Silent Hill: Shattered Memories Review for the PSP

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Designers for portable game systems frequently making the mistake of using backgrounds to artificially raise the difficulty level. Shattered Memories uses the same trick, but the inclusion of a flashlight helps overcome this limitation. The PSP does have some brightness controls of its own. Despite the grainy quality, the graphics are definitely the best part of the game and earn 4 out of 5 stars.

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The voice acting further contributes to the games sound problems. The actors do not speak in crisp, clear voices. The hushed tones used in some of the cut scenes are quickly drowned out by other noises in the area.

What the designers wanted to do was obvious. They came very close to doing so, but needed to pay more attention to the implementation. Removing the annoying background static and buzzing in cut scenes would have made Shattered Memories more enjoyable.

Survival horror games do not seem to have learned the lesson about simulator sickness yet, even if they keep it to a minimum. The look feature allows the user little control over where the flashlight goes and can cause headaches during prolonged play sessions. In spite of this minor flaw, the player will not have difficulty navigating the town of Silent Hill in this remake of the original game.

Shattered Memories will delight fans of the original Silent Hill. The Silent Hill video game series even inspired a movie which failed to be bad as most other movies based off of video games.* Shattered Memories is a game you can play for a little bit, get sick of and forget. The idea of psychologically profiling the player might be interesting. It is unclear what if any impact this has on the game unless the designers know the specific fears of the person. Instead, it seems overburdened with a background soundtrack that makes it difficult to understand the plot.

The PSP version of Silent Hill: Shattered Memories may appeal to fans of the survival horror genre, but it needs to improve in some key areas to appeal to more gamers. Most people will play the game for a little bit, complete it, and forget about it. It does not have high replay value.

*The author is aware of the ease of this task.

Author's Note: The Silent Hill of the video games is usually a small town somewhere out in the Rocky Mountains. The Silent Hill depicted in the movies is in a Southern State. The southern town the fictional community is based on is a nearly extinct Pennsylvania coal mining town called Centralia. Centralia's demise started when the town was burning trash near an open vein of coal. The trash fire spread to the coal vein. Town workers had thought they put the fire out and walked away. The vein started to burn underneath the ground. The Federal government bought up most of the land community in the 1980s after a twelve-year-old nearly died after falling down a sinkhole.