A game of dreams

When you have a strong desire of sharing an experience to the others, you have already started your design concept.

Though you may feel it in a different way, in Cloud, we tried really hard to communicate and protect this experience. It is the feeling of youthfulness, of your memory and the feeling of imagination which we all enjoyed in our life.

Where did the inspiration come from? A lot. The beatiful sky with clouds and white moon, every dreams about flying including Miyazaki's films, true love, joyfulness and goodness from Katamari Damacy, childhood memories, ocean, mountains, etc...

I always wish to make a video game that makes you feel more productive and enjoy your life better. Most video game today is about addiction. But for Cloud, it is designed to be something you can put down and go back to enjoy your life at any time. No failure, no saving. You pick it up and leave it with no second thoughts...

Xinghan "Jenova" Chen, one of the game's creators

Many of you might have played flOw - a game which started its life as a piece of university thesis and ended up as nothing short of a legend among the Playstation Network dwellers and one of the most iconic PS Store's titles. Some of you might have liked the game so much, that they decided to check out thatgamecompany's homepage and may have noticed the other game called Cloud. Maybe even downloaded and played it. This review is for those of you who haven't.

I don't know Jenova Chen, but I know I admire him. He and his teammates are people who can see beyond the realm of consumer-driven rules of making video games and have the courage and determination to pursue their own, independent vision. Great minds with great ideas, knowing hot to both express them and share them with the rest of us. The true artists. And their creations are just what true art is supposed to be: subtle, gentle, not totally overwhelmed with flashy advertisement campaigns and psychological tricks to keep you glued to the screen, but honest and serene. Letting you submerge in the deep dreamworld it helped you create for yourself or, if you don't like it, letting you forget about it with no hard feelings.

I had planned to tell you about the game itself - what you do, how you are supposed to play... I think I won't though. Just go here and have a look around. See for yourself if that's the kind of thing you would enjoy.

Me, I just wish the graphics were a little more realistic, especially the occasional bits of land beneath. Should that be the case, if what I see on my computer screen looked a little more like what I see through my window, Cloud would definitely find its place on my top ten list on the right side of this text. Still, in case of games like this one, graphics are not the most important thing. The emotions and feelings are what truly matters. Besides, the cutscene images are mind-blowing.

This wasn't much of a review, because, if you think about it, it's useless trying to review true art. Or the emotions true art evokes. I merely wanted to tell you that there is a little game called Cloud, which that may change the shape of your mind for a couple of minutes. It's completely free and if you don't like it, it will quietly and painlessly remove itself from your hard drive and life. (in other words: they even remembered not to clutter our precious Windows registry upon installation) It can't hurt to try it.

PS
Thatgamecompany has currently one more title under development, again on PS3, called simply "Flower". It looks spectacular. I just can't wait...

To Hell With It

What the fuck is this?

This was my reaction when I started up the PS3 demo of Alone in the Dark. The PS3 version was God-only-knows how much longer in development and it’s just incredible that not only they didn’t make the game better, but actually made it worse.
First of all the graphics are just… bad. There is no need for some creative adjective here. They are BAD. The textures are in much lower resolution that their 360 counterparts (let alone the PC ones), the screen tearing is just as bad as in the Xbox version and there is aliasing everywhere. Looking at Carnby standing in front of fire (which is the main theme of the game) is like watching a dancing wood saw –it’s that bad.

Second thing is the controls. Atari claims that the controls are “so incredibly, fantastically, very improved” over the original ones. Now that is bullshit. They took a rather bad scheme and made it worse. Did you people ever heard about content sensitive controls?! HUH?! You still have the silly system where you have one button to pick up a table and a different one to put it down. Two buttons change your perspective into 1st person (depending on conditions) and there are multiple buttons for different action when in fact there could be just one. Sure they decided to “free” the camera and give the player control over it, but it has absolutely no impact on the gameplay (actually, the fixed camera was better) and only adds another button to the controls (you have to press it to get into a combat stance).

I bet most of the bugs that were present in the original releases are still in the game.

It’s like giving a sculptor more time to work on his creation because it was ill-proportioned and all he could do is cut the head off.
Good job Atari, good job.

I love this.

Before I indulge myself in a detailed review of the game in question, I shall take the liberty of expressing my feelings about the title in one, uncomplicated sentence:

THIS IS THE SHIT!!!

Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. After the Homecoming misery which was all about Silent Hill breaking my high hopes, I got a game I had no expectations about, and it just blew my socks off. Yes indeed, Dead Space is a nearly perfect horror-shooter and you should buy it right about now. I mean it.

Just a couple of minor boo-boos, just to get them out of the way. First of all, loading of trophy-data in PS3 version is placed right in the middle of the juicy transition between the welcome "press start" screen and the main menu, which is weird and kinda breaks the mood a little. Second of all... Well, after watching the trailers with that haunting "tinkle tinkle" song and violent monster attacks, I got the impression that the protagonist will be all alone in the game, trapped in a derelict spacecraft and surrounded by deadly creatures. I was wrong - there are actually some NPCs - very cliched NPCs at that, which disappointed me a little, because at first it felt like playing Doom3. Fortunately, everything else in the game is absolutely marvelous, but still... were it not for the standard American Spacecraft Crew Complete With Your Standard American Black Guy Captain, Your Standard American White Panicky Chick Accompanied with Your Standard American I-Will-Be-The-First-Victim-And-I-Will-Be-The-Second-One Dudes and some very predictable plot-turns I would be singing hallelujah and this whole review would be rhymed. Well, nothing's perfect. The thing is - Dead Space is fun, fun, fun; full of great things I'd like to share with you.

