Stolen Pixels #45: New and Improved!

[Shamus Young]

Stolen Pixels #45: New and Improved!

Surprisingly enough, Silent Hill Homecoming turned out to be pretty horrifying. Just not in the way the developers intended.


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[Eagle Est1986]

Very good Shamus, I'm glad I'm not the only person that finds achievements immersion breaking. The PS3 ones are slightly better but there should really be a way to just make them silent and invisible.

 

[Susan Arendt]

Very good Shamus, I'm glad I'm not the only person that finds achievements immersion breaking. The PS3 ones are slightly better but there should really be a way to just make them silent and invisible.

Just turn off Achievement notification in your profile and voila - no more pop ups ruining the mood.

 

[Shamus Young]

Wow. I didn't know Achievement notification could be turned off, either. It's actually something I'd want to do on a per-game basis. God of War? Sure. Silent Hill? Not so much.

I've only recently been dragged, kicking and screaming, into the current-gen consoles.

 

[Eagle Est1986]

Just turn off Achievement notification in your profile and voila - no more pop ups ruining the mood.

Well done Susan, you and your pony have revealed me to be a very silly man. Thanks though, now if I could only get the thing to run a little quieter, maybe I should wrap a towel around it.....

Wow. I didn't know Achievement notification could be turned off, either. It's actually something I'd want to do on a per-game basis. God of War? Sure. Silent Hill? Not so much.

I've only recently been dragged, kicking and screaming, into the current-gen consoles.

Maybe developers should be given the option to set a default for the notifications? Like you say, some games it makes things better, others it can really spoil the atmosphere.

So what's Mr Young's opinion? Disappointed?

 

[Shamus Young]

So what's Mr Young's opinion? Disappointed?

To my surprise, I REALLY like Alex's story. I was really expecting another cardboard protagonist. Alex is an interesting fellow and I'm keen to see what's going on with his family.

On the downside, I hit a wall three hours in. Played for 40 mins, and died. Played the same 40 mins again. Died again. (I was in the hotel. I died in a fight against 3 nurses.)

With my work schedule the way it is, I'm way too busy to be throwing away blocks of time like that. I think I need to drop the game and move on.

Alas.

 

[Susan Arendt]

Thanks though, now if I could only get the thing to run a little quieter, maybe I should wrap a towel around it.....

Copy the game to your hard drive (assuming you have the room to do so) and play from there. It's soooooo much nicer. I do that with all of my 360 games now.

 

[Eagle Est1986]

Copy the game to your hard drive (assuming you have the room to do so) and play from there. It's soooooo much nicer. I do that with all of my 360 games now.

Have done it with Fallout 3 and I can't say there's been any difference at all. It seems to be a pointless exercise to myself, except it's a fairly good way to use up that spare 80GB of space that I had lying around.

Anyways, here's me taking up all of Shamus's comment space. Thanks again for the comic Shamus, see you Friday!

 

[Susan Arendt]

Really, you don't notice any noise difference between using the disc drive and not? Wow, you had one quiet drive, then.

 

[Eagle Est1986]

Really, you don't notice any noise difference between using the disc drive and not? Wow, you had one quiet drive, then.

None at all, I guess the noise of the fans drowns it out. I remember my original 360 (now on Elite after the first one died) occasionally made some grinding noises credited to the disk drive but other than that I can't remember the drive being that noisey on that one either.
I'm starting to think that you're the one with the noisey disc drive.....

 

[DaveMc]

It's unusual, isn't it, that Shamus' sidebar commentary is somewhat *less* critical of the game than is the comic itself? Usually it goes the other way, at least according to my increasingly dim and unreliable memory.

 

[illiterate]

I believe what he's saying is that it may be an entertaining game, but it's not silent hill..

haven't played it myself, but that was mr. croshaw's take and I suspect shamus is agreeing.

 

[Lt. Sera]

That last panel is gold Shamus, GOLD!

 

[Lvl 64 Klutz]

I'm intently looking forward to the Silent Hill 5: Electric Boogaloo expansion pack.

 

[Anaphyis]

Wow. I was leaning towards buying the game and was gonna read some reviews about it (only saw the ZP till now) ... but ... quick time events? In Silent Hill? Seriously? I wanted to be fair and kind and had low expectations to begin with but now I hope they all get explosive diarrhea for not less then 4 months to parallel their shitty design decisions.

 

[Aptspire]

yeah, I was thinking "I get the whole dodge thing, but QT events? seriously???"

 

[nerdsamwich]

Please do something about the "add this" button. It gets in the way of the text.

 

[Orzene]

I gave it GameStop... and they gave me points for it... :|