Silent Hill Series Part 1

 

Hey! Where's the usual box cover picture!? Well today's review is gonna be different because, I will be reviewing all the main series of Silent Hill! Well if you want to be specific, Silent Hill 1 all the way to 5 aka Homecoming. I will only talk about my feelings when I was watching the gameplay for Silent Hill 6 cause I haven't played it and I don't plan to. I shall talk about that later after I give you the reasons why I loved the older games more. So let's get started with Silent Hill, the first game that came out back in 1999. I was only 7 years old ='D... Ah the memories of the days when games were truly terrifying.

So basically this are the two things I would talk about during the review of Silent Hill.

(This review is gonna have sooo much typos but I'm to busy to edit them ;~;)

1) How scary it is. And NO I do not mean jumpscares. I mean the atmosphere

2) The riddles cause this is... or was a very important aspect of the game since the first one.

3) A bit on combat cause most of the time they are the same.

"Not judging on graphics since this is a very old game, but this deserves a 9/10 when we're talking about horror games."

Just a heads up, I did not play this game when I was a kid(I was only 7), my mom played it but I did get my try at killing a few monsters and running around so I do know the controls, very typical survival horror game controls. Other than that I only helped my mom solve riddles.

You start this game as Harry Mason and you need to remember this name since he appears in the later part of the review as well. His daughter, Cheryl Mason, for some reason, wanted him to take her to Silent Hill, and being the good daddy he is, agreed. While driving there, he saw a little girl on the road and got into a car crash. When he woke up, Cheryl was gone and he sets out to find her in this foggy town. He followed the sounds of footstep to a dark alley until he reached a dead end where he was attacked by weird monsters... and then he died. THE END!! BEST GAME EVER!

No. He woke up in a cafe where he meets a police officer, Cybil Bennett and asked if she'd seen his daughter. Cybil was like "Nope." and then we find out that she has not seen anyone other than Harry. After she leaves, a pterodactyl looking monsters crashes into the cafe and this is where the game truly starts. The monsters in the game is based on the mind of Alessa Gillespie, each of them having a background story of its own. You'd have to wiki everything since they don't tell you in-game.

In Silent Hill, you experience the two sides of the town. The normal, which is foggy but bright and more of less clean and the alternate, where the streets are dark and the walls are covered in blood and rust. What I like about this game is that it's really creepy, you go to elementary school and a hospital. I mean those two places itself is horrifying, not to mention you need to do through both the normal AND the alternate version of it. 

 

 

When walking through the streets of Silent Hill, you'd always feel the sense of unease even if there is absolutely nothing around. Every room you enter makes you ready your weapon or just hang on to your diaper cause you might pee your pants. I remember very clearly in one room which was the bathroom. My mom checked everywhere to make sure there wasn't any items to take and then headed out. As soon as she was near the door, there was a soft sobbing of a female child. I never wanted to go to the bathroom alone for weeks. Even right now as I am looking for pictures for this review I am feeling kinda creeped out.

"The piano riddle"

The next thing I wanna talk about is the riddles. Silent Hill riddles would most probably want you to rip your hair out cause they are hard. If you want to unlock a door you need to solve that and it isn't like "You need a code. *finds code* DOOR OPENED!" Most of the important notes lying around gives you very minimal hints to get your through to the next area. An example would be the piano riddle. There are several pages of that paper and you need to play the keys to unlock something. I can't remember cause that was like 13 years ago, but I do remember is that me and my mom got tricked and was pressing the wrong buttons all these time. Why? Cause even the title of riddle was a hint and we weren't reading that. 

We were stuck there for a god damn long time but when we finally solved it, we felt like a genius! And that was really fun because we solved something on our own rather than some random paper saying "Here's the code 1234! Use it 8D!" Solving the riddles in Silent Hill adds on to the feeling of mystery and they did it very well in their first game.

"The next game. Silent Hill 2 - 9/10. Still not a bad game but horror went down a bit"

Silent Hill 2 starts out with you being James Sunderland, who lost his wife 3 years ago to a terminal disease. However, he just recently got a letter from his wife saying that she is in Silent Hill waiting for him. In his time in Silent Hill, he meets quite a few more people who were there for a specific reason as well. 

Silent Hill 2 didn't drift too far from Silent Hill. The difference was the added difficulty, not to the combat, but for the riddles as well. Players get to choose how hard they want the riddles to be. I played the game on Normal riddle and it was still quite challenging. I have heard from somewhere that in order to solve some puzzles of the game in Hard difficulty of the game requires some knowledge of William Shakespeare, although I could have mistaken that for Silent Hill 3 since Heather is the one that is interested in literature. I'm not too entirely sure about it but if it's true, I am definitely not gonna play that.

One of the puzzles was the one in the prison where you have to read the profile of people who have been hanged and judge who is the innocent one. If you answer wrongly, two monsters would attack you.

You will now be introduced to new monsters as this time, the monsters are based on James's guilt.  Also, this is the first time you'd meet the icon of the entire game, Pyramid Head. He's works more like an executioner or a punisher

"James - 'I was weak. That's why I needed you... Needed someone to punish me for my sins...'"

In terms of horror, Silent Hill 2 isn't as scary, but it's still creepy enough. You still need to visit a hospital, but hey at least you don't have to go to a school now. Instead, now you need to go to the prison.  They kept the same feeling of the alternate and normal world and the atmosphere was still there. The mystery of Mary's death and the appearance of Maria who looks exactly like her. Laura, a little girl who claims she knows Mary is a total jerk to James.