Great thing number one: Everything is real-time, or actually, real-space.
Every auxiliary screen - including the 3D map, the inventory, the log storage, mission objectives, the communication interface and gameplay tips, is displayed as a hologram right in front of the protagonist. It moves when you do, it turn around when you move the camera - everything in real-time. Plus, there are no health-meters placed in the screen corners. Instead, this information is displayed by a set of colored indicators on the protagonist's back. Sure, it looks just a tiniest little bit unrealistic, but is really very effective and quite enjoyable. The holograms themselves were a brilliant idea - an excellent device for enhancing the realism and maintaining the heavy and scary atmosphere and perfectly fitting the game's Resident Evil 4 third person perspective.
Oh, there's one more great thing - the navigation device, which, upon being activated, flashes a blue line for a moment, showing exactly where you are supposed to go next. That same line is also permanently visible on your map.

Great thing number two: The Gore.
Hell yeah, there's blood everywhere. Mangled, dismembered corpses being "raped" and mutated by abominable alien creatures and brought back to unlife. People seemingly growing straight out of walls, whose purpose of life has been reduced to breeding more abominable alien creatures. Unborn human embryos transformed into wall-crawling predators. And more. I could tell you something more practical about their design, but I think the word "appropriate" will suffice. They are not very pretty and particularly interesting, but then again, they are not supposed to be. They are fast, agile and incredibly aggressive, which more than makes up for any design flaws they may have. None of them look silly or out of place - that's the crucial thing, and you won't have time to take a closer look at them anyway.
But oh, how they bleed... And oh, how they delightfully fall apart having been cut to bits by my ripper, making that lovely squishy-squishy sound... especially in zero-gravity. Splendid.

Plus, there are maybe two million ways of dying in this game. I didn't have a chance to experience that during my first playthrough (I had picked "easy"), but now, feeling insane, I decided to try out "hard" and... Stickman, my man... You were so right... ;-) The hell of it is - dying is actually part of the fun. Especially since there are many, many savepoints and even checkpoints to the rescue, you can pick up pretty much exactly where you were... "left off", so to say.

Great thing number three: The Environments.
Totally industrial. After all - this is a planet-cracking, mining spacecraft, we're talking about. Rusty metal and electric lights. Narrow corridors and giant engineering chambers. Dark and messy. All the same, yet somehow not overwhelmingly repetitive. What more could you possibly need? What? The decompressed "outdoor" areas? Sure, they're here, I was just about to mention them.
Once you enter the vacuum, a rapid decompression takes place, which is portrayed by a lovely pixelated blur effect. Then, as the vacuum can carry no airwaves, only the vibrating metal beneath your feet makes some sounds, which are muffled and barely audible. All except your screams and gasps for air.
Lack of air is good, but lack of gravity is better. Normally, the suit let's you walk over the surface, probably with the use of magnets. However, you may jump and fly all the way to the opposite wall or the ceiling, which is quite amusing. Unfortunately, the monsters can do that too, so don't be surprised if all of the sudden you'll see a one-legged (actually it's a tail) mutant slowly flying at you with its claws stretched out and ready to kill.
Speaking of the suit - just look at it. I have never seen anything like this... I can't even begin to describe it... I mean, if anyone asked you to imagine a space suit, would it look anything like this? (Don't tell me it would, because that means you're obviously lying.) Dear EA guys (EA?? Jesus, is this really EA who made this game??), I don't know what you are smoking, but it surely can't be bad for anyone's health.

Great thing number four: The Story.
Argh... Fuck, just go ahead and play the damn game already, because I would hate to spoil anything!! Well, as I have already mentioned, there are cliched NPC's and some predictable plot-turns. Additionally, I must admit that the basic concept of the game is also not very ground-breaking, (after all, the theme of alien monsters in space has been exploited over and over for more than twenty years) but again, it's appropriate. Not too simple, not too psychological either; overall, fitting for the game, except for... Yes, there are some elements which elevate the Dead Space Plot far beyond the seemingly infinite realm of horror-shooter mediocrity. For example, I really liked the game's take on religion: how people (especially rich people) can take something and start worshipping it, creating cults, spending massive amounts of money on God-knows-what... Once you actually think about the story, draw some conclusions and make some implications, the plot becomes a wonderful satire on human stupidity and the everlasting "come to think of it, we brought it down on ourselves" or even "maybe it is we who are true monsters" theme. There is more stuff I'd like to tell you about, but that would spo..... I THOUGHT I"VE TOLD YOU TO PLAY THE GAME!! C'mon! I'm dead serious! Stop reading and play it. Now, damn it!!!

Great thing number five: The Conclusion. (?)
Those of you who have already played the game will probably notice that I skipped quite a few things - like the telekinesis ability, or stasis, which "magically" lets you slow down the thing you are aiming at. I haven't even mentioned the store which lets you buy items with money you collect or the suit and weapon enhancement system. The fact is, these things just don't matter very much. What matters is the feel of the game. Dead Space is a great, gory space-horror-shooter. If you don't like things like that, feel free to skip it. Yet, if you do enjoy killing/being killed by scary, grotesque creatures, madly dashing through the dark maze of metal corridors, trying to steady your hand while being torn to pieces by bosses bigger than your hometown... WELL, WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU STILL DOING HERE?!? PLAY THE MOTHERFUCKING GAME!!! NOW!!!

