Welcome to Silent Hill.
Or welcome back to Silent Hill if this is not your first SH game.
For me it's not, I've played through all the 4 (now 5) titles of this
wonderful franchise (my favorite actually) and intend to replay them
for as long as I live. I'm what you could call a SH-maniac.
So, does SH0 disappoint or not?
No. It does not. Let's divide this review into different categories:
01 - STORY
The story is very good and very reminiscent of SH2 (because of the
emotional part), but not going into many details (I don't want to spoil
it to you) it goes like this: Travis Grady is a trucker, driving into
his next destiny/job. On the way he decides to go past Silent Hill for
a shortcut but something happens, a little girl crosses his way (sounds
familiar?) and he stops and there's nothing out there. In the reflexion
of his side-mirror he sees the little girl again and follows the road
to a house on fire. After saving the little girl, Travis faints and
wakes up in a misterious foggy place, a street, clouded by fog. Silent
Hill. He decides to check out the hospital and see how's the little
girl doing. But something is not right...9/10
02 - CONTROLS
The controls are very responsive and the animations of movement are
very fluid. There's a slight wait of like 1 second after you press
SQUARE for Travis to run. But this is probablyon purpose because, let's
face it, if it was real you would also waste a second to start your
full run. So this adds to the credibility of the game and the
difficulty. Also, Travis gets tired (wich was missing from the other
SH's), thankfully there are energy drinks scattered around town for you
to keep running (specially in town when the straightjackets are all
running towards you!). So this is something else that adds to both
reality and difficulty of the game. Also, thank God for the shortcut
for the weapons (by pressing the directional buttons) a la Silent Hill
4 wich is awesome if your weapon breaks or you waste all your bullets
'cause you don't need to open the menu and navigate through all the
menus to get where you want or use and medicinal pack or drink. You use
the analogic to move around, CROSS to check/pick up objects and use
doors etc; TRIANGLE to access your map (very useful as usual); and
CIRCLE to toggle your flashlight on/off (remember this is very useful
to hide from monsters and sneak past them!). You also use R1 to go to
your fight pose/aim and CROSS (while R1 is pressed) to attack/shoot. So
the controls are easy to learn and easy to get, no difficulty here and
very good response.10/10.
03 - GRAPHICS
The graphics are some of the best you'll see on PSP, and the static
effects (when you get close to monsters) are very similar to when Henry
was close to ghosts on Silent Hill 4. Very cool. The screen flashes red
on the sides to warn you when your health is very low, so keep an eye
on this. The sceneries are totally awesome specially on the
"other-world" where they become gruesome and blood splattered. The
monsters are very well modeled/animated and very very
gruesome/disgusting. I love the "plastic" effect they have too. The
character models could have more details on them, but nothing that will
get in your way. I had a very funny experience with this, while I was
fighting a monster the camera was right between Travis and a Wall and
Travis leans backwards to attack the monster and the camera goes inside
Travis' head LOL it was the scariest thing I've ever seen. Back to
being serious, everything on this category was great.9/10
04 - ATMOSPHERE
So, we know this looks like Silent Hill by now, but does it FEEL like
Silent Hill? Hell yeah it does! The fog is there, the radio is there,
the flashlight is there, the monsters are the there. The town is there.
Along with some familiar characters (one of wich was really BAD on this
game =\). Apart from this character, we'll be visiting some familiar
spots and majorly new ones (yay!). Also, the music Akira Yamaoka makes
(wich is perfect!) and the sound effects he produced (wich are also top
notch) make a huge difference on the atmosphere (more macabre and
frightning).10/10
05 - SOUND AND MUSIC
As I said in the previous category, Akira Yamaoka's music/sound is
perfect (as usual) and fits the whole game/ambience/story so well that
will make you cry... in fear. :) GO AKIRA!!10/10
06 - REPLAY?!
This game is scary and excelent for the first time. But on the times to
follow you probably won't be as scared (if scared at all). The game is
missing some "WTF?!" moments that we were used to see on other Silent
Hills, but this does not mean you won't like replaying it and you won't
have anything to aim for. You do, and lots of stuff. This game presents
a new mechanic called ACCOLADES, each time you do something specific
you will unlock costumes or weapons (or other cool stuff). Also there's
loads of spots you can check out in town that you won't be visiting the
first time because you'll be too worried running away from the freaking
jogging straightjackets! And now, here's the major downside to the
game. It's SO - FREAKING - SHORT! I finished it in 4 hours the first
time, and in 1 HOUR the second time (the UFO ending is indeed like 40
min before the true end of the game, but even so you will probably
finish the whole thing with 1 hour and 30/40 minutes the
second/thirt/etc time you go through it). This does not mean it's not
fun and you will want to play it again and again either for the
adrenaline of killing monsters and stuff or to see the 3 different
endings (you will want to see them, specially the BAD ENDING, wich is
the true ending to the game) and getting all the accolades. So yeah,
there's a lot of stuff to do here. Aside from the accolades system you
will get the EXTRA OPTIONS (the ones you see in all the other SHs) only
after you finish it once (it has some new options there too).
So, is this your first time on Silent Hill? I'd suggest you play the
other ones first as you will understand the plot a LOT better. But, if
you are already playing this before playing the other ones, keep going,
because on the good side, you will want to play the other games to get
the whole (well not whole) thing straight. Could be a better prequel as
it does not tell you much of the beginning of the story (or even
Alessa's father) but it's entertaining to play just for Travis' story.
It does get some of Alessa's background straigh thought, wich is good,
and explains what really happened before Slent Hill 1 (it's a direct
prequel). Now I want a prequel to the prequel. Lol.
So if you're a Silent Hill or Survival Horror fan and own a PSP this is
a MUST PLAY! Excelent game with great quality. Climax really did it! Of
course Akira Yamaoka (GOD) had clearly his finger on it (you can see by
the previous version of the game).
OVERALL9.5 (5 Stars)
Excelent game!
