Silent Hill: Shattered Memories for PlayStation 2 Reviews by Gamers

First off, I know everyone is raving about the "mental quizzes" in this game. To be honest, every Silent Hill game has mental quizzes, they just embed them in the gameplay instead of making them obvious. It's kind of neat to see your choices displayed in such an obvious way, but they could have handled it better.

The game keeps cutting back to the Psychiatrist's office to do all this "mental quiz" stuff. Isn't the point of a horror survival game not knowing if you will live or die and enjoying the moment to moment tension and excitement of trying to survive, not taking quizzes? Breaking the gloom to cut to yet another Psychiatrist visit kills the tension fast.

Now, to get to the meat and potatoes of Silent Hill: the plot and the "other world". The fancy "changeable plot" was easily manipulated by the quizzes with no real surprises once you figure the quiz out.

An ice other world was an interesting change from the typical rusted other world, but it did not make up for the frustration. This other world was mostly just one annoying "speed run" maze after another. You can hold off the monsters with flares, but there is a massive drawback: with a flare out you cannot look at the map or you loose the flare! Did I mention flares have limited ammo and are the only "weapon"? So either you have a vague map but must try to run in the dark with monsters mobbing you, or have no map then die in a dead end as soon as the flare runs out. This is not scary- it's annoying. Nobody wants to be the victim in horror survival, but this game offers no other real option: you spend the "scary part" of the game running and screaming.

I see a Nintendo-friendly violence free "Silent Hill" trying to keep players interested with bells and whistles like that quiz thing. Silent Hill should be about survival and redemption, not endless maze runs and personality quizzes. If this was not a Silent Hill game I would not mind so much, but as a Silent Hill game it fails. The Room was better.

One of the features that I enjoyed most about this game was the way they used the therapist to change the outcome of the game. At the start of the game (and throughout the game) you are asked questions about your personal life. Various activities that the therapist prepares for you seem to have a direct outcome to the game's story, amongst other minor details.

There are no fighting scenes, which may disappoint the regular Silent Hill fan. However, that is replaced with a more hectic running sequence, in which you are to follow the blue doors and walls to get to your destination. The creatures that chase you tend to run much faster then you, making this a difficult task if you don't know where you are going. The monsters themselves seem to all be the same, which left me disappointed. And, they only appear when you are in the icy world of Silent Hill.

There are a series of momentos to collect throughout the game that symbolize an important part of someones life. Whether you choose to collect these or not does not affect the storyline, nor unlock any achievements in the game.

The Silent Hill storyline is still there, however. And, this will not leave Silent Hill fans disappointed!

For another missing piece of the Silent Hill puzzle, this game is fun to play. However, if you're just joining the Silent Hill craze, then you may not find this game as entertaining as a true Silent Hill fan.