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11-02-05 12:59 PM
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Acmlm's Board - I2 Archive - General Gaming - Silent Hill 4 | |
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Rydain

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Posted on 04-28-04 10:50 AM Link | Quote
GameSpot preview article

What do you think? I love the premise of being trapped in your own apartment by a mysterious web of locked chains across the front door and having no choice but to go into some freaky portal, but that bit about making the game more action-oriented than its predecessors really worries me. Personally, I think the Silent Hill experience is best when the gameplay follows this sort of structure:

- Explore. Get creeped out by your surroundings and their soundtrack (or lack thereof).
- Start to hear your radio crackle. Get ready to beat something or run.
- Gaaah! Monster(s)! Frantically save your ass by beating or avoiding said monster(s) as necessary.
- Continue what you're doing. Going through a door into a room without enemies gives you a nice breath of relief.

I don't particularly care for something along the lines of this scenario, which irritated me part of the way through Silent Hill 3's office building:

- Save the game. (To the credit of the sadistic bastard who designed this little area, at least that was one thing they did right...)
- Step into the next hallway. Hear your radio and the telltale sounds of a Slurper. Whack the Slurper with your katana. Get knocked down by its friend, which was right next to it. Get chewed on a lot. Restart.
- This time, whip out your shotgun, which is the best weapon you have for dealing with multiple enemies. Waste a ton of ammo shooting the walls because you weren't actually close enough to aim at the monsters. Attempt to quickly aim and shoot said monsters without getting knocked over. (They're fast.) Discover that there are actually two more Slurpers. Get knocked down and chewed on a lot. Swear. Restart.
- Do better healthwise this time but still use about half of your shotgun ammo. Restart.
- Repeat until you finally get through without wasting much ammo or health.

I'm just worried that instead of a good balance of exploring and fighting (or avoiding), the game is going to turn into an exercise in annoying the crap out of the player by throwing tons of enemies at them. I can deal with a very limited number of irritating areas like the one I mentioned above, but too much of that would really ruin my enjoyment of the game. Not only that, they're evidently introducing enemies who can go through walls, which takes away that happy door safety breather I mentioned above. The developers of Silent Hill 3 tried to make the game more intense by taking away sources of relief. The game had a supply-balancing function of sorts that would cause some supplies to not show up if you had a certain amount of them already. Also, most of it took place indoors and in cramped areas, which felt (and was) more dangerous for your character because it made it more difficult to run away from enemies. It was a good game, and I did enjoy it, but I thought that the first two Silent Hills felt more balanced and player-friendly, and I really don't want to see this one continue further down into the pit of "hey, let's scare the player by torturing them".
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Posted on 04-28-04 01:11 PM Link | Quote
Never liked it... and i think you have mentioned most things the game is lacking/annoying and down right fustrating
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Posted on 04-28-04 01:17 PM Link | Quote
It's these kinds of games that make me want to say "Fuck it." and go buy a gameshark/replay/codebreaker.

SH1 > SH(anything after 1).

Let's lock all of the doors and give you no supplies. Have fun dying. Sucker.

That's what it's seeming like to me.

..

Of course SH2's final area was amusing.


//

And I doubt I'll be getting this, having not gotten SH2/3.


EDIT: After reading the article carefully... I came up with a name for it.

SH4: Porta-portal. Based on a porta-potty. "...it doesn't look like Henry will be getting much assistance on his toilet portal-fueled adventures."


(edited by 404 on 04-28-04 04:20 AM)
Rydain

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Posted on 04-28-04 05:41 PM Link | Quote
Now that's an idea...I can buy/rent it to enjoy the freakiness and the story and just put on some infinite *insert good stuff here* codes if I get really pissed off.

