Silent Hill Downpour Playthrough

[Seil]

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I bought it today. Why? I know it's gonna be crap. I've ranted and raved about that fact since it was announced. Since Akira Yamaoka left. Since they realeased a trailer with a Korn track.

But my Chemistry course wrapped up at the end of March, so I've got a whole lot of free time. Free time that will be spent drinking, and I was thinking that as long as I'm drinking, I could rip off the Snake thread and write long, rambling sentences about video games.

Also, because I want a place to vent, make terrible Seil-jokes and talk about the latest Silent Hill title. So if anyone wants to play along with me, open your nearest bottle of whiskey and lets get cracking.

[Seil]

Pros so far: Looks amazing. Killed a fat man in the shower.

Cons so far: Sub-par music, no Yamaoka. No blood or scares.

Verdict: Still terrible.

[Azisien]

I hate this game because the trailer for it plays at work and it plays the WHOLE KORN SONG. OVER AND OVER.

[Seil]

Played for an hour or so - I had my... ugh... first visit to "the otherworld."

While SH4 The Room had trips to various "worlds," I liked it because it played like a classic SH game. An addition I'm certain has been brought on by the movie is the transformation from the "Normal World" to "The Otherworld." It was done to interesting effect in the movie, and in Shattered Memories it was a significant shift becausde of the lack of combat. Even Origins got it mostly right giving the player control over the changes. Downpour is terrible in that while it looks cool, the Otherworld is an excuse to throw in crazy puzzles that interrupt the flow.

So here's the deal: you're a prisoner named Murphy Pendleton. As the game starts, a guard helps you murder a dude in the showers. Given Murphy's familiarity with him, I'm calling it now that the dude was a pedophile and Murphy just got revenge. Okay. Anyway, Murphy later gets transferred to another prison, and during the cutscene, we're introduced to an important looking female officer.

The bus crashes, Murphy wakes up and wanders around for a bit (very reminiscent of the later bits of SH1) and you get an update that when the Native peoples were on the SH land, they worshipped something something crows. Crows are everywhere in this game. As you wander, the important looking female officer finds you and tried to capture you again. She ends up slipping off a ledge and you've got the choice to leave her or to help her. She falls either way. Anyway, Murphy meets a ninja Mailman who disappears and reappears like Batman.

Murphy then ends up in a motel of some sort where he has his first Otherworld experience (which is terrible) and gets attacked by several... women who look like the Numb Bodies from SH2, the armless ones. He finds Mustached Prisoner fighting one and pulls a Romeo where Mustached is hurt above his arm.

/\----\/

Like I said, it looks really good. However, that's all it really does well. The combat is terrible - it's similar to Origins in that you've got melee weapons all over the place that don't last more than one fight, and after it degrades you switch immediately to your fists. It's similar to Homecoming in that the enemies are fast and able, and the block doesn't really do anything at all - in fact, it's worse because the attacks still hurt if you don't block with a weapon and it looks like blocking with the weapon aids its degradation. It does add terrible camera angles to the mix, along with no autotarget... It's awful.

They do go to great lengths to build atmosphere - your flashlight is detachable, so you can have it clipped on like other SH games, but you chan SM it and look around. There's areas where you have to duck under a low hanging beam, slide through a crack, whatever, and the game automatically does this as you progress; it's nice, but it also autimatically jumps down any ledges or anything if you get close enough. It keeps the same door mechanic as SM, so that you have to push the door open.

It all meshes together to make an interesting effect, but there's no proper scares, and the music is barely passable with the absence of Yamaoka. Along with the dramatic shifts to the Otherworld, the sub-par combat against the sub-par monsters, and the Prince Of Persia inspired... I don't even know what to call it... escapes? Running? There's a... black hole that follows you around and you have to run from it as you would a Dahaka. They have a habit of having random doorways and gates open and close on you in these scenes.

There's no scares, no atmosphere, no... nothing in the story so far. I can't relate to anyone yet. If the game wasn't a Silent Hill title, it would be sub-par by itself, but measured to the collective standard of the series, it's awful.

So far.

EDIT

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This shows some of what I'm talking about.

