Two buttons is everything Exo One needs to create some of the most physically intuitive movement I've played in recent years. Following Miyamoto's famous empty room anecdote, our sheer existence as this shape-shifting ball is extremely fun and stimulating as long as we have a dune to surf.

I love it when progress in a game's curve is based on my understanding of its gamefeel alone, and I loved learning to break the sound barrier with my tiny avatar so badly... that I was a little underwhelmed when I reached the final level without that many opportunities to play around in even crazier grounds. From my point of view, it's a diamond in the rough, really recommendable as it stands, but with the potential of achieving excellency if the team implemented its fantastic kinestesia into some thought through level design that allowed for more complex ways of expression.

EASILY the worst Silent Hill game made by Team Silent the original developers due to multiple infirituating design decisions. Which is a shame because the opening 30 minutes are the literal peak of this entire series.

===GAMEPLAY===
The combat (historically terrible or just plain basic across all Silent Hills) was made even fucking worse by adding a very bad wind-up mechanic (those "heavy attacks" often will just miss your target standing right in front of you) and a dodge that is even worse than that.

Moreover, the devs in their infinite wisdom added a limited inventory space and an infinite box in your safe zone to store items, clearly inspired by Resident Evil. The inventory mechanic leads to some cool moments where you have to go back to your safe zone and interact with certain equipment to alter items, solve puzzles, and progress the story, I like that.

What I don't like is that you cannot reload your gun with bullets from the ground when your inventory is full (LIKE YOU CAN IN EVERY SINGLE RESIDENT EVIL EVER), you can use healing items from the ground, and most importantly you cannot fucking dismiss or drop items. This leads to situations where you are FORCED to backtrack to the safe zone and dump items only to backtrack to the item and pick it up. This sounds minor but it will be like solid 25% of your playthrough if you play like me, I'm not fucking kidding, I always held onto one melee and ranged weapon, ammo, 1 heal, and 2 anti-ghost equipment, usually there was a key item I needed to hold on because I did not know when I will use it, that's 7/10 slots gone. In Resident Evil I would be okay with that, but in Silent Hill nothing stacks, there are 3 different healing items, but none of them stack, and ammo doesn't stack if you take two mags for the handgun and the weapons itself that's 30% of your inventory gone, WHAT THE FUCK!?

The second enemy you run into, who becomes a regular from that point, is the ghost. Those motherfuckers are immortal (they always get back up unless you pin them to the ground with the third rarest item in the game), and they deal damage by just being near you (countered only by wearing the second rarest item in the game, it breaks after standing in their dmg zone for too long), they also have a massive HP pool you need to get through to even have a chance to knock them down to the ground (unless you use the rarest item in the game, the silver bullet, to one shot them). Do you see the problem that immediately pops up from that description? They are one of the shittiest enemies in all of gaming, they attack with no animation, they float so you can't get away from them unless you leave the room, and require you to waste the most precious resources you have in the entire video game. To top it all off, they just look like run-of-the-mill zombies! No cool ass fucking design like Pyramid Head or anything from previous games, just a grey dude with blood on him...

I don't even have the strength to talk about how they butchered level design, puzzles, and environments compared to previous entries. Every single thing related to moving your character through the levels and things you will see there is a direct downgrade from every single Silent Hill before this one.

=== The Story ===

You play as Henry, during the game's opening, you learn he is stuck in his apartment while the life of everyone around him goes on. This is immediately captivating, the image of the heavily chained-up apartment door leading outside is literally one of the most striking images in all of Silent Hill. Why is Henry stuck there? How does he tie into the overall narrative of Silent Hill? Well... it all comes crumbling down from there. Because at some point you learn that Henry has nothing to do with the IP, he just moved into this apartment which is getting haunted. This is quite the point of content to me, because:

1) Silent Hill is built on the idea of the protagonist being the key element to the story. Harry, James and Heather are KEY elements to their respective games, the story is happening because of them. Henry is a random schmuck like in all other games, Resident Evil is a good example, Leon, Chris, and Jill are random schmucks. They are very cool, beloved characters, but the story is happening because some evil scientist or cult did something, they are the solution to the problem, not the root of it. This is quite normal for games, movies, and other media, but it also means that Silent Hill 4 is just less unique than 1, 2, and 3, as SH4 just chose to be like all those other things instead of sticking to the series identity (great way to kill your IP btw, at that point why even call it Silent Hill?). Also in general Henry is just severely bland, to a comical extent, somebody can get their skin peeled in front of this guy and he will just kinda stand there and maybe say 'ew'. But on the other hand, he LOSES HIS SHIT when his female neighbor who doesn't even know his name gets targeted by the villain, this MF seen 4 guys and 1 girl die right in front of him and he could not give any less of a shit, but he is obsessed with this random chick? I though there was going to be a twist that he's a serial killer or a stalker obsessed with her because of how weird he acts around any human being, but nope, he's just some schmuck whos apparently also very weird.

2) Ghosts and hauntings are fucking boring compared to anything we have seen up to now. I'm sorry but it's true, visual design wise Ghosts have to be the most boring thing we have ever seen in the series, even more boring than just a fucking dog enemy. The main antagonist of this one, and like 2/3's of all the bosses are also just ghosts of some dude... can you name a bigger downgrade from Pyramid Head, Incubus, God, Mary, and all the other shit the previous 3 threw at you?

=== The Room ===

One of the only two cool things I have to say about this videogame: the room. I love how intimate you get with Henry's apartment throughout the game. His apartment is a safe zone you teleport into every time you encounter a hole in one of the levels. You can interact with different photos Henry took of Silent Hill locations (for some fucking reason, the game could establish he's a photographer to excuse that and give him some more personality but nope, add that to the pile of wasted potential), he comments tidbits about his time there and such. The room also becomes haunted from time to time which results in different items becoming possessed, which is super fucking cool. The hauntings themselves are random and there are some rare ones you can get in your playthrough or not, they also turn your safe room into a not-so-safe room since they damage Henry if he gets to close.

The second thing I kinda liked is how in-depth the escort mission section of the game is. The second half has you protecting an NPC while backtracking zones you already visited, while that doesn't make for great gameplay I have to admit some of the stuff devs put in there was fucking cool. The NPC in question cannot die, but the more damage he receives the more possessed she becomes, this allows her to read cipher that looks like nonsense to Henry, but she also starts behaving like Ghosts, hurting our hero. How well you protect her dictates what ending you get, and the gameplay is frustrating outside of those mentioned cool interactions.

=== The summary ===

The opening was INCREDIBLE, but all the endings and the gameplay in between were just bad. The story also unveiled in very uninteresting and quite generic way to be honest, the villain just turned out boring and the spooky ghost hauntings were just an empty spectacle with little to no plot ramifications at the end. This feels like some new developers half-assed attempt at a survival horror, but it's made by one of the teams RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS ENTIRE GENRE. It's honestly embarrassing and a blemish on Team Silent's reputation. I would never recommend this game to anyone, not even hardcore fans of Silent Hill or survival horror genre, or at least I would straight up say to just play the first 30 minutes and then watch a plot summary and endings on YouTube, maybe listen to some of the OST, they won't miss out on much because it's a fucking waste of 9-10 hours.

Fun platformer game that is honestly super ambitious for a PS1 game but ends up falling short in many aspects. The quest system in this game is quite novel for a platformer game, and it's fully-voiced acted dialogue it ends up really charming. However, most of the quests end up feeling more like busy work rather than engaging gameplay. You never get any real meaningful rewards to do any of these quests aside for the sake of 100% completion. Fortunately, these quests are largely optional so its not too much of a hamper on this game's quality. However a big issue with this game ends up being its controls. The controls are honestly terrible. Everything feels like molasses and Tomba has the floatiest jump I've ever seen from a 3D platformer. The main method of attacking enemies is by grabbing them and throwing them. But often times the hitboxes are a little hard to decipher so you end up taking contact damage with them instead of grabbing them. Fortunately, the floaty jump ends up working in Tomba's favor and does mitigate this issue a bit. Furthermore, there's just several systems in this game, like the costumes, that feel too clunky and unpolished. I feel like if this game released on the PS2 with better controls and more polish it would be remembered as one of the greatest platforms of all time. It especially fumbles by the end by having a "Chozo artifact hunt" where you have to traverse the entire game and find specific pig doors with no indication where to find them which completely bogged down my experience by the end. I wouldn't say this is a bad game per say; it's just one that you have to stomach its bad qualities so that you see its hidden quality unsurfaces.