I liked the way SH1 handled supplies and difficulty levels. Ammo and health were pretty plentiful, but the actual number of bullets in each box changed depending on the mode, and other parameters (your defense ability, the enemies' defense ability) influenced how much of the items you'd need to use to kill stuff or heal yourself which, in turn, helped determine what style of gameplay you should choose. On Easy, you can pretty much just shoot everything, but Hard mode necessitates conserving your stuff whenever you can. In contrast, Easy mode in SH3 really wasn't all that easy, especially at the beginning of the game, where you get next to nothing and have to repeatedly avoid big, nasty enemies while running around.
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Posted on 04-28-04 05:46 PM Link | Quote
I played SH3 with Sofie and I thought it was awesome, everything, the graphics, the movie sequences and the story. Especially how it integrated with the first Silent Hill. I also really liked the idea that there was monsters that you could kill, but it would take alot to kill them and you would most likely not be able to beat most of them. So I just ran past every monster, it felt more real that way since I doubt I'd go beat a 3headed dog with my 1inch pocket knife any time soon in real life.
I also saw the trailer for SH4 and it looks pretty cool and scary as it's predecessors. It's something I'm eagerly waiting to get
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Posted on 04-29-04 10:53 AM Link | Quote
Having to run away from some of the enemies definitely makes the game more exciting. For instance, I thought that the Pendulum monsters were well-designed. They were difficult to kill and annoyed the crap out of you with their rusty squealing, which made you want to flee from them as fast as possible, but they weren't obnoxious like the Slurpers, which appeared in skinny corridors, were nigh impossible to get around, and hurt you badly if you made a misstep while near them.

Did you actually manage to kill anything with that knife? I killed the first dog on my first attempt through the game, but I got bitten a lot and decided that it just wasn't worth it because I could run in the room, grab the stuff, and leave. It would be amusing if anyone got good at beating up Closers with that thing.

On the subject of Silent Hill 4: here is another article that makes the game sound more player-friendly than I feared it would be. Its flow is going to be drastically different from that of the existing Silent Hill games. Instead of progressing on a one-way path toward the game's end (which I liked because it sucks you into the nightmare and gives you a feeling of being propelled toward some terrible finality), SH4 has the player warping to different locales from a central area (your apartment), going back and forth as needed to find more items required to solve puzzles. Although the one-way path seems more Silent Hill-ish to me, I enjoy nonlinear exploration of the sort described above (Symphony of the Night is one of my favorite games), so I think this could be an interesting and fun new direction of gameplay if they can get it to retain the overall feel of the series (and I don't see why they couldn't - for instance, various areas might change as you get further in the game, which would retain that feel of unstoppable progression). It seems that your health is restored whenever you return to the apartment. If you can do this as much as you want, then the higher quantity of fighting will be much less bothersome than I feared. An infinite wellspring of health is an excellent feature because it makes it easier for you to practice fighting and generally screwing up, it decreases the probability of your permanently wrecking your chances of beating the game, and it doesn't necessarily take away the game's challenge. (I highly doubt that they'd let you warp back at will and then immediately return to the exact point at which you left. You'd still have to get through entire sections of the game without the help of the apartment.) All in all, I think I want to get it now...
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Posted on 04-29-04 02:45 PM Link | Quote
I've only played the first game, but I've kept up with the plot of the later games (it's like reading a nice psychological thriller) and I have to say the SH series have my fave plots of all time, they're F'd up enough to keep me hooked
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Posted on 05-01-04 06:01 AM Link | Quote
Frankly, the thing I look forward to most in SH4 is the soundtrack. SH3's is absolutely brilliant, and I expect this one will be as well.

That said, having seen the trailer to SH4, I find it boring that I'll still have to attack annoying dog creatures. There should be times when you absolutely HAVE to run away. That makes it more tense and frightening. Those weird creatures that sort of glide along the ground, though...they're freaky. They look kind of humanly, but their limbs appear to be mangled, and the way they move around is bizarre. I love it.
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Posted on 05-02-04 07:52 PM Link | Quote
Originally posted by Rydain
being trapped in your own apartment by a mysterious web of locked chains across the front door
This, people, is when you bring out the mysterious bolt-cutters.
Rydain

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Posted on 05-03-04 07:24 AM Link | Quote
Heh, that would be the shortest survival horror game in history.

