Silent Hill

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Combat in Silent Hill 1-4 was pathetically easy, so I dunno about that lessening the horror of THOSE games, Harry Mason was essentially a Demi-God and could kill everything in the game effortlessly, this is the first Japanese silent hill to have combat be anything other than the MC just cakewalking over everything and anything.
I don't like every aspect of the combat in the original games either. However, in terms of difficulty Silent Hill F is very generous with save points and autosaves, and throws items at the player. The problem with the combat isn't that it is too difficult. I believe combat in horror games should be simple, intuitive, and immersive. Having stamina/health/sanity/durability bars and gamified combat mechanics like perfect dodges and glowing attacks for counters is not what I think a horror game should have. At a certain point while playing I realized there aren't many reasons for me to play this game over Nioh 2.

From an over-the-shoulder survival horror series (there is no way they are going back to fixed camera angles) they have many examples to look to for good combat systems in games. In Dead Space the health bar and status module isn't on a HUD but is shown on the back of the character, ammo is shown on the gun itself, and the inventory management seamlessly works with the holographic display. Even something more generic like what was shown in the Silent Hill 2 Remake is better than the convoluted overly melee focused combat system of Silent Hill F. Silent Hill F's combat could be improved in so many ways if they removed unnecessary features, merged others, and reworked enemy animations and placement.

I can see what this game could be and that's why I'm frustrated by what it turned out to be. The criticisms against this game are more substantial than those against Silent Hill 2 Remake but the toxic positivity around the game by reviewers doesn't take them seriously as they try to make it seem like anyone who criticizes this game is a purist that only wants the original Team Silent games. How can reviewers with a straight face acknowledge the issues with the combat or performance and give this game a 9 of 10? It is an okay game. That's it. I don't think it is terrible, but it is not a masterpiece.
This is true, for plot reasons its entirely different, I'd prefer the "Dark Realm" be an even more fucked up version of the town, however, the plot reason is simply that the Fog Town is her in a White Claudia infused drug trip, and the Dark Temple is actual Spiritual God Shit bridging the gap from the Spirit Realm into the Unconscious Dream world, so they are not the same sort of situation as SH 1 through 3.

mind you, SH4 didn't have an Otherworld like the rest either.
I understand the plot reasons. I don't care if they go with it in a different way, but the difference is very extreme. I found the "Dark Realm" less tense and ominous than the town, when it should be the other way around.
 
So great going from Silksong to this and immediately having to slowly crawl between two buildings to mask loading times. A nice return to the reality of modern games after playing something of actual quality. Combat sucks massive ass, the super speed dash dodge doesn't gel at all with the slow ponderous swinging of a lead pipe, the enemies look like shit and are braindead but at least they keep endlessly respawning, that's fun right? I've only played a couple of hours but I sincerely doubt it's going to get better. Also nothing about the game is even remotely scary apart from the terrible optimization.
 
There is nothing gayer than Silent Hill fans arguing about the lore. Nothing.
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Calling them gay however would be an insult to homosexuals, these clowns are straight up faggots.
 
Team Silent knew 20+ years ago and planned to use other AMERICAN towns to tell more stories and have more unique otherworlds (like shadows/daylight). Beyond this concept is the addition of expanding SH4's mini bustling towns into a playable game. It was allegedly worked on, but Konami killed them while they were making the engine and some assets and Homecoming happened instead, with some cool lighting tech still in place if you play the mote stable 360 version and betas.

Saner SH fans only stick to the lore of 1-3 (maybe 4) and read the Lost Memories: The Silent Hill Chronicle translation and archives of the SH4 victim files if they seek more understanding for the story. Everything else is fucking garbage that sadly sold well enough to have 3 films and arguably worse video games because at least the movies are comically terrible.

Twin Perfect's The Real Silent Hill Experience holds up perfectly even with some things they "got wrong" or upset redditor fans with. It tells you every bad omen to occur with the series, opens with the honest misdirection of the series and hammers out the misconceptions. The only thing they really got wrong was just their theory that Alessa's burning was a tragic accident, because really why the fuck would Dahlia care about that knowing how she treats Alessa? There is no sympathetic part to her. She tricks Harry the entire game, gaslights people and caused the events to happen to begin with. Dahlia is fully responsible for why Silent Hill got fucked up when you think about it. Alessa wanted no part of her ritual, Dahlia forces her into it and causes Alessa's nightmare. She is also partly responsible for Walter Sullivan.