On a different note.

I don’t like EA, I really don’t. For me it’s a commercial monstrosity that only cares about what it eats. And let’s face it, before EA started to devour all the talented studios they could put their dirty little hands on they didn’t even make games. No, they were mass producing plastic, garden gnomes. The same ones every year too.
EA was an equivalent of an uncle you don’t like who visits once a year, pinches your cheek, blows his cigar smoke right in your face and tells you how much you’ve grown- even though you’re twenty eight – then ruins Christmas an leaves.

And then they announced their internal studio was making a game, and not some licensed piece of crap, but an original IP. Not only that – they had the balls to make it a survival horror (an action one, but still). They, of all companies, had the nerve to put up a fight with the likes of Silent Hill, Resident Evil or Alone in the Dark. “How delightfully absurd.” – to quote That Guy with the Glasses. And you know what? EA fucking ripped off everyone’s balls – all of them. Right now the only game that could be better than Dead Space is Resident Evil 5. Seriously.

Dead Space is one of the best, if not THE best game I’ve played this year. It takes a lot from other games, but has new ideas as well and those it “borrows” it makes better. The holographic line that shows you the direction you need to go, the vacuum sections, the zero gravity sections, the adaptive ammo system (you only get ammo to the weapons you carry at the given time), the wonderfully brutal combat (best design I’ve seen in years), great enemies (many types – all completely different), excellent music, fantastic graphics, well written plot… I could go on for a long time with this.
No, Dead Space is not perfect, but it’s bloody damn close.

I bow to you EA Redwood Shores, because you’ve made a game that I truly adore.

P.S.
Rumor has it, that the sequel is already being developed. It just can’t come soon enough.

The Bleeding Skies

As a foreword I will confess than I’ve never finished the first two games released on the PS2. Hell, not only that – I actually only played like half an hour of the first one. I was hyped for the first game and spend countless hours browsing through the amazing website that promoted it. It was supposed to be a dream come true - a truly Japanese horror turned into a video game. But when my PS2 swallowed the DVD it was like getting your favorite soup with a dead, half-rotten rat in it. The game’s hallmark feature – the sightjack (the ability to see through enemy’s eyes) turned out to be a pain to use and the game was more unforgiving than your boss after crashing the company car. I didn’t touch it ever again and I didn’t even consider getting the second one.
However, during the absence of horror games, on a gaming session with EXramp we downloaded the Siren demo from the Japanese PSN. I have to say that when I pressed X over the Siren icon in XMB I was expecting the worst – the same clunky controls, the same silly level of difficulty and I was just so wrong. I won’t bother writing about the demo, because you had a chance to read EXramp’s impression and instead I’ll concentrate on the final product.

Siren: Blood Curse (or New Translation as it’s known in Japan) tells a story about a TV crew stranded on an island where people are killed and turned into undead monsters (the Shibito). The events are somehow connected with a blood rain the falls on the village. The story is not that different from the ones in the previous Siren games, but I can tell you it’s a really good one. There are some unexpected twists that made me blink twice to shed off the surprise. The plot is well written, very well executed and you will have doubts about that exactly is going on until the very end. I’m not going to tell you more, because I wouldn’t want to ruin anything, but rest assured that the (circa) twelve hours you spend with the game won’t be wasted.

Just like the story, the characters are well developed and the actors responsible for the voice overs should get a bonus in shape of pineapples and hominy for doing such a bloody good job. This voice acting with the very nice character models make the game feel more natural (giving the circumstances) and realistic – which greatly contributes to the experience. The Shibito are also excellently modeled and will make you very uneasy every time you encounter them.
The overall atmosphere is simply top notch mainly do to great sound (You want to have a nice surround system for this game, you really do.) and great graphics. You’ll fall in love with the dark skies with red clouds flowing on the horizon. It’s all very intense and somehow charming. The parts of the game that happened during misty days are also incredible with the deaf silence of foggy locales. However, considering the downloadable nature of the game some sacrifices had to be made. Some of the textures look more like someone’s smeared brain than anything else and no, it doesn’t add to the atmosphere – it’s just ugly. Still, most of the time you won’t notice that because you’ll be in the sightjack mode. And the sightjack mode is a completely different kind of shit – there are multiple filters layered on the screen and it’s much harder to move and even see, so even though you have an idea where your enemies are there is this sense of dread that you might make a wrong turn by mistakes and find your guts on Shibito’s knife. And believe me, it happens more often than you can imagine. The ability to look though Shibitos’ eyes can be nerve wrecking by itself as those creatures do not go to the kindergarten – you can take my word for it.
The game can be pretty scary at times but it’s mostly disturbing. I’ll give you my favourite example as it’s something that still gives me nightmares.
There is a part of the game where you control a small girl and you need to escape or hide from the Shibito (the girl can’t use weapons). At one point the only viable place to hide is an old furnace… you can’t even imagine how many times a Shibito was treading by my hideout and I was sure that the monster will light the furnace up and I will be burned alive. When you read this it might not sound like much, when you’re experiencing this in the game it does make you breathe in a very shallow and quiet way.

