Silent Hill: Downpour Poisons Water With Horror

[ZombieGenesis]

After watching a few trailers I can happily announce that this game looks GOOD to me.

Now I realise for anyone not living inside my brain that isn't going to mean squat, but I have a hideously high standard in games, and in particular with games that include themes I like (survival horror being one of them). The videos had lots of lovely small details which I think really make horror work.

My only concern will be pacing. Pacing is KEY to a horror game and badly done, it will destroy them.

 

[Gladion]

The one problem I have with this game is an interview I read with the chief developers. Without getting too elaborate now, they were basically just saying "Okay, we truly, honestly think that Silent Hill 2 is the best in the series (we don't say that to please the fans, we honestly think so) and we want to go that way. We don't want to do it like Resident Evil 5 did it, with all the action and stuff. We didn't like that. AT ALL. JUST LIKE YOU GUYS. PLEASE LOVE US."

First Silent Hill game I'm not the slightest bit interested in yet. As a fan, I'll give it a chance, but I don't have hopes that this will be any good. Although the notion of water being the biggest part of the horror-elements does sound very good. Hard to fight water and hard to avoid it. Let's see how they will handle this.

 

[ajemas]

First thought: "QTEs for quick time events? Man, this game is going to suck."
Second thought: "Well, maybe not."
Let me explain. The main reason (at least for myself) that QTEs suck is because if you mess up, you have to start the cutscene all over again. They also require little to no skill, and take away an action that the player could be doing for him/herself. Cutscenes should only be used for actions that the character can't do during normal gameplay.
However, Silent Hill Downpour might actually pull it off correctly. Have you ever seen a scary movie where you closed your eyes during the scary parts? Or, while playing a game, used the convenient pause button to briefly take yourself out of the action? No matter what horror medium is being played, the player always has the option to look away from the screen. Games are a bit of a problem, because the player might simply put the controller down if it is to scary to resume, while movies can just keep going.
QTEs could offer the perfect solution. They force the player to keep on watching the scary or horrifying cutscene through penalty of not continuing. The events are simple enough to do even while scared, so the player gets a much more horrifying experience.

TL/DR, QTEs circumvent the problem of having players look away or stop playing by forcing them to stare at the screen in order to continue.

 

[Balkan]

Combat plays out just like you'd expect in a survival horror game. Murphy can hold one weapon at a time, such as a crowbar or pipe, and all weapons have limited durability. However, Murphy's inaccurate striking abilities don't make him a very good warrior. Fighting should be avoided whenever possible in Downpour, with boss battles mostly taking place through QTE.

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUU

Degrading weapons and quick time events??
That is huge glowing warning sign saying that this game will suck.

Oh Silent Hill, what happened to you??? D:

Go play dead space if you want quicktime event fucking SOB . The game looks good .I wont buy modern warfare 3 for this .Looks like something made with tallent , not with money .