Ah, I'll just go over these point by point.
1. Yes, it's called a reimagining. However, a reimagining usually has something to do with the original work. This basically doesn't.
2. While I do understand they're there to represent certain parts of yours and cheryl's psyches, Cybil(the cop) feels completely unnecessary most of the time, and her character feels empty, while Lisa - which in my opinion seemed like a nice reimagined character, had so little screen time with so little impact that she was more redundant than anything else. In my opinion, their inclusion didn't work especially well.
3. Because it's not actually a reimagining. It's a completely new game with basically nothing to do with either the series or original work at all, so it seems like the use of the SH name and the names of characters and places in it have been taken purely for selling points. Shattered Memories has as much to do with the Silent Hill series as, say, Alan Wake does.
4. Actually, I'm saying SH1 had
variation. And that enemies that don't do enemy like things aren't exactly scary. And yes, I would say that the enemies in the original game was actually scarier than this. At least they tried to hurt you.
5. It seems you missed a word. "Voice acting is
good all over".
They've got symbolism in spades, but they don't have anything of the mythos or the atmosphere that generally are what makes a Silent Hill game. In fact, it has nothing at all to do with the original game except for reusing names from SH. Take an example:
If I released a title called Zelda: Ocarina of Time Redux, and marketed it as a reimagining of the original game... Had it start out with a boy living in the woods being woken up by a faerie, and the game had a lot of the names from the original work in it... And then changed the story into a murder mystery with the King of Hyrule being dead, Zelda being an important witness, and Ganondorf the main suspect? Would that still be a Zelda game? Would I really be able to call that a "reimagining" of the original work? I really don't think that would hold up, yet it's essentially the same as what has been done with Silent Hill: Shattered Memories. The only reason it has the SH name is because that makes it sell better.
Now, don't mistake me for a Silent Hill fanboy. Sure, I like the games, and have played all the major ones except for Homecoming(though I've tried it a little), but they have more than their fair share of flaws. Even SH2, which people praise up and down to no extent.
Yes, it has a lot of symbolism tied in neatly with the story line, but it has a lot of simply boring gameplay too. (I was one of the many who didn't understand how she died until the end, I must admit, though. Hehe!
)
I loved the idea of Shattered Memories - a reimagining of the original game, with all combat removed. But the execution was poor, and it only has the Silent Hill name for selling points, as I've said a few times now. If at least it hadn't tried to fool us into thinking it was supposed to be a SH game(and do such a poor job of it) I would've given it a slightly better score of 3/5, half a point more, but still not more because it's simply not a great game. Gameplay is stale and predictable, story is only decent, characters are for the most part hollow, and the parts that are supposed to be scary and exciting are only boring and frustrating.
Haha, at least you don't sound as bitchy as I do. xD