The gameplay is something a bit different as well. You will control multiple characters throughout the course of the game – some can fight, use weapons and items and some can only hide. There are puzzles in the game (save one), but rather natural choices. You come across a locked door – you need the key, but the key is guard by a Shibito with a rifle, so you need to distract the Shibito with something first.
This game is a lot more about survival and horror that any other survival horror. I can tell you that.
One thing that (at least for me) ruins the climate a bit is the whole game is objective based. You start a chapter and you get a set of objectives that you must complete – reach floor x, find a fuse, start the elevator. It does make the gameplay a bit more fluid and you won’t be going in circles wondering what to do, but on the other hand it feels as natural as eating rocks through a straw.
The gameplay itself is not particularly balanced either. If you don’t have a weapon there is no way to take a Shibito out (apart from a few scripted encounters), but when you do have a weapon there is no stopping you – you can take out almost everything on your path – unless it has a gun – if it does, you are screwed. And it goes on like this – you either hide all the time, or kill every Shibito you can find. It makes the stealthy parts sometimes a bit too hard and the action parts way too easy.

The game is great for collectors – there are many items to find (that includes weapons, documents, plot items and so on) and in most cases it will take multiple playthroughs to get everything. There are no bonuses for collecting all items, but for people who like to get one hundred pre cent out of their games it is an incentive to finish the game more than once. There is an “Archive” section in the main menu where you can browse through your findings and I bet you’ll be surprised how much work went into this game. For example all the videos you’ll find in the game are neither CG or engine based but actually recorded by hand with real actors (I’m not taking about story cut scenes here, but rather about video tapes you’ll find scattered throughout the game). I find it very cool and it’s something that adds to the immersion.

Siren: Blood Curse is without a doubt a great game with its own ideas and mechanics – something that seems more ambitious and less action oriented than what we are exposed to lately and it only makes the game better in my eyes. It’s also an excellent survival horror with thick atmosphere and great story. It may not be perfect, but it doesn’t really matter, because its flaws are minor and insignificant. If you haven’t played it yet, be sure to download at least the demo from PSN. And if you happen to live in Europe or Japan you can get a disc version (since today) as well as the downloadable version.

'I know all about Silent Hill.'

If you were a moron, you could say the Silent Hill wheel has come full circle. The American games neatly wrapped the Japanese ones in a Zero-to-Five envelope. They dug their teeth into the original Silent Hill 1 magic, redefining and reshaping things their way, while at the other end they wrapped the series into chains and pulled it into the cinema near you. Is it right or wrong? Does it even matter?

Naturally, that full-circe, envelope thing is a load of bullshit. Origins and Homecoming were made by two different companies, with different ideas, goals and attitudes. In fact, they are two completely different games, having only two things in common: the title - or at least a part of it - and that they both carry a neat tag "Made In The U.S.A." Before I tell you that I think it's just wrong and explain that by "into the cinema near you" I meant Homecoming would make a great Silent Hill movie, but not necessarily a great game, let me ask you this: what do we actually expect from every incoming Silent Hill installment? The answer is - another Silent Hill 2. We want sheer perfection - impeccable atmosphere, truly disturbing monsters, filthy and disgusting and yet strangely charming locations and a set of characters thrown in a heartbreaking story, skillfully delivered into our hungry brains. And of course a perfect blend of action and mind-rattling puzzles, while we're at it.

Yet, at this point, it's obvious that this is not going to happen. Ever. Every later Silent Sequel did have some of the above features, but there was always something wrong. We felt disappointed with SH3's lack of innovation. We felt angry about SH4's tedious "do it again with Eileen" repeatedness. We weren't content with SH0's SH1-but-not-nearly-that-cool taste. So we waited in fear, watching teaser after teaser, interview after interview, beta version after beta version marked only by Alex's changing hairstyle. And now the wait is over. What about Silent Hill 5? Did the Double Helix Team Silent Next's anticipated child called Homecoming surpass all its imperfect predecessors and is ready to be called THE NEXT GREAT SILENT HILL GAME and A NEW HOPE FOR SILENT HILL FRANCHISE?

No.
Sorry.
That just didn't happen.

What should a game reviewer begin with while dealing with a Silent Hill game? The plot. And the story, once you actually get to uncover it, is good. Dare I say, it's one of the best things in Homecoming, saving it from the depths of games hell and the "total disaster" label. Sure, there are a little too many characters involved and the last stage of the game smells suspiciously of the dreaded Saw series, but I think that, no matter who you are, you'll agree with me that they could have fucked this up in an even worse way. The protagonist, one Alex Shepherd, is actually very likeable and if you manage to forget about his strange hairstyle being the result of years of wicked experiments, you may find controlling him a very enjoyable experience. Most of other characters are unfortunately not that likeable, especially his seemingly retarded brother Josh, but, well, you can't have everything. As you can see, I'm not going to spoil a single little fact from the story, but I will say that the plot is well-constructed and even manages to throw some unexpected turns at you. I liked that. Sometimes it made me forget about all the things I'm about to write about.