[Seil]

Okay, HD Collection break.

..Looks really good, really smooth animations, music still kicks ass and... different voice acting?

Fuck this shit.

[Aldurin]

Yeah, I'm not even gonna bother with this game. I'm rather enjoying watching Matt derp his way through it while he and Pat go into surprising detail about the subtleties and tropes of Silent Hill.

[Bells]

never knew Bathrooms were such an important deal in Silent Hill!

Uhmm this one feels.... to slow to me. I understand what they are trying to do, making you feel unconfortable in each room and each place... but it just doesn't seem to be working (at least not in the video). The game seems to be pretty much navigating you room to room , glowing thingy to glowing thingy instead of forcing you to explore and Rewarding/Punishing you for it.

[Seil]

Uhmm this one feels.... to slow to me. I understand what they are trying to do, making you feel unconfortable in each room and each place... but it just doesn't seem to be working (at least not in the video). The game seems to be pretty much navigating you room to room , glowing thingy to glowing thingy instead of forcing you to explore and Rewarding/Punishing you for it.

No, man. No. There is no slow and uncomfortable. There's no uncomfortable at all. There's just slow.

Pat go into surprising detail about the subtleties and tropes of Silent Hill.

That's what I love about Silent Hill. I love Two best Friends, but I love it when they do SH games - Shattered Memories and Downpour - because people pay attention to them, and all I've a sudden I'm not a whinging binge, I'm making actual, valid comments about a great series of games that have slowly degraded and Americanized over a long period.

Also Yahtzee (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/878-Silent-Hill-2).

[Seil]

Okay, this game is pretty. Like, looking at reflections of the sky in a wet street pretty. It looks good, is what I'm trying to convey here.

So After you make it out of the basement of the Motel, Murphy finds some cabins and changes out of his prisoner gear. (He also finds a police badge in the clothes and decides to keep it for some reason.) He heads out on a sky tram to this tourist trap just outside of Silent Hill called "The Devil's Pit." Also, there was a mine level what where some guy comitted suicide and you had another choice as to whether or not yo... yeah the choice made no difference again.

Oh, speaking of which, Important Looking Lady Office (TM) showed up in the mine looking like hell. No word on Ninja Mailman as of yet. There was an interesting new monster who you had to run from, and it was all tense and you ran to... an educational train trip. It's a train for the Pit rigged up with an automated recording that clues you into more on the early Native days of Silent Hill. Also, it's as interactive as a cutscene - even though there are brief flashes of the Otherworld manipulating mannequins in strobe lights and bat creatures are everywhere, noting much happens.

Just like a real educational train ride.

/\---------\/

Not scary at all, very pretty, too many characters, not enough characterization of the other prisoners save for Mustache.

[Bells]

Are there multiple endings? Cause if there are... i'm pretty sure who you save (or not) affects that.

[Seil]

Here's what I'm sure of:

1) Dude you murdered in the beginning was a pedophile who molested you when you were young.

2) In Homecoming and maybe one other game, you had choices that affected the games ending, but in this game every choice I've made has led to the same outcome.

3) The enemies are balls - you've got lady, batman and now just regular man. Supports theory that Murphy was molested.

4) There's an un-named as of yet voice over when you interact with certain objects or enter certain places or whatever. Guessing that's either a police man or Murphy's dad.

[Bells]

Since Silent Hill tries to play to Mindstrings i would say that the deal isn't much the outcome but the action you took. As in, it should reflect your character's state of mind.

Since he is a criminal, i suppose that the whole balance thing here lies in a covert moral system of "repent of your sins" vs "not" ?

[Seil]

The early Silent Hills play mindgames and pull on the heart strings. The later Silent Hills try to employ a moral choice system.

The difference is that the former presented the information in a symbolic or ambiguous way, letting you connect the dots for yourself, the latter lays everything out.

Take Downpour for instance: Murphy seems like a pretty decent fellow, a little like Henry in SH4. Murphy is in jail for stealing a cop car and going on a joy ride. There is evidence - sometimes literal evidence photos, and bits and pieces of toys and things centered around his younger brother as you progress. (I am changing my call, I'm saying the younger brother was molested.) There's notes and memos and kites and things that lay out the story. They never did that in SH 1, 2, or 3.

