Silent Hill: Origins is a survival horror game and a prequel to Konami’s wonderfully creepy series. The game opens with the lovable meat head Travis Grady, a redneck trucker who’s taking a shortcut through Silent Hill – the American version of the Bermuda Triangle. Before even making it into the town shit starts going wrong as Travis narrowly misses squashing a little girl (this can probably be attributed to him talking on his radio instead of watching the damned road). Despite the girl being fit enough to outrun Travis into Silent Hill he still decides to follow her into the town. Within seconds he’s in a burning building rescuing a barbequed girl from some kind of ritual. After saving her the lights go out and Travis’s bad day starts.
One of Silent Hill’s biggest selling points over the years has been its intricate plot and characters – not to mention the spine chilling horror of the town itself. Newcomers to the series, British-based Climax Studios couldn’t have missed the point more if they’d been blindfolded, facing the wrong way and on another planet from the point itself.
I’m just going to take a second out to clear something up; I’m not some kind of pokey eating Japanite who’s cursing my lack of Samurai blood, but those japs know two things.
1) How to kill a whale and 2) how to make a good horror game. Previous titles have been characterised by the almost crushing loneliness of everything. You’re constantly on the edge of your seat, always expecting a monster that just doesn’t come until that split second where you’ve unclenched your sphincter.
After five minutes of playing Silent Hill: Origins I was bombarded with monsters and every corner I turned to had some twisted horror jumping out and screaming “boo” at me until I came to expect it. Enemies respawning faster than I can kill them and so any terror I felt was replaced by annoyance. The first time you see a 12-headed horror from beyond its pretty terrifying, but after the 50th time they become interchangeable with anything and have the same effect. However, they never stop being a problem and this is due heavily to…
…The combat! Now I realise that Travis is just a humble trucker and probably hasn’t got a black belt and a green beret, but half the time it’s like he’s not even trying. There are so many holes in the combat that I’m just going to save the time and list them off; Travis is as slow to throw a punch as a 90-year old Buddhist, when he does have a weapon it break unreasonably quickly for example a sledge hammer – an item designed to be driven through tough structures at very high forces – breaks after five swings at whatever squishy bag of organs you’re aiming for. The inability to move and change weapon at the same time makes it feel like Travis is a Pokémon and learning to do more than four things may cause him to forget how to breathe and finally… Quick time events… Please God, stop this shit! All quick time events ever do are to make sure we’re paying attention and force us to watch the same little animation over and over and over again…
1) How to kill a whale and 2) how to make a good horror game. Previous titles have been characterised by the almost crushing loneliness of everything. You’re constantly on the edge of your seat, always expecting a monster that just doesn’t come until that split second where you’ve unclenched your sphincter.
After five minutes of playing Silent Hill: Origins I was bombarded with monsters and every corner I turned to had some twisted horror jumping out and screaming “boo” at me until I came to expect it. Enemies respawning faster than I can kill them and so any terror I felt was replaced by annoyance. The first time you see a 12-headed horror from beyond its pretty terrifying, but after the 50th time they become interchangeable with anything and have the same effect. However, they never stop being a problem and this is due heavily to…
…The combat! Now I realise that Travis is just a humble trucker and probably hasn’t got a black belt and a green beret, but half the time it’s like he’s not even trying. There are so many holes in the combat that I’m just going to save the time and list them off; Travis is as slow to throw a punch as a 90-year old Buddhist, when he does have a weapon it break unreasonably quickly for example a sledge hammer – an item designed to be driven through tough structures at very high forces – breaks after five swings at whatever squishy bag of organs you’re aiming for. The inability to move and change weapon at the same time makes it feel like Travis is a Pokémon and learning to do more than four things may cause him to forget how to breathe and finally… Quick time events… Please God, stop this shit! All quick time events ever do are to make sure we’re paying attention and force us to watch the same little animation over and over and over again…
To sum up: this is a poor attempt from another developer to squeeze some money out of a dying franchise. The characters are so mind-numbingly unlikable and unreasonably stupid. I mean honestly, there is NO reason at all for Travis to be there. No wife to find, no daughter, no past to explore, nothing at all! Unless he has a van and a mystery solving Great Dane somewhere there is nothing keeping him in Silent Hill. There’s a scene early on where he talks to a nurse moments after fighting some twisted pile of flesh. He oddly neglects to mention this to her and after some ideal banter she mentions that she’s going to some sanitarium and for no reason at all he decides to go there! He doesn’t ask her if he can go with her, or more reasonably, if she can call him a taxi out of town. No, he waits ‘til she’s long gone and then the only indication of his destination is a small ring on the map. People this dumb deserve to be dry humped to death by fleshy monsters. If he’s so desperate to stay in Silent Hill he won’t mind me turning of the console and leaving him there.
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