Straying away from the main plot and exploring the ominous town of Shepherd's Glen which apparently has misteriously found itself on the east coast of Toluca Lake somewhere after SH2 but before SH5, we'll come across some strange things like ash laying aroung in Silent Hill itself, of Pyramid Head's triangular pyramid head. At one point, I asked myself "is it actually a part of the games or the movie timeline?" To this day, the answer eludes me. I'm not sure whether asking if this or that is a part of the official Silent Hill timeline makes a lot of sense, because with all those multiple endings and the very surreal nature of the world presented make space for an awful lot of loose ends (like Frank Sunderland's son and daughter-in-law mentioned to have gone missing in Silent Hill in The Room - no matter how hard I try to make that work with SH2's possible endings, I fail miserably), but I suppose one would be right to ask "what is this smoke coming from the asphalt, when the town itself has never been deserted as there was no underground fire". These are just some of Homecoming's factual inconsistencies, which I believe are obvious effects of trying to combine the Silent Hill The Game and Silent Hill The Movie universes.

Coming to the more practical aspect of Homecoming, I have to say that playing this game can be a real emotional roller-coaster, but for all the wrong reasons. It is terribly unbalanced, unforgiving and cruel. The already famous fighting system with dodging and rolling on the ground does make a lot of sense in theory, although its execution is just... so very bad. Most enemies have means to reach and hurt you, even when you lie on the floor gathering your guts together, and knock you right down again. And again. And again. Until you die. And after you've respawned, you find yourself miles back, more often than not right next to glowing Halo of the Sun signifying a savepoint. There are checkpoints, but too few and too far between - the phenomena more than perfectly commented by FallingStickman: there are some places where it gets so hard, you wish to stop playing and take a break; you cannot however, because quitting the game means canelling the checkpoints and starting from the last save which happened so long ago, you think you've made it back on your PS2.

Controls are Homecoming's greatest misery. The inventory is split into two sections: one for items and one for supplies. Entering it with L1 and L2, while L2 and R2 are used for aiming and shooting (as you can see I own the PS3 version) is unintuitive. Choosing the desired item by carefully pointing at it with your stick is even more unintuitive. Using a healing object with pre-assigned buttons is just reckless. God knows how many times I wasted a health drink by pressing L1 and square, while all I wanted to do was to perform a force attack. If that's not wrong, I don't know what is.

The enemies design can be summed up in just three words: NO MASAHIRO ITO. Nurses straight from the movie. Skinned dogs which are just skinned... dogs. Schisms looking like sharks. Sharks? Godawful needlers which you might call disturbing because their heads dangle from their crotches. Siams which look like overgrown siamese twins, only with SH3's Closer's arms. Piramid Head... or actually Boogeyman or whatever the fuck they insist to call him... and the most idiotic thing of all: smogs - once you defeat one of them, please take a second to look down at its decaying corpse, with all of its pink and yellow-glowing bulges (I might have seen a similar thing in one of Electric Six music videos) and ask yourself "is this how a Silent Hill monster should look like?" If your answer is "yes", I loathe you.

There is no structure, no similar traits, no common theme. Just like in Silent Hill Origins, the monster design is just one big melting pot of ideas, some of which look promising and some of which are so ridiculously bad you feel like weeping watching them. I think the bosses are somewhat better - each of them neatly manifesting what they are supposed to (I can't tell you more, it would spoil the plot), yet even here - the common factor between them and the regular enemies is extremely elusive, maybe even it's just not there at all.

Moreover, the difficulty curve is actually non-existent. Instead, the level leaps and drops with each encountered monster, which leads to some very awkward, dismaying situations. Let's take the already mentioned needlers. These creatures are easily the biggest menace of Homecoming - with their ability to walk on walls and ceilings and effectively block your attacks with their long and sharp limbs. Every time you run into one of them - or more, which is usually the case - you pray. Or utilise some of the game's bugs to your advantage. Fortunately, the needlers disappear at about three quarters of the game, only to be replaced with actual human opponents: evil cultists dressed like town dwellers from the movie. You'd think that they would pose some considerable challenge, after all, they are real, thinking people, not mindless beasts. But no, once they see you they just dash in your direction, only to die having experienced some rapid yet violent encounters with Alex's dagger. In other words, you just have to tap X until they drop. Is it just me, or is there something wrong here as well? It is actually possible to learn how to play this game *right* and once you finish it - it gets quite easy on the next playthrough. But should honing your combat skills be the most important thing in a story-driven survival horror? Would adding an "easy" difficulty mode really hurt that much?

Thankfully, there are puzzles. Some of them are just laughably simple, some aren't - again, having SH2 puzzle difficulty selection would be a blessing - but after SH4 and SH0 I guess we should be just glad they're there. We have standard button-pressing, plate-moving, cable-switching ones, we have put-the-correct-item-in-the-correct-place ones and... Oh my God... There are also some riddle-decyphering ones, which I couldn't be happier about. I've missed them terribly since 2001.

The environments could be divided into two groups - differing significantly in quality. The "normal" world, if that expression may indeed be used, seems rather mundane. You can hardly see anything, even with the flashlight illuminating only the most immediate walls and the two colors seen most often are dark gray and darker gray. There is no trace of that "abominable but charming at the same time" quality, but it's not so bad either. Just, well, an empty town and a whole lot of fog. Still, the game makes up for that emptiness with the nightmare world. Blood and rust, rust and blood, ever so delightful. Let me tell you, that the only times I smiled while playing Homecoming was during the nightmare sequences. They are detailed, disturbing, reflecting SH1's environments and in a proper way. I might even say, that it's worth buying and playing the game just for them. (and the story, to some extent)

The music is Akira Yamaoka all over again and that's the only thing I have to say about it, because - honestly - I just didn't seem to hear much of it. Sure, I remember some stingers here and there, nothing really special, I remember the sad tune accompanying the second boss fight, which was good enough and I remember that McGlynn woman's voice singing another Yamaoka song during the credits. As I've said somewhere before, your standard Silent Hill music, nothing more and nothing less. I must admit I've grown tired of this same set of sounds game after game, over and over again, but maybe it's just me. On the other hand, I would be scared if they were to change it to something else. I've used the word "wrong" too many times already.

