries off with just about anything that's not nailed down, be it something more expected like a nightstick or hunk of jagged wood or something more unusual (if expedient) like an IV drip, toaster, or bottle. The only negative here is how said items don't seem to stand up to much usage – most are lost after taking down a single enemy. And while it’s perfectly realistic and understandable that something like an alcohol bottle would break after a hit or two, it stretches credulity to its limits to assign similar properties to a nightstick!
Bottom Line:
Fellow disgruntled survival horror aficionados can rest assured that the Silent Hill franchise is back on track. The more discriminating among us were quite perturbed by the dumbed down gross-out of Silent Hill 4: The Room, which barely rose above the level of an Eli Roth production (duh…there’s lots of blood and swearing! Huh-huh-huh…I’m a horror genius! F*ing moron…), which didn’t even try to broach the usual, more sophisticated psychological/metaphysical chills of earlier series entries.
Silent Hill: Origins brought back the profound sensation of fear which made the Silent Hill series one of the top survival horror series in videogaming history. If you’re adult enough to appreciate shivers up your spine and psychological discomfort (as opposed to a childish fondness for splatter and “torture porn”), you can rest (un)easy knowing things are back to where they should be. If you want to indulge some foul urge towards the disgusting and/or the perpetration of extreme violence towards others, go rent a Saw movie, Se7en, House of Wax, Hostel, Cabin Fever, or any other Eli Roth production. Hell, you can even rent a season of Alias or the last James Bond movie – apparently, a certain administration’s disdain for the strictures of the Geneva Convention have spilled down into accepted popular culture. Just never accuse me of suggesting you patronize or perpetuate this repulsive trend in American society.
| Pros: | Cons: | Final Score: |
|---|---|---|
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| 7.5 |
Posted: 2008-05-14 15:40:21 PST