Silent Hill: Downpour Poisons Water With Horror

[mindlesspuppet]

Why does a small coal mining town have a subway system?

Why does said town have a prison? Or an elaborate labyrinth located below the history museum?

Actually, I'm pretty sure it was only a coal mining town in the movie and Homecoming. The other games have always depicted it as a sort of resort town.

It was always a coal mining town. Though, that aside, why would a small town have a subway? Especially considering the town had been abandon for a century.

I'm not sure if it has a prison, I'd imagine they were just passing through; "the highway was closed, and prison guard Jimmy is about to have a baby" or some other horror cliche.

As for the labyrinth thing... got me there.

 

[DrScoobs]

give the franchis back to team silent and i will consider becoming interested in the series again.

 

[Onyx Oblivion]

What?

A giant town, with a subway?

For some reason, I smell a collectible hunt.

 

[Casual Shinji]

This is probably the most not-scary Silent Hill trailer I've ever seen. Hell, the Batman: Arkham City trailer was scarier than this.

Either get the original team back or just kill the franchise, because Silent Hill is slowly turning into Tomb Raider.

 

[Aurora219]

All of this, and it'll still never be as scary as Amnesia.

The complete and utter inability to fight back is a powerful thing.

 

[Therumancer]

Seems like everyone wants to play with water physics as a gimmick today, they even released an XBL game around that theme.

That said, I'll be taking a "wait and see" attitude with this. Going to a Czech studio means that they apparently aren't bringing back most of the original team, and also means that we're again seeing non-Japanese writers trying to emulate a Japanese style of horror (even if the games have been set in the US)

The mentioned design choices also somewhat irk me. I myself am not a big fan of either degrading weapons or QTE events. Truthfully people designing these games should take a look back to the older Silent Hill games for how to balance combat. The trick is to make hand to hand combat fairly "iffy" with a limited supply of healing items, not to make the combat inaccurate (ie "we made a clunky half functional combat system, but are promoting it as a feature") or weapons degrade. The monsters should be tough and fairly unpredictable at times, I should be concerned about the creatures themselves, than whether or not the weapon I'm carrying is going to magically disintergrate in my hands. What's more Silent Hill revolved around the idea of guns being pretty efficient at killing monsters, but bullets being in relatively limited quantity, like healing, while monsters respawn. This is what encouraged the player to avoid conflict because "buying your way out" of a situation might mean not having the stuff to succeed later on.

I think Konami needs to pull contract on the original team somehow, get them off those SAW games even if they want to do them, and put them back on Silent Hill.

 

[JaymesFogarty]

All of this, and it'll still never be as scary as Amnesia.

The complete and utter inability to fight back is a powerful thing.

Do you mean this game should take from it's predecessor, "Silent Hill: Shattered Memories,"?

 

[Rad Party God]

This however should be the last game in the series. Sure the games have terrific atmosphere, but this series should have the dignity to end gracefully as oppossed to constantly strung out. What they should do if they want players to enjoy the atmosphere is release a level creating pack for die-hards that can offer their unique horror experiences online.

^THIS

That would simply be AMAZING!!!, how I couldn't have thought about it before!??, releasing some kind of level editor that's powerful enough, people would create their own terrifying adventures, a la LittleBigPlanet or a la create your own modules of Neverwinter Nights!

OT: I like the idea of degrading weapons, as the last SH I've played was Shattered Memories didn't have any and it emphasized on running away instead of fighting, I liked that game.

BUT... QTE?... in Silent Hill!??... I just hope this doesn't turn into a Krauser battle.

 

[Aurora219]

All of this, and it'll still never be as scary as Amnesia.

The complete and utter inability to fight back is a powerful thing.

Do you mean this game should take from it's predecessor, "Silent Hill: Shattered Memories,"?

Honestly, no idea. I've never played the game.

 

[v3n0mat3]

In the rain? Awesome. Could be grounds for nice scares.

All signs point to failure:

A sequel that slipped under the radar? Check. Not exactly, it was announced April of last year. Not quite under the radar. Besides. It's Silent Hill. Until we get a confirmation that they discontinue it... there will be more sequels down the road. Guaranteed.
Inexperienced development company? Check. CD Projekt. Specifically: Red Studio. Look em up.
Flaunting QTEs? Check. Now people don't have a problem with it when it's in a game called "Shenmue" and another one called "God of War". I still don't get why it's a problem now.
Yahtzee's tears melting audio equipment? I'll check it anyway. Eh. Probably.

 

[mjc0961]

I can't help but wonder why the people of that world don't just cordon off Silent Hill, or maybe bomb it or something.

I was going along with everything until it mentioned boss fights via QTEs. That somewhat dampened my enthusiasm.

I see what you did there.

 

[Stoic raptor]

Im not understanding y people are complaining about degrading weapons. All the good silent hills had horrible combats and weapons. While the silent hills everyone complains about had the better combat.

I can understand the QTE's though.

 

[thethingthatlurks]

The mentioned design choices also somewhat irk me. I myself am not a big fan of either degrading weapons or QTE events. Truthfully people designing these games should take a look back to the older Silent Hill games for how to balance combat. The trick is to make hand to hand combat fairly "iffy" with a limited supply of healing items, not to make the combat inaccurate (ie "we made a clunky half functional combat system, but are promoting it as a feature") or weapons degrade. The monsters should be tough and fairly unpredictable at times, I should be concerned about the creatures themselves, than whether or not the weapon I'm carrying is going to magically disintergrate in my hands. What's more Silent Hill revolved around the idea of guns being pretty efficient at killing monsters, but bullets being in relatively limited quantity, like healing, while monsters respawn. This is what encouraged the player to avoid conflict because "buying your way out" of a situation might mean not having the stuff to succeed later on.

