Gorilla Gunk said:
Proverbial Jon said:
I think that's the problem right there. You're not supposed to "like" them, you're supposed to be reviled by them, horrified and disgusted. Like Yahtzee said, they're just dudes. Ain't nothing scary about dudes, even if their eyes have been forced open or they scream at you. Frankly the screaming female ones are ridiculous and they make me laugh a bit. Always brightens my day when they come shambling over!
The "You're not suppose to "like" them" argument just doesn't make sense to me. I've quite liked past SH enemies. I don't really see he problem with Downpour's enemies being human-looking. Previous SH games had the nurses which were just, um, nurses with fucked up faces, and Pyramid Head is just a dude with, well, a pyramid on his head, not to mention the ghosts in SH4: The Room.
I was never a fan of the ghosts from SH4, for mostly the same reason. I mean something as literal as a ghost in something as creative as a Silent Hill game always jarred with me somewhat.
Silent Hill 3 had the best designs for monsters and there was nothing human about them but I never really found them all that scary...
The nurses specifically were a manifestation of James' sexual frustration so they had to be sexy to a point so keeping a certain amount of their humanity is understandable. Plus there's something rather terrifying about a nurse who wants to hurt you with a steel pipe. I can't even begin to explain why PH works even though he's just a dude with a pyramid, like you say!
I think you might have a point here, the more I think about it the more I see the human creatures are the more effective. However it doesn't change the fact that I don't find Downpour's enemies scary. Perhaps it's the way they have been used. In SH2 the manequins would just stand in the dark until you approached with the light, the straightjacket things would kind of convulse towards you or slither across the floor and the nurses sort of limped awkwardly and sometimes took pot shots at you with a revolver. The abstract daddy would try to eat your face etc...
Downpour just tends to chuck a load of enemies at you and they all kind of rush you, flailing blindly. With the exception of the weeping bat, that guy's just a jerk. I guess they need just enough hamanity for us to be able to relate and just enough mutilation to keep up the WTF factor.