\/-----/\

Anyway, the lame train ride from the mines ended in a near-literal troll face crashing you, and you end up in Silent Hill. Lots of long, linear areas and clusters of enemies make combat a bit painful.

There's also a few radios in town you can turn on, where a DJ mentions he's got a request for a "Murphy Pendleton," or just cowers and whispers for help because the monsters are after him. Kinda breaks the flow a little bit, he's a little like that dude from Fallout 3.

The Ninja Mailman showed up, mentioned that Important Female Office was still pissed at me, and directed me to the Radio Tower.

Now, here's a gripe about Homecoming and Downpour: side missions. It's more a gripe about Downpour, as once you hit Silent Hill, you free random caged birds everywhere, you're finding paintings that combine into a treasure map and you do odd jobs for hobos. Homecoming had a few here and there, like finding a womans "memories" in the hotel, but these "missions" seem to be a recent edition to the franchise. There's no atmosphere when you're freeing birds.

It's still not scary.

[Seil]

Okay, so here's what's happened:

The DJ who was dedicating all those songs to me was like "Silent Hill is crazy. We need to get the crap out of here. Then he got a call from someone who wanted to dedicate a song to him. Then the Important Female Officer burst in, and a bunch of monsters, and Murphy... blacked out. When he came to, everyone was gone, and Ninja Mailman told him to go to the monestary.

So there's also this kid named Charlie.

Sidequest ho! And... okay, so I've got full run of this little corner of Silent Hill, and I can do... side quests. That's it. I can free birds, return stolen items, follow ribbons... LETS RECAP, SHALL WE?

1) Prison
2) Bus Crash, head to Devil's Rest Stop
3) Head to Devil's Pit
4) Head to Silent Hill
5) Head to Radio Tower
6) Head to Monestary

And it looks like the Monestary is the last stop on this train. Mysterious Nun lets me in and dissapears. There's a little kid a la Silent Hill V intro level who won't let me in unless I know the Boogeyman rhyme. ...Pyramid Head? ...No, Gas Mask Man. Also, the Monestary is, like, an orphanage and medical center with its own psychiatrist and x-ray machine.

Okay, so apparently this Charley is my son. ...'Kay.

\/-----------/\

I think I've figured out my problem with this game. It's that there's no characterization. I know there's a DJ, there's a Mysterious Nun, there's a Ninja Mailman, there's JP Sater, there's Important Female Cop, there's Mustached Prisoner... but there's nothing really I can say about them. There's no story. There's just Murphy wandering around Silent Hill completing side quests.

Seriously, the side quest thing is wack. It's just padding. There's no plot connections, there's no important reason for doing them... They're just there. You get extra ammo or first aid kits for them.

Also, there's no pacing. You've got the aforementioned Dahaka-esque (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMS0LKD0_uw) chases with a... sphere... red... glowy... you know what? It's a Dahaka. Fuck it. So you've got a Dahaka chase, and then you... wander around for an hour finishing an area or doing a sidequest.

And then there's the people. Yes, other SH games had people, but they were always either drawn to Silent Hill because of something terrible in their past, and it seemed that they were doing their own thing and you just happened to cross paths at various points, like in Silent Hill 2, or like Maria in Silent Hill 2, Eileen in 4, Elle in 5, they have a viable reason for being there.

In Downpour, all the characters feel like Murphy's supporting cast - they're all there for him. It seems like this was supposed to be another game before Vatra got the Silent Hill contract. Everyone but Murphy knows what's going on, save for the DJ and Female Cop - but they still know more than Murphy.

The puzzles are really arbitrary. Some of the sidequests take up the entire map, but a lot of them are confined to a single area. If they were tied into Murphy's story instead of just... there for an acheivement, they could've been good. As it stands, the actual plot-moving puzzles are pretty bad.

Playing for nearly ten hours, there's three enemies - a woman with claws, a man with a knife, and batman. The gasmask boogeyman might count, but I'm not counting the guy in the shower - who has been named. His name is Napier. And I still think he molested someone.

