So many people online seem to already complain about Silent Hill f out of a few details coming out of trailers. I honestly think the game looks sick and I can’t wait to play it, expecially considering the writer’s good reputation.
I remember the SH2 remake lived in a similar hell-hole before gathering critical acclaim. I have not seen this kind of anxious negativity about new games in a series ever. What do you think?
IMO, hit stop in the combat. Also, the camera perspective puts too much emphasis on combat.
At its core, the peak way to play Silent Hill was to engage in combat as little as possible. This makes sense both in lore and for the player of the game:
In the game lore, protagonists in Silent Hill are “Everymen.” Just an average person. Average people do not generally have combat experience or training, and thus an average person put into a Silent Hill scenario, will more likely want to run away than engage in combat with a weapon they are not familiar with. They may be so unaccustomed to combat with a weapon they may injure themselves or waste all the bullets or break the weapon due to lack of training in combat. Additionally, Silent Hill has generally focused on people with some sort of dark past, with the exception of the 1st, 3rd, and 4th game. The 3rd game’s original plot apparently did give the protagonist a dark past, but Konami felt it would.have been too much and thus changed the plot significantly. Some elements of the original plot still remain, but are reworked into the new, different plot in the game currently.
For the player, combat felt bad, and generally posed more risk than reward (trade potentially losing a lot of health in a fight just to not have to walk around the enemy) as in Silent Hill, killing enemies doesn’t reward the player with anything other than having one less enemy to avoid. They don’t drop health or items.
SH2 remake, and in fact Homecoming and Downpour fall victim to this overemphasis on combat, and it is primarily the fault of the over the shoulder camera. The combat feels good and fun, and thus it makes the player want to do it more. This resulted in more sales because the mainstream audience seems to only like playing one kind of game. Unfortunately, it also resulted in the IP losing its identity.
The story looks fine, but calling it a Silent Hill game when it gives no indication of connecting to the town of Silent Hill is concerning. Every Silent Hill game previously connected to the actual town in some way. If f doesn’t do this, then nothing separates it from being a generic horror game with the Silent Hill name slapped on top.