It's a complete and utter shame the game got released in this sorry state.
The story itself is nice. It's a Silent Hill 2 type of deal, where everything is just metaphors until it starts making sense near the end but, unlike Silent Hill 2, the end result can feel overly complicated with how forced and contrived some of its beats are. Still, it is nice.
The atmosphere, the same thing. Like Silent Hill 2, it goes for a melancholic sadness type of horror that works relatively well. The art direction is great and the soundtrack isn't bad either. It traverses a couple of different settings and they all feel pretty well realized. Never scary though, despite clearly attempting it, which is a shame.
Everything else is very much awful. All that makes a game a game... Is awful. I'm a passionate defender of horror games having clunky controls as they work well to naturally build extra tension and can be surprinsingly satisfying once you get the hang of them--especially "fixed camera/tank controls" games--but this isn't that. Here, every time the camera changes, you lose your way (a problem usually fixed with the tank controls it sadly excludes as an option); Everytime you try hitting an enemy, you gotta pray the stupidly small hitboxes even connect--or to be more specfic, YOUR hitboxes connect, because enemies will almost always be at a ridiculous advantage--I hope you like getting stun-locked everytime you're forced to fight multiple enemies; If you lose too much health, the dip in speed it causes leads to either getting hit an unfair ammount easier or just getting plain bored;
As far as gameplay's concerned, the only positive is how much potential the dog mechanic had--which it still somewhat squandered as it made traversal a matter of going from point A to point B, disincentivizing actual exploration. The couple instances where that limitation got turned on its head were definitely cool--but also Megalodon levels of rare.
Survival horror games aren't meant to be fun but they are definitely meant to be gripping, and it's almost impossible for me to be gripped when I have cheap frustration taking me out of it at every corner. Old Resident Evil and Silent Hill games work because they are well designed around its intentional clunkiness but there's, virtually, no clunkiness to work with here... It's just broken.
What remains is good. Even if all too easily comparable to SH2 in most regards it does enough to stand out and be pretty interesting by its own merits. That's why the score is still positive. I just wish it was actually fucking finished.
Konami should not be remaking any Silent Hill games but Atlus should really be remaking this. If good emotional horror is something which interests you enough to put up with an entire cattle's worth of bullshit then, please, play it. If not, don't bother.
The story itself is nice. It's a Silent Hill 2 type of deal, where everything is just metaphors until it starts making sense near the end but, unlike Silent Hill 2, the end result can feel overly complicated with how forced and contrived some of its beats are. Still, it is nice.
The atmosphere, the same thing. Like Silent Hill 2, it goes for a melancholic sadness type of horror that works relatively well. The art direction is great and the soundtrack isn't bad either. It traverses a couple of different settings and they all feel pretty well realized. Never scary though, despite clearly attempting it, which is a shame.
Everything else is very much awful. All that makes a game a game... Is awful. I'm a passionate defender of horror games having clunky controls as they work well to naturally build extra tension and can be surprinsingly satisfying once you get the hang of them--especially "fixed camera/tank controls" games--but this isn't that. Here, every time the camera changes, you lose your way (a problem usually fixed with the tank controls it sadly excludes as an option); Everytime you try hitting an enemy, you gotta pray the stupidly small hitboxes even connect--or to be more specfic, YOUR hitboxes connect, because enemies will almost always be at a ridiculous advantage--I hope you like getting stun-locked everytime you're forced to fight multiple enemies; If you lose too much health, the dip in speed it causes leads to either getting hit an unfair ammount easier or just getting plain bored;
As far as gameplay's concerned, the only positive is how much potential the dog mechanic had--which it still somewhat squandered as it made traversal a matter of going from point A to point B, disincentivizing actual exploration. The couple instances where that limitation got turned on its head were definitely cool--but also Megalodon levels of rare.
Survival horror games aren't meant to be fun but they are definitely meant to be gripping, and it's almost impossible for me to be gripped when I have cheap frustration taking me out of it at every corner. Old Resident Evil and Silent Hill games work because they are well designed around its intentional clunkiness but there's, virtually, no clunkiness to work with here... It's just broken.
What remains is good. Even if all too easily comparable to SH2 in most regards it does enough to stand out and be pretty interesting by its own merits. That's why the score is still positive. I just wish it was actually fucking finished.
Konami should not be remaking any Silent Hill games but Atlus should really be remaking this. If good emotional horror is something which interests you enough to put up with an entire cattle's worth of bullshit then, please, play it. If not, don't bother.