Mother of the year award, really. You already know Dahlia will be fucked up in the remake since no one not even Twin Perfect/fungo understood her. Dahlia is so evil even Kaufmann had to inadvertently help Harry. She backstabs her own business partners. She is the most evil character in Silent Hill aside from Walter. Poorly expressed in-game, but made way more clear in the novel.
 
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the enemies look like shit and are braindead but at least they keep endlessly respawning
Huh? What? No they don't
Calling them gay however would be an insult to homosexuals, these clowns are straight up faggots.
I just find it frustrating that everyone is glazing 2 so much. 2 is great, don't get me wrong, but in my opinion 3 is the best and the ending song is kino.
3 hits harder, 3 has better characters, 3 has better enemy variety and levels. 3 is more scary imo, the environment just feels a lot more hostile and insane. And I love the cult stuff from 1 being expanded on.
I liked Origins for gameplay reasons and it was a cool game to have on the PSP back in the day, story just felt dumb and Travis was some mega autist. Homecoming is dogshit, Downpour is painfully undercooked and dumb, Shattered Memories was kinda cool and stays in my Wii collection along with Disaster Day of Crisis, Book of Memories I haven't played and never will.
What else is there, java games on the phone? I think I played one of those as a kid.
The "fandom" is full or loud mouthed retards screeching at everything calling it "not SH" for any reason.
 
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It's a simple rule, anything after Team Silent isn't Silent Hill, not even PT since there wasn't enough to show aside from the town design and atmosphere. If this happened to Resident Evil or any other series you wouldn't be saying this about the fans. Silent Hill strayed far away from its roots. You don't see that much polarity beyond few IPs.

People complain for the wrong reasons though and it turns into a slapfight over what the company thinks the series is about vs what the fans think and the twitter/tumblr/reddit fans are mostly retarded and latch on for the "fandom" rather than games themselves these days. When you say Silent Hill fan, I think of someone like me or some joe like Vinesauce Vinny who's played all 4 games, or Nubzombie who knows pretty much everything about the series for better/worse. Not the posers who only watch the YouTube video essays, which I forget makes up most of the voice and the target audience Konami is aiming for. Those are the ones who made SH2 remake outsell SH1.

With Resident Evil, it at least had great and experimental games after 4. With shit like star wars you at least get some charms after its "death".

Silent Hill is unique in the thorough way its been fucking butchered and zombified so much that it took until the sh2 demake to remotely have anything correct about the games which still fucks it up by altering lore and story points for the expanded content. Fucking Polish hack developers got lore/details/respect to the original games through unnoticeable things in the map details than the devs before, and no one besides fans would notice it. The problem? Too long, no 10 star runs, no hyperspray despite the model existing, no original va options or original choreography in cutscenes, and so on. It's a downgrade in every conceivable way to the original which gave you more gameplay even if the combat was simple (unless you play hard runs without ng+, the enemies are too fast and actually scary for me)
 
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So great going from Silksong to this and immediately having to slowly crawl between two buildings to mask loading times. A nice return to the reality of modern games after playing something of actual quality. Combat sucks massive ass, the super speed dash dodge doesn't gel at all with the slow ponderous swinging of a lead pipe, the enemies look like shit and are braindead but at least they keep endlessly respawning, that's fun right? I've only played a couple of hours but I sincerely doubt it's going to get better. Also nothing about the game is even remotely scary apart from the terrible optimization.
I'm about 2.5hrs in now and just finished doing a bit of exploring in the town before meeting up with my PARTNER. I am absolutely confused why anyone is glazing this game. The otherworld sequence was horrendous. Some initial thoughts sperging behind spoilers just in case:

I could not believe how badly they railroad you (try walking off the intended path before sequence has started? "I need to follow the furry...") and then set up what would otherwise be a reasonably short spooky puzzle solving section at you only to fucking shove a painful, over-drawn combat encounter at you... that keeps respawning fairly quickly because fuck you, fighting a monster is scary! Did I mention they gave him an inflated health pool, bloodborne multi-hit combis, and even a weird punishment rapid slash for some reason? Oh, and your only weapon is a knife that's deliberately shitty. Maybe you're supposed to run away? Great! Good look staring at a bunch of similar looking wooden pictures spread out across a narrow area that requires you to not only focus in on the board but focus a second time on the desired piece of wood, but also input another button press to flip it. This is all while the game isn't paused so you know that monster you either killed or ran away from? Yeah it's making it's way to you like a retard seeking missile.