Interesting point. I always liked the combat of SH3, where the number of killed enemies ("They look like monsters to you?!") actually affect the ending of the game. Sure, you could kill them all, but...would you really want to? SH2 did the same thing, albeit to a much less noticeable degree. Plus both games had boss fights, in which the sparse ammo and health items were actually needed, so I would rather see the devs build on that.

 

[GrammarLad]

I can forgive the degrading weapons and QTE's if they can create a good atmosphere, afterall the "good" Silent Hill games (1-3) have some crappy elements, but the sense of terror and fear of the unknown compelled me to finish them, the lack of that in the later games just pushed me away I guess.

 

[Uber Waddles]

WAY too many people here watch ZP and takes Yahtzees opinions as facts.

Why are QTE's bad? They arent... They are, however, an element of a game that can be phoned in, and be annoying if not utilised correctly. Ya know, like EVERY other game mechanic in the history of ever.

Games like Kingdom Hearts 2 (though a bit simple, Ill admit) and God of War did QTE's right by making them a core gameplay mechanic. They made the combat feeling specialized by having different actions for different enemies. A game that uses QTE's randomly just for flair is generally bad: they fail because they arent a core mechanic and most of the time, the mechanic just shows up randomly.

When done right, QTE's are a good thing. They allow you to perform a specialized task you normally wouldnt be able to do within the game mechanics. Done wrong, its press x during a cutscene to dodge vase ZOMG IT HIT YOU START OVER.

Now, your all judging a mechanic based on nothing other than a Game Informer article. I hate to throw around insults, but seriously. You have to be thick to judge a game you havent touched. Let alone that NO gameplay footage has been for.

ZOMG THE WEAPONS DEGRADE AND THERE ARE QTE'S!!!! Because done right, degrading weapons wont add tension to the atmosphere, and QTEs are bad because everyone else says so. Get it together.

 

[Dfskelleton]

All of this, and it'll still never be as scary as Amnesia.

The complete and utter inability to fight back is a powerful thing.

However, it must be done right. Frictional pulled it off perfectly, but Shattered memories had a few issues getting it down, and it got annoying.
Also, I am completely mesmerized by your avatar.

 

[Callate]

Le sigh. "If at first you don't succeed, farm the franchise to a different dev and cross your fingers."

It sounds like someone said, "Well, Homecoming didn't work because the lead character was too efficient a fighter." Annnnd... then decided to do something stupid.

Look, combat has never exactly been Silent Hill's strong suit. But there's something to be said for allowing the player to save weapons for when they really need them, letting them agonize over whether it's worth it to be able to get through a hallway unaccosted by minor and slow-moving beasties only to later have to fight an inside-out tiger with meat cleavers for ears in an elevator with a toothbrush. What they're describing doesn't sound scary to me, just irritating and contrived. A less friendly way of saying exactly what they've described would be, "Yeah, there will be combat (huh huh) but it will su-u-uuuuuck..." And that's not even getting into QTEs.

And what's with all the people? Jiminy Christmas, it's like they've forgotten about the element of isolation in Silent Hill completely. You were mostly alone in SH2, and the few people who showed up mostly just reminded you of how wrong the place was. SH3 had two characters who were varying degrees of insane and one who largely served to remind you that the "adults" weren't going to be able to help you out. Even SH4's heroine largely served to transfer your anxiousness from your own safety to hers.

But then we got Homecoming, and for the first time we got people who felt completely like NPCs waiting for events to trigger. People who had no reason not to help you in this weird situation, other than their being utterly ineffectual. People who were always around to say inane things at the most tension-wrecking moments.

And it looks like of all the things they felt were going wrong, this they decided to keep.

I like the older Silent Hill games, warts and all. But until we get someone whose grand high concepts read like "It's Silent Hill... In winter! It's Silent Hill... Flooded!" the series is going to keep degenerating, no matter how shiny the chrome may get.

I was like

"Fighting should be avoided whenever possible in Downpour, with boss battles mostly taking place through QTE."

Then I was like D:

So would it be accurate to say the game made you move your colon? (Sorry, couldn't resist.)

 

[k-ossuburb]

Don't care about the QTE's, it's not they're going to be used all the time. The degrading weapons worked for me in Silent Hill 4 and I'm probably one of the minority who actually liked the game.

To be honest, I'd like this series to be taken in new directions, Team Silent tried something else with Silent Hill 4 and, even though it wasn't that well received, I didn't consider it a failed experiment, I was happy for it to take a different direction since the overall thematic elements were there that I had enjoyed in the previous titles.

In case this has slipped by some people; Silent Hill was originally intended to be an experimental game. The idea was that it took the basics of what a survival horror should be and tried something new with it. As far as I'm concerned, every game should've been completely different from the last, as much as I loved 2, 3 and 4 got my attention because they weren't being formulaic with the concept and tried something new.

I'm still happy to see where this is going, they seem to at least make an effort. Mostly I'll be happy if there's no sign of Pyramid Head, that's pretty much all I'd need to see for it to be a decent sequel.

So, basically, I don't care if it's nothing like any of the others, as long as it's a decent game that actually puts some effort in and creates a rich, interesting experience than I'll be perfectly happy with it. I'm not going to judge it before I play it, but let's just say I'm optimistic.

 

[KaosuHamoni]

I seem to remember watching that trailer months ago... =/ And a new Silent Hill article along with it...

Nothing new.