b e a r d @beardalaxy@gameliberty.club

the best silent hill song is one that was only ever performed live

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22tOAzs3Oqc

1. I ended up turning on the little UI elements that show you things you can interact with. Look, the game does a decent job at showing the things you need to collect and whatever, but it just doesn't meet the mark. I view this as a necessity, unfortunately.
2. The flashlight is infuriatingly bad. It seems very selective on how far it can actually go, depending on if there is a wall in your line of sight or not. I liked the Alone In The Dark remake's flashlight so much better. I can't fully remember how SH2's was, but that probably means it was at least not an annoyance. I think they are trying to limit visibility by making the flashlight not let you see down long hallways and such but that's just another reason why fixed camera angles are superior for this type of game.
3. Eddie looks horrible, and not in a good way. Something about his model just really makes him look like he's not a real human. The original cutscene models for *all* the characters are far superior.
4. There's no shoulder swap for the aiming. If you're going to change up the camera to be over-the-shoulder, AT LEAST put in shoulder swap.
5. Unfortunately, the game does play into the whole "shoot out their kneecaps" trope from Resident Evil, it seems. Since the original doesn't even have aiming, each enemy just took a set amount of shots to kill but this one has way more strategy to the action. Personally, I don't think that belongs in a Silent Hill game.
6. Combat still sucks. You pretty much just have to guess when an enemy might want to attack and dodge at that point. There are tells, but you really don't have enough time to react to them. I feel like there is going to be a point where the game's health item pick up to janky combat balance is going to be upset and I'll have to lower the combat difficulty to compensate for it.
7. Enemies are being hidden behind walls, Fromsoft style. Yeah, I am starting to feel the action horror element kind of seeping in. I really shouldn't have to be dodging around corners, thinking an enemy might be there, in Silent Hill.
8. Again, more filler notes that aren't in the original. They are kind of cringe, honestly. Like they're taken directly from a 14 year old emo's MySpace account.
9. For fans of the original, you might remember the apple juice garbage chute puzzle. It's a little "out there." Well, here it's not even something you have to think about, the juice is just right next to garbage chute. Interestingly, it doesn't put the coin into the trash can, but it falls out onto the pavement. Wonder why they changed that. Adding to that, the newspaper about Walter Sullivan being arrested isn't in the garbage either. I haven't seen it at all. It's actually important lore building so them leaving it out is really peculiar. If I recall, a puzzle also relies on this information.
10. Okay, actually, now that I think about it all those edgy notes ARE from Walter Sullivan. So, they added in these edgy notes and removed the newspaper, seemingly. Honestly, I disagree with that change. It really feels like extra padding and unnecessary changes. It's heavily embellished while also leaving out crucial information. I hope it gets filled out more later, but it shouldn't have to be in the first place.
11. The coin puzzle has several steps to it, which is actually pretty cool.
12. Pyramid Head reveal... Not as good. Still okay, gets the job done. But it's nowhere near as visceral as the original. You don't see as much of the mannequin rape (it's a lot more implied) and James only fires a few shots as opposed to mag dumping the thing. It's like, all of the elements are there, just presented in a different way. It's like, higher fidelity for sure, but at what cost?
13. Really...? Not only are there glass breaking mechanics, but now there are WALL breaking mechanics? Bro I'm destroying WALLS with a plank of wood. This is just kind of ridiculous. Why did this stuff even need to be added in? It makes the game borderline comedic.
14. When you investigate an item, it doesn't go back to your inventory. You have to navigate to the menu again, which has also reset your position. It gets really tedious when you want to examine multiple items at once.
15. The game has auto saves, but it also has manual saves. The manual saves seem to be in relatively the same spots as in the original, so I can't help but wonder if it would have been better to just add more manual saves around instead of doing auto saves too. If it weren't for the significance of the save points, I'm willing to bet they would have done away with them entirely and had it all be auto saves, then let you make manual saves from the menu or something. Just seems like the design philosophy is clashing a little bit there.
16. Every single puzzle has a cloth draped over it. Like some guy had gone through and said "ohhh this is an important puzzle location, so we have to cover it in a cloth so nobody can find it!" This really could have been solved by either A) fixed camera angles setting up shots to show an object's significance in the scene or B) just make the objects stand out way more from a design perspective. Make them look like things the player would want to interact with. Just draping a cloth over it seems a little lazy.
17. Not a huge fan of the Otherworld design. It's a bit too realistic and not artistic. Maybe it's just because of the limitations of the PS2, but the Otherworld was a lot more simple and easier to digest whereas here, it's extremely noisy and your eyes kind of get pulled all over the place. However, it is still very tense and keeps you on edge. It's the most scared I've felt my entire playthrough, which is now up to 5 hours. Still, there are much better Otherworld depictions in the franchise.

Overall, I think there was more bad than good this time around. I think they're going a little overboard in some areas. For someone who has never played the original, it's probably outstanding. It's just really, really not the same game at all.

Got this little Dou keychain from Diives :)
@diives

Rivals of Aether 2 is awesome guys. It's free on Steam for the rest of the week, please go check it out :D