[Bells]

Plot-wise how far do you think you're in? Second arc? Third?

[Seil]

About 85% - you get a statistics option in the pause menu that shows your progress.

Also, I've just died. Like, I was shot in a cutscene and now I've gone to hell.

[Bells]

Hope this is not too spoilery for ya but it read up and the game has 6 endings (including a special one, just a goof )

[Seil]

Every silent Hill game has multiple endings, and nearly all of them have alien endings.

[Bells]

This one does not! This one has Cake!

[Seil]

Just beat the game.

...So I beat the Monestary, and apparently the gas mask Boogeyman is... revenge. For Murphy, it was Napier. (Because hey, guess what, Napier molested Charlie. Called it.) And then the... ghost of Charlie forgave Murphy... for Charlie running off and... Not really sure what happened but I doubt it's Murphy's fault. You do find a letter from Carol, some random character who only has a letter to her name, pissed off at Murphy about Charlie's death.

Anyway, Mysterious Nun is there. Murphy finds the DJ's boat, drives away and winds up being shot by Female Officer. He then... goes to Hell, I guess. An otherworld version of the prison from the beginning. Going all the way through reveals flashbacks that the officer who let you kill Napier in the showers in the beginning of the game - his name was Sewell - wants a favor for giving you the opportunity. Sewell is under corruption charges and wants you to kill the informant. The informing officer turns out to be a good guy, and Murphy's only real friend in prison.

Then, in my game, Female Officer gets pissed, Murphy turns into the boogeyman, and chases her through the prison. Murphy gets shot a bunch, he dies, Female Officer wakes up in prison. This prison scene plays exactly like the beginning of the game, only Femal Officer is the inmate and Murphy is the guard.

...Nothing is explained, none of the characters other than these two are here and, it's about fifteen seconds long. It's.... It's....

[Seil]

AHHHHHH AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH AHHHHHHHHHHHHH AHHHHHHHHHHHHH AHHHHHHHHHH AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH AHHHHHHHHHHHH AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

[Seil]

Okay, replayed the final boss fight. Got a much better ending that still doesn't explain much. Game still sucks ass. Typing this while credits rol...

FUCK SHIT KORN FUCK

[Seil]

Okay, looked at the character bios (or what passes for bios) after the game. Let's see if I can work this out:

Murphy Pendleton was an orphan and raised by Mysterious Nun in the Monestary in Silent Hill. Based on files in the Monestary, Murphy is has a few disorders and psychiatrist recommends full frontal lobotomy - which might explain the combat. Murphy meets woman named Carol and fathers Charlie. Carol and Murphy become estranged.

One day Charlie runs off while playing, and Murphy can't find him. Charlie was abducted by Frank Napier, molested and drowned in Toluca Lake. Carol is furious at Murphy for not keeping Charlie safe, Murphy is plagued by guilt and hatred. Napier is arrested, and becomes a sequestered prisoner due to the nature of his crimes. Murphy steals a police cruiser and goes on a ten hour joyride to get himself thrown in prison.

While in prison he meets two officers, Frank Coleridge and George Sewell. Coleridge likes Murphy and treats him like a relative, giving advice on things to do in the Prison to increase chances of parole. Sewell is under corruption charges and wants to make them go away, and realizes Murphy is the way to make that happen. He offers Murphy the chance to kill Napier for Charlie's murder if Murphy does Sewell a favor at a later date. The favor is that Murphy kill Coleridge, the primary informant of Sewell's deviant activities.

The game begins with Murphy attacking Napier in the showers, then being transferred to another prison. Anne Cunningham, the Important Female Officer, is the one who pulled the strings to arrange the transfer. On the way to the new prison, the bus crashes just outside Silent Hill. Murphy makes his way to Devil's Pit, while Anne follows. She ends up falling down a bottomless pit.

Murphy makes his way through the Devil's Pit to Silent Hill, haunted all the way by a man in a wheelchair. He meets J.P. Sader on the way, who commits suicide. Murphy is also attacked by several bat-man creatures, who are, apparently, mythical animals of the area. The prisoners on the bus, as well as the rest of the characters, are affected by the town the same way Murphy is. Mustached prisoner is found beating up a monster.