Originally wrote this:
I dunno man.
The monsters are creepy and the sound design is creepy but the story... I just don't care. I mean it seems like its leading to the idea that these monsters are the manifestation of some psychotic misery of this dude's mind (I'm guessing) and I wasn't really intrigued by that. Gameplay-wise I am also pretty unimpressed. My first three hours looked like this:
1. Watch cryptic and not particularly engaging cutscenes.
2. Wander down the streets and then the apartments scouring and clicking on everything hoping to find the next key to unlock the next door.
3. Beating up on jerks with a stick using awkward controls.
4. Being mildly creeped out by the monster design. I found the monsters in 1 a lot more creepy!
It seems like this game means a lot to a lot of cool-sounding people on the internet... but it ain't doing much for me.
Kudos to the people who made the Enhanced Edition. I didn't really feel compelled from my time with this game but I like that there's a lovingly restored version to play.

Then due to the overwhelming praise this game has received on this site, I gave the game another hour. Nothing changed! If anything I felt more negative. Gave up after getting to the hospital with these thoughts:

I don't like it. I played for around 4 hours. The breadcrumbs this story is dropping are not intriguing me. The creepy setting is not mysterious enough to pull me in. The surreal dialogue feels more corny than profound. The gameplay is shockingly repetitive and boring.

The fog town is cool and the sound design is scary but I'm frankly just finding this to be a watered down and less compelling version of Silent Hill 1.

"whack the jamook"

Pros
- voiced by james gandolfini and company. behind-the-scenes of recording sessions included as bonus content.
- Like Lost Via Domus, it's remarkable that a landmark of Golden Age Television was adapted for a game. Looking forward to THE WIRE next.
- naked chicks
- ending credits is a slideshow of TV Stills of all the main cast, it's so tonally opposite of the true series ending that it's funny.
- cheats make it easy to beat. (infinite health / ammo / respect)
- bat mitzvah

Cons
- It's not fun to play. Stiff combat.
- All the levels are smutty locations with shitty people. There's nothing appealing. Doesn't lean into the camp or goofiness like Saints Row.
- No Carmela.

It's an oddity and a relic of unnecessary PS2 licensed games. It's bad, but not "so-bad-it's-good". Just bland.

Full Playthrough
Part 1: https://youtu.be/ovm9XuJEdO0
Part 2: https://youtu.be/91C_7CT2YRU

As an Adventure game The Prisoner continues the pure bloodline of Atari's Adventure which harkens closer to the esoterism of text-adventures rather then the action focus the genre would take following The Legend of Zelda. This esotericism is fitting considering its source material is the equally esoteric TV show The Prisoner.

As a game with sparse text its unable to replicate the depth of character and theme found in the show, but the game excels at creating the same diversity of set pieces which made the show enjoyable in a moment to moment basis. Some of them like the wild -> train station -> to city side quest are ripped directly from the show while most are entirely new. The game is set up as a series of mini games which often have meta or outside the box solutions and either lead to a false escape method, a hint, or the true escape.

What is most impressive here is how outside the box many of the game's tricks are. Years before Metal Gear would demand players turn off the console, this game tells you to unplug your computer. When trying to extract your resignation number the game will through some abstract tricks at you. In one minigame you have to memorize strings of numbers and repeat them back, but will though in your own resignation number within those lists. At random times the game will through up a fake crash telling you to input your resignation number as an error code decades before Eternal Darkness. There is a level of meta and playing with the players expectations here that wouldn't be seen in mainstream gaming for decades later. Text--adventures and its immediate adventure game precedents really are a lost art of gaming, a genre which evolved narratively and structurally faster then the genres which have survived today, to point of where games in the past decade have really only begun reaching this sort of structural playfulness regularly.

The major flaw here and the one which leaves the game unfinished for me is how slow the game is. Anytime you are caught and fail in an escape you must sit through a minutes long load screen ontop of the loading for each individual screen. All text in the game is unskipable and proceeds at a snails pace, which make the trial and error gameplay necessary to finish the game too tedious to truly recommend finishing.