Silent Hill: Shattered Memories for Wii Reviews by Gamers

If you go into Silent Hill: Shattered Memories expecting the traditional tank controls protagonist with a pipe in the midst of a bunch of a child's psychological cult monsters, you're going to be disappointed. Silent Hill: SM is a flawed gem, and the only reason I'm giving it an 8 is based on how much I loved the story. Trust me, it's enough to redeem the repetitive sections.
The flaws of this game are the ice world sections. At first, they were tense and frightening. The no combat aspect really helps to put you on edge. But, each ice world section is more or less the same, and I never even payed attention to the hiding mechanic. It stops being scary and starts being very FRUSTRATING. You end up turning yourself around a lot, before you figure out the 'bread crumbs' each ice world level gives you. Each time you die, you just start back at the beginning of that ice level. The last ice world section of the game was one of the most frustrating parts in recent gaming I've put myself through.
Though, the game is still redeemable. The atmosphere is incredibly eerie and bleak, which fits the story of the game perfectly. Silent Hill is still very ghost town-like, and the presence of snow helps the cold, lonely feel of it all to hit home. The story is, at its core, still Silent Hill 1. They tweaked a few things, but never strayed from the original formula of the first game (aside from crazy cultist stuff). At the end of the game, after the big reveal at the lighthouse, I felt myself frozen in my seat for a few minutes. It's a very depressing ending, and depending on the ending you get, it could be even more so. The story is worth the wade through the tedious ice world sections, which are pretty short once you get the hang of them.
There are a lot of things they didn't do right with Silent Hill: SM, but the things they DID do right certainly outweigh the flaws. You're either going to love this game or hate it, and I know I loved it.