While in the Pit, Murphy finds clothes in a cabin and changes, finding a police badge in one of the pockets. He keeps it, and it's found by Cunningham later, where she breaks down, attempts to murder Murphy, then decides not to. She tells him to go.

While in the Devil's Pit, Murphy ends up trapped in the Otherworld, where the defining features are:

1) Water - His son was found at the bottom of Toluca Lake
2) Clockwork Machinery - ?
3) Prison Motifs - Self-explanitory

The Dahaka ball is apparently called "The Void." I don't understand why it... is, or why it chases Murphy so fervently.

Once in Silent Hill, Murphy has several run ins with a Ninja Mailman. Okay, yeah, don't know who he is. He makes his way through town where he is attacked by... women, apparently called "Screamers." They might symbolize Carol. There's also a knife weilding man, could symbolize Napier or other prisoners.

Murphy heads out to meet DJ Ricks, where Ricks tells him that he's been there a while - probably for his own reason. He just hasn't tried to leave, resorting to barricading himself in the studio against the monsters. DJ Ricks tells Murphy that he's got a boat, but someone stole the keys. He then gets a phone call from... someone asking him to dedicate a song to DJ Ricks. All of a sudden, Screamers and Cunningham burst in, the game shifts to the Otherworld and Murphy runs from the Void.

Murphy wakes up and Ninja Mailman tells him to go to the Monestary, where a nun meets Murphy at the door. The nun lets Murphy in, telling him that he was "The only one we were able to find a family for." The Monestary is falling apart, but the nun, a young boy and a young girl are all there. The boy and girl are behind a locked door, and won't let Murphy in unless Murphy tells him the rhyme to keep the Bogeyman away.

In Homecoming, the Bogeyman was Pyramid Head because... Pyramid Head was in the movie. Which didn't make much sense either. Okay, it was PH because the game was all about the history of Silent Hill. In Downpour, it's a large man with a hooded rain coat and a gas mask. He carries a big hammer.

...I don't know.

Anyway, as soon as Murphy is back with the rhyme, he spies the Boogeyman in the room with the boy, and begins reciting the poem. He says the final line as the Boogeyman kills the boy, and the door opens. The boy is revealed to be Charlie. This might signify the powerlessness and guilt that Murphy feels for Charlie's death despite the fact that he couldn't have helped him. The girl appears and shouts at Murphy for killing Charlie, believing him to be the Boogeyman. She runs to the side of the man in the wheelchair.

Murphy falls unconcious and wakes up with the nun, who tells him that he needs to identify his son. She lifts the sheet off of a gurney, and it's the Boogeyman. Murphy denies the Boogeyman is his son, however DJ Ricks boat key is on a chain around his neck. Murphy attempts to take the key, and a fight ensues. When Murphy wins, the Boogeyman is unmasked, and the face rapidly shifts between Murphy and Napier. The Boogeyman is... whoever a person believes is a monster?

Anyway, with DJ's key, Murphy makes his way to the docks, starts the boat and is held up by Cunningham. Cunningham shoots Murphy, who wakes up in the Otherworld prison, where he is presented with flashbacks of Sewell asking him to kill Coleridge. After he makes it all the way through, he ends up in the showers, where he finds evidence of a brutal beating. He places the evidence in a large scale, which opens a door to the man in the wheelchair, now a giant boss monster. After defeating him, Anne Cunningham shows up, looks at the corpse of the man in the wheelchair which has turned into Frank Coleridge. Murphy is horrifed, but despite his protests, Anne doesn't believe him, and he turns into her Boogeyman. He then attacks her, and has the choice to spare her or to kill her.

In my game, she is spared, it's revealed the Sewell attacked Coleridge and framed Murphy for it. Coleridge survived, but was a vegetable, infuriating his daughter, Anne Cunningham. She revealed how she went to great, and "disgusting" lengths to have Murphy transferred to a new prison under her watch, where she believed she could have revenge for her father. Fortunately, she knows the truth, where Sewell is the man responsible. The two are transported back to the scene of the bus crash, and she lets Murphy walk off.