Before I end this review and let my dear friend FallingStickman post some of his thoughts, which he may be having, I would like to mention one more thing wrong with Silent Hill Homecoming. Something far less substantial than bad controls and awful monster design, yet not of a lesser importance. I namely think, that handing the series over to an American team was a bad decision. Silent Hill has lost its Japanese soul. Again, before you ask me what the hell I am talking about, let me ask you to try and imagine how it would be like if Rockstar let some Japanese game developer make the next Grand Theft Auto. Think about it. I dare you to visualise how this game would actually look like, let alone FEEL like.

The first step towards this dreadful nationality shift was the Silent Hill movie. You may love it or hate it, but the thing is - you can just ignore it, because this is just an adaptation. An unofficial spin-off. The second one was Origins - which painfully tried to mimic the atmosphere of SH1 and nearly succeeded, were it not for it's simplicity and weird alterations of SH1's characters. But then again - it was originally a PSP installment. You know, just like MGS Portable Ops. Your average PSP series compliment, which you might have ignored just as well, like SH Play Novel on Game Boy Advance. Yet, this time it's number 5. Another "big" installment and the first on the next-gen consoles, to make things worse. So while Homecoming gained something from this radical nationality switch - most notably better dialogues and more natural voice acting, it also lost the trademark Japanese polish, the evidence of which I've explained above and the trademark Japanese sense of strangeness, or more adequately: foreigness. If you don't know what this is about, try and compare Siren 3 with the most recent trailer of the everupcoming Alan Wake. Resident Evil with Nocturne. You'll immediately see what I mean.

That being said, I think it's high time to shut down the series. Why oh why, you ask? Yes, I would really like to believe that everything's going to be okay and there are better Silent Hills in development, maybe even I'll get to play a true SH2's successor, before the series turns 10.

Yet, at this point, it's obvious that this is not going to happen. Ever. Every later Silent Sequel will have some of the SH2's features, but there will always be something wrong. We'll feel disappointed with SH6's something. We'll feel angry about SH7's something. We won't be content with SH8's something else. So, especially with Yamaoka's revelations and two next movie sequels already confirmed and in production, we'll wait in fear, watching teasers, interviews, beta versions... And each time we'll be asking this same old question: what about Silent Hill X? Did the Team Silent X's anticipated child called XY surpass all its imperfect predecessors and is ready to be called THE NEXT GREAT SILENT HILL GAME and A NEW HOPE FOR SILENT HILL FRANCHISE?

No.
Sorry.
That just won't happen.

This won't be long, because EXramp pretty much nailed it. To my surprise no less, because I was thinking our opinions about Silent Hill 5 were much more different.

But just to add my five cents as Silent Hill is, next to Resident Evil, my favourite gaming series.
From my confrontation with Homecoming I came out a bit bruised, but more importantly surprised that I have enjoyed the game so much. It is a good game. Not only that, it actually is a good Silent Hill. I finished the game twice so far and I must say that I have a bit of an issue with the difficulty - on my first playthrough I was cursing like a drunken fisherman who lost his left eye in a bar fight just ten minutes earlier. I was dying every few minutes - the game is unforgiving to newcomers - and the fact that checkpoints and savepoints are scattered by the developers completely randomly doesn't help at all. However on the second playthrough the game became simply too easy. Before the last boss Alex's inventory was bursting with health drinks and first aid kits. Once you realize that unlike with other Silent Hill games
a bigger weapon is not always the better weapon the game becomes easier than picking your nose.

Another gripe that I have with SH5 is that there is just too much of the movie in it. I don't know, maybe Yamaoka just loves his bastard child so much that he decided to clone it, but since the first one was a girl and this one was supposed to be a boy he ended up with a violent hermaphrodite with emotional problems. Not only that. Instead of finding a a woman who would have a kid with him he went to a sperm bank and paid the janitor to take make the child for him.

Last thing - a note to people in Double Helix.
Learn your fucking craft or stop making games and start growing cabbage. After having a game so long in development you shouldn't release it with some many bugs and mistakes - however small they may be.

The game is full of inconsistencies - like you need to cut power to half a block in the town so you can get into a prison. You do it and the town goes dark, but once you get into the prison there is power inside and what is even more baffling in certain rooms you see rays of light coming through the windows even though there is night outside and there is no power. So where is this light coming from? God?
In the same part of the game some of the locations outside are shown during the day while others (just one loading screen away) are shown during the night. Now come on! You can do better than that, can't you?

Still, all those things are just minor blemished on an overall pleasurable experience. If you like Silent Hill, or survival horror games in general get this one, you probably won't be disappointed.

Little Big Beta

I will be completely honest with you. I think Little Big Planet is the best thing that happened to video games industry since the first Playstation. Seriously.
I wanted this game ever since I saw the first footage and after spending a few days with the beta I can honestly say that this is one of the few games that will define this generation of hardware. And if it will succeed financially, and I’m sure it will, I anticipate a big comeback of classic platform games.

