SuperHarman’s April Journal

A note on my rating system. If something is bad, I feel there’s not much room to move there so I came up with a simple 5 star rating system where there only “bad” rating is 1 star. Here are how you should take any rating below:

= Bad, * = Okay, *** = Good, **** = Great, ***** = Exceptional

Three Trips to Silent Hill

I didn’t really expect to become a Silent Hill guy, even after I became a Resident Evil fan a couple of years back, playing through the Silent Hill games was never on the cards. Even when the remake of two came out to good reviews, I still waited for a sale but when I finally did sit down and play that game, I realised I loved Silent Hill, in a lot of was it speaks to the type of horror that really gets to me, the nightmare world literally being a nightmare for me given my fear of decay and rust. It was something more than that though, there was a real dread and fear of the unknown in a psychological journey.

After I played the first Silent Hill earlier this year, I decided to get a copy of the film which like Resident Evil, had been the only piece of media I’d taken in from the franchise, then set myself for some SH over Easter, I’d watch the film and play the third game. Prior to watching the film, I’d heard the story that Christophe Gans changed the gender of the protagonist to female because he felt a father searching for his daughter was too emasculating, so I was going into this film a bit defensive. Despite this frustration though, I did like the film, it did a solid job of capturing the atmosphere and it just looked and felt like the Silent Hill I’d come to admire, even if it does go pretty off the rails towards the end. It was the way that it captured the town that got me fairly amped me to head back into the world as a game.

I knew I wasn’t playing the best version of Silent Hill 3 by going into the HD remaster and I really hope that this is the third game to get the remake treatment after they finish the original, because I loved this game and not only that, I’m still thinking about the thing nearly a month after finishing it. There is something compelling about Heather’s plight here and how she comes crashing headfirst into the horror. All the side characters work well and the turn the game takes halfway through was a genuine surprise, yep, even after all these years, I hadn’t had that spoiled. When I finished the game, I was a bit bummed that it was over, I know there are other games in the series to play but I don’t think I’ll be able to capture the highs I’ve had with the games thus far beyond new entries.

That said, if you want to ruin it all, you could watch Silent Hill Revelations. I don’t want to be too mean to this film, it has a decent enough crack at retelling the story of the third game while also trying to resolve the first film, the main problem is though that there is just nothing scary or even unsettling. When the film first switches to the nightmare it all feels forced and fake. The strength of the first film was its ability to capture the atmosphere and setting of the games well, there’s just none of that here and we’re just breathlessly taken through a fun house of Silent Hill imagery without punch, and not the good Fun House from the third game either.

So yes, count me among the Silent Hill fans now. I’ll be getting Townfall day one along with the remake of the first game. Seeing that both the 2 remake and f did well is heartening and I hope we continue to get some great entries in the franchise.

Silent Hill 3: *****

Silent Hill (Film): ***

Silent Hill Revelations (Film): *

Other Games Finished:

Planet of Lana II: My recollection was that I liked but didn’t love the first Planet of Lana so going into this one I wasn’t sure how it would land. It’s largely more of the same but there was enough variety here that made it seem like the game sang a lot more than the first one. I’m always down for a good puzzle platformer and while there wasn’t anything that tested me here, it was a good time had. ****

Little Nightmares and Little Nightmares II: I got sick for the first time in about a year and a half during April so I needed something that I could just lay back on the couch and work through. It turns out these games were the perfect choice and similar to what I said about Planet of Lana above, good puzzle platformer games that aren’t too challenging. Where these games work though is their dark and dank settings, I was surprised how much these games really landed for me and in the case of II, I mean really worked. I as so damn engaged by the end of that game that when the credits rolled I said to myself, “wow, that’s a genuinely great ending.” Anyway, I’ll eventually be talking about Reanimal here eventually but I’m working through that with my brother online.

Little Nightmares: ****

Little Nightmares II: *****

 Pointing and Clicking – April

3 more puts us at 12 for the year but I’ll likely be taking a break in May, I tried The Longest Journey but it kept crashing which kind of bummed me out.

Dracula Origin: After finishing one of their Sherlock Holmes Games, I decided to go into the Frogwares back catalogue and pulled this one out. While I like a lot of the ideas and some of the settings, it’s all just a bit too silly for me and a real slog by the end. **

Scholar Adventure – Mystery of Silence: A short but sweet one, while sometimes a bit obtuse with its puzzle design, I enjoyed the journey discovering the mysteries around the monastery. If you’re looking for a quick hit point and click, you could do worse. ***

D3AD HAND: There is actually two games in here and reviewing them as one feels a bit of a cheat given how different they are but D3AD HAND is very short and wasn’t overly challenging, but I really liked working my way through it. It’s follow up R3D STAR was a lot more obtuse than I would have liked with the character needing to wander back and forth between so many locations to solve various problems. I did like it towards the end though where it became a lot more focused. Again, some good light fun but nothing overly spectacular. **

Other Media:

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie (Film): While I wouldn’t say I liked the original film, I had some fondness for it given how much I like Mario and that world but watching this, all that good will went away. A complete nothing of a film and while I enjoyed that Star Fox sequence and also seeing the Super Mario 2 characters (quick note: SMB2 holds a special place in my heart) everything else was just way too rough. I think this film can best be summed up by the Yoshi sequence at the start, why is that sequence there? Because they promised Yoshi and couldn’t work out a good plot reason for him so here’s what basically amounts to a short film for 5 minutes…get used to that. *

Predator Badlands (Film): After barely using it, I finally cancelled Disney+ but in doing so, realised I had some films to watch. I enjoyed a lot of this one but had a bit of trouble really connecting with it. I don’t think that was because there was no human to latch on to but I might just be because the script wasn’t quite there. The action though was again great and I hope we see more from Dan Trachtenberg on this series. ***

Predator Killer of Killers (Film): Speaking of…I was a bit weary of this one, for starters, my head cold was really starting to hit with the sneezing and blowing my nose thing but not long after it started I was locked the hell in. While the first two sequences are largely what you’d expect given their settings, the third sequence really upends it all leading into a great finale. The final scene is fan service for sure but hey, if they deliver there, I’ll be down, especially with how much this one worked. ****

Fantastic Four First Steps (Film): It’s actually been a while since I watched a Marvel film and I’ve always enjoyed them, it’s just like a lot of people I fell off and don’t have too much of a fondness for the characters being a DC guy. I do like the Fantastic Four though a worked myself up for this one hoping it was finally the adaptation that got them. It did get them in a way, but everything else about it fell completely flat for me. I’ve thought a lot about why this one didn’t work for me and I think it’s really just death by 1000 cuts. I also think they may just have overcorrected on the quippy dialogue too much, there has to be a happy medium there. Unfortunately, frustrating. **

Carpe Jugulum (Discworld Book 23) by Terry Pratchett (Novel): As the last of the non YA Witches novels in the series, this one was a bit bittersweet as they’ve generally been the most entertaining of the novels for me personally. This was also largely missing one of my favourite aspects of the novels though, the relationship between Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg, that said, this was still a lot of fun and the play on Vampires here really worked. ****

May Plans:

I actually finished Pragmata prior to end of April but decided to hold off on writing about it because I thought it’d make a pretty interesting contrast with Saros which I’m at the final boss of. For other games though, I’ll play Forza Horizon 6 because I love that series and see if I can get to Call of the Elder Gods because I liked Call of the Sea, I’ll also finish off Mixtape which I've been playing in short bursts. I'm buying 007 First Light but don't see myself finishing that prior to the end of the month if I even start it.