There's also mysterious writing on the door that warns Henry (the apartment-dweller) not to go out, so I'm guessing that his mysterious bolt cutters were stolen by the mysterious entity that wrote that.
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Posted on 05-03-04 07:25 AM Link | Quote
i hate this game
Rydain

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Posted on 05-03-04 11:40 AM Link | Quote
*Rydain whacks Aioria with the Stick of Meaningless Blather*

If you hate something, explain why - don't just make a one-line post. (I'm honestly curious as to why someone would hate a game that hasn't even been released yet. ) Otherwise, you're spamming, and spamming is bad, umkay?
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Posted on 06-23-04 06:24 AM Link | Quote
*B to the izzump*

So what if I started this 1 1/2 months ago - it's my thread and I have significant new content to share, so there ya go. SH4 is out in Japan, and it has an English language option, so a bunch of people on GameFAQs have imported it. The two reviews posted thus far gave it a 5/10. Of course, a significant population of the SH4 board is whining over the fact that the reviewers dared to have a negative opinion about the game, but I think their criticisms are well-written and fair. Be warned that kyouki's review has an unmarked puzzle solution spoiler.

Review page linky

For a different perspective, here is another well-written review from someone who enjoyed the game much more than the two people mentioned above.

Positive review (message board thread)

My opinion thus far is that the game looks entertaining, but I'm concerned about some of its features that seem artificially tedious (like the item-based puzzles that require lots of backtracking - sure, you had to run around somewhat in the other Silent Hill games, but it never seemed excessive), so I want to wait for more reviews before deciding whether or not to run out and buy it. At the moment, this seems like one of those titles that I don't think is worth $50, but I wouldn't mind picking it up used later (I actually just bought a couple of those yesterday ). It doesn't come out here until September anyway.
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Posted on 06-23-04 08:07 AM Link | Quote
ive always enjoyed the Silent hill games for a little scare, especially when you play at night in the full moon by yourself in a dark room.....
Darth Coby

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Posted on 06-24-04 03:02 AM Link | Quote
Originally posted by Chaosflare
ive always enjoyed the Silent hill games for a little scare, especially when you play at night in the full moon by yourself in a dark room.....


NU UH! Something I don't do, nope, can't make me do it. Whenever I play SH I make sure I'm with too, it's more fun that way.
And when I play alone it's usually broaght (spelling?) daylight.
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Posted on 06-24-04 08:01 AM Link | Quote
*shudders*

As much as I wanted to play through the series, I couldn't. It freaked me out a little too much.

And I didn't like how all the rooms and such are run down, broken, messy, bloody, and gross in general. They should make a Queer Eye for the Silent Hill Guy, and have some of those locales cleaned up.
Darth Coby

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Posted on 06-24-04 02:41 PM Link | Quote
Originally posted by Toxic

And I didn't like how all the rooms and such are run down, broken, messy, bloody, and gross in general..

Uhm, that's the point. And if you're still in Normal Silent Hill then the rooms aren't all that messed up, then they're pretty ok, but the moment you get into Dark Silent Hill you're pretty much fucked.
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Posted on 06-24-04 07:39 PM Link | Quote
I demand that XKeeper posts the Pyramid Head comic he did.
Rydain

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Posted on 06-26-04 07:52 AM Link | Quote
I just realized that I never posted my entry into a Fark Photoshop contest where the idea was to illustrate a modern game as it would have appeared in the Atari era. It got 4 votes, and a couple of people from different message boards have linked to it. (I know this because I go through the rydain.org logs every now and then. I like to see where people are coming from...and no, direct linkage doesn't bother me at all because I have a fuckload of bandwidth to burn.) I'm happy that people are amused by it.

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Posted on 06-26-04 08:23 AM Link | Quote
I remember seeing the collection of pictures on FARK's site.

Too bad that a lot of people, even though they had good entries, didn't understand what Atari-style was.
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