Little Big Planet’s roots are in all the great old-school 2D platformers that generations of players loved. Yes, the game may have 3D graphics (and damn good ones if you ask me), but the gameplay is 2.5D at most. It’s not bad by any means, far from it. Thanks to the fantastic physics engine and “materials” (simulating real-life materials like polystyrene, wood, stone, rubber, sponge and so on) used in the creation of all the stages the level of interactivity is beyond any platform game that I can recall (and I can recall quite a few).
The whole artistic design is created around that too and is just incredibly cute and adorable, but it’s not the cuteness of Viva Piñata. It’s something that appeals to a much broader audience - to my surprise actually. I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary because I like silly, cartoonish designs, but when I showed the beta to EXramp, who is generally against putting into games anything that make little girls smile, he expressed an enthusiastic approval. I was shocked, shocked I tell you. It seems that Media Molecule really nailed the art design.

In the beta version of LBP there are only a few story levels designed by the developers. The function as both: tutorials and material/item storages. Before you’ll be able to build anything, you will need to get through those levels to acquire the “building blocks”. And LBP is about using those “blocks” in the most creative way you can muster. The level editor is unbelievably powerful – the possibilities are almost unlimited. Those who think that you’ll just see simple landscapes and some platforms are in for a big surprise. The amount of devices, triggering systems, switches and contraptions is impressive, but what’s even more impressive is what people can do with it. There is one level in particular that made my jaw drop all the way to the basement. I can’t really recall the author’s name (sorry bout that), but the level is called World of Colour (or something very similar) – it is one of the best levels I’ve seen in any platformer… ever. The person who created it should get a job in Media Molecule and a big pile of cash.
And yet the whole creating process is as easy as tying your shoelaces – by that I mean, that a 4-year-old might have a problem with it, but with some practice even he will be able to make helicopter out of it.
The only problem I have with the game right now is that it’s fairly easy to make a level that simply won’t work and player will not be able to finish it. That, however, is unavoidable and cannot be fixed. Still, if someone is diligent enough he will test his own creations for all possibilities of failure.
Another thing that worries me a bit is that a player can only publish five levels at a time. That is not a lot, but the again, if, let’s say, a million people will buy the game and everyone publishes those five levels it gives five million levels to play. Let me write it in capitals – FIVE MILLION LEVELS! Even if 1/10 of them are playable the potential is just mind-blowing.
And that leads me to the last thing – the community. Even in the beta the community is lively, prolific and helpful. Considering that everything (posting levels, comments and all sorts of interactivity) is completely done in-game I would have to say that it works extremely well.

The beta will end in a few days and when it happens I will be holding my breath until I die or get the retail version of the game. Because it’s worth it.

EDIT

Since I'm being subjected to constant nagging by my beloved finacee I should point out that Little Big Planet made a big and surprisingly positive impression on her. So big actually, that she WANTS me to buy the game and play with me, which is remarkable. That is something that doesn't happen very often even though she's not against games at all, and occasionally plays them as well.

et omnia vanitas...

Longing for Still Life 2 (what's taking them so goddamn long?!) I decided to try out some other adventure games featured on Microids homepage, namely Dracula 3 and Sinking Island. While I haven't tried the latter, I've finished the former and here's what I think about it.

One big applause for not making the story painfully cliched - no, there is no Van Helsing on a blood hunt, no Jonathan searching for his beloved one, no Victorian Era. Instead, the year is 1920, the old Tepes castle, much like Transilvania itself, has been nearly leveled by the war and the protagonist is a simple, yet educated priest, who has been sent by his Vatican authorities to a sleepy village of Vladoviste in order to investigate the death of a certain female doctor who is to be made a saint. Needless to say, the investigation will take a few unexpected turns.

The setting is really promising - like in some good novel, the plot pretends to have nothing to do with the title, when, one by one, the disturbing details enter the stage, eventually placing the good Father right before the burning red eyes of the infamous undead voivode. However, a nice story is nothing if you can't sell it properly and even that does suffer from an acute case of anemia from time to time. So, as they say, let's get it on.

First of all, I must admit, that I've never played previous Dracula games, so the static "click-to-go-in-that-direction" first person gameplay was something of a surprise to me - not being a total adventure freak, I was quite amazed that they still make games like that. At least the interface is pretty intuitive with the cursor showing exactly where you can go, what can be examined or operated and how it is done. Too bad the inventory is a little worse - there's a standard set of empty slots and one "to go" stack, where every newly acquired item lands. You then have to take it out from the stack and place it in the normal inventory. Complicated and totally pointless.

From the inventory screen you also have access to the objectives list, the save/load menu, the dialogues section and the files department, which is really large, since there lot's of reading in this game. This includes the entire text of Bram Stoker's "Dracula" (or so it seems, I didn't bother to read those 500 pages to be sure), many pictures, which you can inspect with a magnifying glass and many, many books and letters written in various languages and translated (nice touch). Finding your way through all this can get tedious, especially when you have to find a certain document or instantly switch between some of them; all the necessary icons and buttons are there, it's just not very comfortable to use them - I think spacing things out a little better might have done the trick.