And then after you're finished the puzzle another retarded chase sequence where monsters are leaping into you while you're supposed to be running away but the game has God himself staggering you for... tension reasons(?)... but Hinako doesn't auto-run again so you're mashing the shift key to get her to sprint again all while you're getting stun locked and slapped around by the monsters but depending on their shitty AI (I found you can just slowly circle strafe them infinitely, retardedly). Not tense: retarded, confusing, annoying.

The combat itself is schizophrenic too: am I supposed to be playing as the dude from Sekiro or some scared schoolgirl? Because one moment I'm power dodging (perhaps issue with git gud but the perfect dodge window is insanely small and wonky - sometimes I perfect dodge and I'm nowhere near them, other times I'm timing it like a motherfucker and nothing happens) and delivering counter-attacks to glowing red enemies (only certain attacks though! no not that one. Or that one. But yes, this one!), and the next I'm slowly swinging my weapon and out of breath after a couple swings.

And then when the city sorta, kinda, slightly opens up you think fuck yeah, let's explore! スローダウンフレンド! The streets and alleys all look identical because they didn't add nearly enough details or artistic flourishes to the areas to delineate them from every other grey brown Jap street so hope you enjoy looking at your map. Luckily the game is kind enough to actually reward you for looking everywhere and checking out previously visited places to see if something changed or items appeared (the map is reasonably detailed with good markings). Okay, good good. Unluckily, because the game has this retarded item durability mechanic, your options are to fight the monsters that are everywhere and risk losing your weapon via attrition (hope you've found some toolkits!), or run away from them in the narrow alleyways and streets. Okay fight or flight, not a huge deal. Well, as a matter of taste I find it fucking annoying that the game is almost punishing you for exploring in a way by degrading a resource in order to actually explore it and eliminate a threat. A combat heavy/focused game that actively punishes you for engaging in said combat by taking away your resource to engage in combat. What the fuck?

A nice detail is the weapon actually starts to look broken, though.

Also, the optimisation is terrible. I do not have bad machine by any stretch and the traversal stuttering is atrocious. I think without fail, after hitting a new section of the map or sequence there's an abrupt load in and after it finishes my view has switched completely in a different direction (sometimes a complete 180) and thanks to the samey looking areas, I end up going backwards by accident and/or right into the face of a monster I was bravely running away from. Wild.

I'm going to finish this just to be certain but so far it feels nothing like Silent Hill and like a mediocre j-horror game. I think the SH2remake was better than this, which is saying something.
 
I like pretending the series is dead and I'm done with the thread since there's just a curse on the series but it's kind of nice to sperg about the series with you autists. If Townfall is good I'll probably buy numerous copies just so it might stick, fingers crossed it isn't cancelled of course.

My love for Silent Hill outweighs the vitriol I have about what came after 4. It's super easy to get it back on track RE style (which is what makes it so fucking frustrating to talk about), you just need a Kojima style tard wrangler for the series. All you have to do is follow and touch up the blueprint Team Silent left with their Shadows idea and the original SH3 script repurposed.

We need an anti-Tom Hulett, an older developer who's played all 4 original games or such. Not exactly a fan but someome better than the retarded gooks in charge right now. People like the guys behind REVII spring to mind. The other step is having a Silent Hill game collection, long overdue but it should be made by a company like Nightdive. They went on record to talk about wanting to remaster the first four games, and maybe a fifth one or so which likely refers to Origins/Shattered Memories.

Konami is Konami and doesn't do gaming very well anymore.
 
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This new silent hill feels like one of those games that will be completely forgotten in a month or 2.

The visual style of the town and monsters isn't as striking nor memorable as the original ones and feel more like some indie game.
The combat is a joke with those 5 minute pauses every time you hit and the dodges look more like something batman would pull off as opposed to a normal girl.
On top of it the story and themes feel really cynical and out of touch considering how privileged women are in the modern world and how lonely and pussywhipped men are in japan.
Also personally I am fucking sick of the prevalence of the fox in jap games. I do know about it's significance in jap religion (who doesn't at this point) but it's just so cliche and boring now visually at this point.
 
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I came here to say that Silent Hill F is dogwater.
Truly a modern game for a modern audience.

All I can say about the story is that the Chinese devs really want Japan to go extinct.
 
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