[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



This shows some of what I'm talking about.