The graphics are tolerable enough, if you manage to convince yourself that it's 2002. The backgrounds and cinematics are atmospheric and fitting, yet their rather simple design is just unimpressive. It's hard to be scared in this kind of environment. Then the character design. During the end credits, you get to see all the rendered models together with their concept sketches in the background. You compare them and ask yourself "where did they go wrong?" I know it's a matter of personal taste, but the people in Dracula 3 are just... warped, deformed in a dismaying fashion. Especially the gravedigger and the little kid. Even the protagonist - Father Arno Moriani - looks like a young, cartoonized version of Gabriel Byrne's character in Stigmata. Plus their movements are way too slow - again reminding me of the good old, but long since gone, days when such a thing was normal. The voice acting and the music are also tolerable enough, though I've found it strange that the dialogue options chosen by the player are not spoken out - when they usually lead to dozens of other questions which are spoken.

Most of the time Father Moriani tells you directly where he should go or whom he should talk to next which, in close co-operation with the detailed objective list in your inventory, makes the game quite straightforward. So are the dialogues themselves - you get a list of questions and you just ask them one by one, until you run out of options and the conversation ends. You never need to worry about saying something inappropriate which might get you into trouble or getting stuck altogether. The only times when the game actually pauses and lets you do the thinking are the puzzles.

Yes, the puzzles... The heart of any adventure game, aren't they? Dracula 3 features many of them, so, as you can probably guess, some are great and some are just horrible. Most of them are somewhat complex and require more then one activity to solve them. I was completely mesmerized by the one where you have to take the sample of your own blood - before you grab the needle and the torniquet, you have to sterilize the tools, which involves taking a pot, filling it with water, putting it on a stove, taking a piece of wood for the fire, letting the water boil and so on and so on. Neat. Then there are some standard button-pressing and switch-flipping ones, some use-this-on-that ones, even some what's-wrong-with-picture ones - diversity is definitely there. Fortunately, while most puzzles are not overly simple and do require some neural activity, they rarely cross the unpleasantness threshold are are usually quite fun to solve.

Then again, some puzzles are just agony, for example the one with counting white blood cells. I swear to God I did everything exactly the way I was supposed to (the game wouldn't let me do otherwise) and I just kept getting wrong results. I've consulted some online walkthroughs and apparently sometimes you have to repeat the puzzle to finally get it right. Plus, the puzzle itself is very tedious - just clicking on the right things in the right order over and over again. Unforgivable. I can imagine someone suffering a similar pain while trying to decode letters encrypted with Enigma (did they actually have Enigmas back in 1920?) and there are more. Again, I'm not an adventure game freak - escpecially since they've seized to be a proud game genre and have become underdogs, with the underdog sales and underdog quality - so I'm not really sure if such brain-boilers are normal or not. Yet, I believe that any element which makes you angry and willing to throw the goddamn game out of the window is a bad thing.

Just one more boo-boo before I wrap this up - the entire game is operated just by mouse, except for one thing and that's skipping dialogues and cutscenes which is done by hitting your space bar. Sounds like an unimportant little thing, but believe me, having to reach for a keyboard from wherever your hand is resting can be annoying. It especially bites since even the Esc key, which you'd expect to take you to an in-game menu or something, doesn't work.

It's not the worst game ever. It's (moderately) atmospheric, (moderately) clever and (moderately) enjoyable. For once, I managed to finish it (that means something), but then again, I had no second thoughts about uninstalling it and forgetting about it. If you need to take a break from the next-gen craze and feel like drinking a tepid tea instead of hot chocolate or ice-cold cocktail, go ahead and play it. It won't bite much.

PS
The last cutscene suggests there's going to be a sequel, this time during the WWII period and maybe it will be (moderately) better.

Fears and Thrills

Being a Silent Hill fan[atic] I was waiting eagerly for the first next-gen entry to the series… and then I found out it was being developed by an American team. What’s even worse I found out that it will borrow some elements from the not so great Silent Hill movie. Oh, the horror, the horror. From that day everything went downhill. I didn’t like that the protagonist looks like a member of Westlife, I didn’t like the monster designs – especially those taken directly from the movie, I didn’t like the fact that they decided to include pyramid head – and take the movie version and I didn’t like the fact that they were putting so much emphasis on the combat. I didn’t like what the developers were saying during the production cycle and most of all I didn’t like what Akira Yamaoka said – the only guy from the original Silent Hill team claims that the best thing that connects all the games are the silly bonus endings. Let me make a direct comment to Yamaoka-san:

You are making the best gaming music, but please, shut the hell up. You are making a fool out of yourself.

Still, despite all those things I bought a US version of the game, because I can’t wait until it will have its European release. Why? Because I love Silent Hill and I will play any crap with the name attached. Well, excluding Silent Hill Arcade – for that Konami should burn in digital hell. Yes, I have finished Play Novel. And even though I’m very scared about how the game will turn out I already know that I will play it, see all the endings and make the best of it. And I knew since the day it was announced that I will add it to my collection. But know this - if this game fails to deliver at least to some degree I will embark on a personal crusade to punish those responsible.

A side note.
Have you seen the official SH:H website? It’s the most pathetic videogame site I’ve seen in many, many years. Being a web designer myself I can tell you that I’ve made a similar thing about the Silent Hill series… nine years ago… in high-school… alone… in two days… after school… with one hand. Why did Konami agree to put up on the net a deformed monstrosity like that is beyond my understanding.
So an offer from me to Konami – I can create a decent Silent Hill Homecoming for you, if you will promise me that you will forbid Yamaoka to speak in public.