She then pays Sewell a visit.

[Seil]

It was still a shite game, though.

[Doc ock rokc]

The clockwork/industrial stuff is supposed to represent his upcoming fear of execution.

The void is Murphy feeling like he is losing himself after he lost everything else (literally he isn't a father or a husband. Then he made a bad deal that caused his friend to be hurt/killed his friend.)

The boogeyman is like the void. its how Murphy feels about himself. When he saw his son as the boogeyman its because he was blaming his son for his own actions. When the boogeyman killed his son it was him reliving the memory of Naper. When the boogeyman shifted between Naper and Murphy it was basicly a visual "not so different" speech. He became a monster for his revenge. Once he realized this he became the Boogeyman and after you spare the officer Murphy realized that it wasn't his fault and he isn't a monster.

[Bells]

Also about Boogeyman: Big Hammer = Judge's Gavel
And Raincoat = To Shield himself from the Guilt about his Son's death

[Seil]

When he saw his son as the boogeyman its because he was blaming his son for his own actions.

It was never his son. It killed the ghost of his son, but then the ghost comes back and forgives him.

Also, I can't help but feel as if you guys are reaching for some of that. Like, really.

EDIT

Also about Boogeyman: Big Hammer = Judge's Gavel
And Raincoat = To Shield himself from the Guilt about his Son's death

In regards to the coat, it's because it's raining. It fits that whole motif. In regards to the gasmask, it's because they needed a way to hide teh face and gas masks and trenchcoats are cool. (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GasMaskLongcoat) The hammer symbolizing a gavel is kind of out there, man. I mean, it's a cinderblock attached to a pole. If we're saying it symbolizes a judge's gavel, we could also say it symbolizes the prisoners fighting with whatever they could find.

The clockwork/industrial stuff is supposed to represent his upcoming fear of execution.

But he's not getting executed. He's being transferred to a different prison. He only gets executed in one bad ending.

It could symbolize teh passing of time while in prison.

The void is Murphy feeling like he is losing himself after he lost everything else (literally he isn't a father or a husband. Then he made a bad deal that caused his friend to be hurt/killed his friend.)

...This kinda works. I was going to say that he seems like an okay father and husband. I don't know many people whose fault it is that their children were kidnapped and killed. They think it's their fault, though, sure. I'm not sure what caused his wife and him to drift apart, but the whole child death thing didn't help.

The boogeyman is like the void. its how Murphy feels about himself. When he saw his son as the boogeyman its because he was blaming his son for his own actions. When the boogeyman killed his son it was him reliving the memory of Naper. When the boogeyman shifted between Naper and Murphy it was basicly a visual "not so different" speech. He became a monster for his revenge. Once he realized this he became the Boogeyman and after you spare the officer Murphy realized that it wasn't his fault and he isn't a monster.

The Boogeyman, I think, is supposed to be evil. It's supposed to monster-ize someone, make them big and tough and powerful - someone who is evil incarnate in the eyes of another specific person.

1) The boogeyman kills Charlie's "ghost" - probably Napier, and cementing the guilt that Murphy feels over Charlie's death and the fact that he was powerless to stop it.

2) Murphy/Napier - Napier for obvious reasons, but Murphy saw himself as a monster for attacking Napier, and attacking not helping Coleridge.

3) Murphy - When Cunningham sees Murphy as the boogeyman, it's because he is evil in her eyes. At this point, she believes that he's the one who beat her father, and turned him into a vegetable. She believes it's his fault, and as such, he's evil in her eyes.

[Seil]

Also, it seems that the cannonical ending is either "Forgiveness" or "Truth and Justice," where it's realized that Sewell killed Coleridge. There's little points throughout the game where you hear the voice of a kind officer (called it, kinda) and when you first encounter The Void, you hear the words Coleridge yells at you before he's beaten by Sewell:

"Murphy. RUN!"

[Aldurin]

Well the Two Best Friends finally finished running through this game, mercilessly tearing it apart on every piece of bullshit they could find. Overall, it looked like a pretty damn sad attempt at a horror game.

[Seil]

It is.