The Invisible Prisoners were the ones that creeped me out. They don't attack you, and you can't see them but your radio keeps having static and James keeps looking in their direction(even though they are supposed to be invisible) and they keep chanting... something. You can kill them and they cry in pain and can't fight back cause they're trapped in a cell.

Nothing much has changed when it comes to combat. You still get a plank/pole thing as your first weapon. The swinging is still kinda weird. The difference is that ammos has become much more available. By the time I reached the hospital and I was all trigger happy and shooting everything. James will now get tired after running for awhile.

Also note that if you bought the HD Remake for the PS3, there is a glitch with the sound when James is catching his breath when you choose "New Voices". He sounds weird even though the rest of the voice acting improved a lot. The original voice acting was really artificial.  
 

"I don't know what to give you DX!! I love Heather but the monsters are so frustrating D<!! 8/10!"

Okay last game for this part! Silent Hill 3. You can most probably see a pattern now. The ratings just keep dropping. but I have my reasons but we'll get on that later. Silent Hill 3 is a continuation of the first Silent Hill but instead of controlling Harry Mason, you now control his daughter Heather Mason, who was once known as Cheryl Mason. She is now caught up in the continuation of what Harry been through, all the cults, God, crazy people... Claudia Wolf. This time, the cult of Silent Hill wants to resurrect their God again, and since they need Heather to do so(I shall not spoil the reason why.) they are now hunting her.

For the first time, you get to control a teenage girl(who by the way has a fear of mirrors) and she is AWESOME! She's nonchalant and when people tell her some stories about cults or bullshit and stuff like that she'd be like "Is every person here a mental case?" and her dialouges are funny mainly cause she's a very typical female teenage girl which I personally think the developers did a fantastic job on her character.

First, let us start of with the combat cause this is something I want to rant about. *breathes* THERE ARE TOO MANY MONSTERS! Instead of taking my time to get into the feel of the game and checking places out one by one, I had to keep running and dodging every monsters in every room cause I get a tiny dagger at the start of the game and sure soon after I get the gun but ammo is very very little.I spent more time focusing on not getting hit, than what the game is trying to offer me.

"Just look at that! 3 nurses in one tiny hospital room!"

Oh, just run past them... They're slow. No. The dogs are fast and the lunge at you. The nurses are slow but their pipe has a freaking long range for some reason and you seems to only meet time in tiny corridors or rooms. Those... blade things are easy to avoid until the start spinning then you're screwed cause they become fast and you are trapped in a tiny room with hordes of them. You try dodging them for the ENTIRE game. I'm not kidding. Since the start of the game, which is the mall, you are swarmed with monsters in 90% of all the corridors. I didn't like that. I wanted to check everywhere to see if there are things to pick up but no, I am blocked by monsters and it wouldn't be worth it for me to risk health to get health. 

Why not just kill them? Cause like I said ammo is little and I'd rather save them for the even harder and faster bosses. Melee weapon? Pipes are slow and the tiny switchblade has neither range nor damage. I mean I can understand why, Silent Hill focuses on protagonists who are very average people who may not know how to use weapons and not to mention Heather is just teenage girl but the amount is just too much for me to truly enjoy a good game cause when it comes to horror and riddles, this game isn't bad.

"Yeah you see this? This is the very first few monsters you'd meet in just the start of the game. Try killing that with a pole"

*breathes again* Fuuuuu... okay... Next to the riddle. The riddle in this game is as hard as the previous games, but the number of those puzzles are dropping which is kinda sad but I'm still okay with it. The puzzles mainly consist of "Find the code" which I find annoying but at least they do it in a way that you have to solve this riddle to solve that code which makes up for it. As I have said in the review on Silent Hill 2, I am not sure which game requires the knowledge of Shakespeare on Hard riddle difficulty, it could be this one I suspect so it's cool with me and the riddle in this game. I am satisfied. Now on to the last part. THE HORROR!

"Tu Fui, Ego Eris"

Silent Hill 3 is terrifying. The type of horror in this game is different from the previous games. In the previous games, the horror comes from almost nothing. There isn't much in the game to scare you, just minor scares here and there but still even when there aren't any scares, you still feel creeped out. In Silent Hill 3 though, they made the horror more direct, still not jumpscares though. They show you why you should be afraid, they let you know that something is coming yet you are unsure what. Maybe it's just me cause I really do not like seeing mannequins in horror movies or games, so I'm showing you guys what scared me the most just walking into the room.

Yeah... Do not want... The worse was they added "Haunted House" in the amusement park. As if the game was not scary enough, the had to add horror within a horror game. 

In my closing statement for the first part of these reviews, I'm just gonna say, throughout the whole Silent Hill series, these 3 are my favourite of them all. They are scary, yet exciting, not too much action to the point where you forget about the horror. Even though I complained about Silent Hill 3's monsters, I still loved it, well mainly cause Heather is awesome but still it's a good game. I don't know where you can get Silent Hill 1 but Silent Hill 2 and 3 had a HD Remake for the PS3. If you're more of the Let's Play kinda people, I'd recommend Helloween4545 mainly because he's funny and likes to talk to Heather, yet gives his own views about the game and he's competent in gaming. Most of the time he agrees with Heather, which is rare since he always laughs at most other protagonists. Best of all, he's British! Mmm~ Accent

And for a bonus for reading this much into the review for the first part. Here's a picture of Heather 8D!

Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines

"7.5/10 I love you but I hope you will have a remake to fix some stuff"

*rubs eyes* I am so sleepy =w=... But still awake to talk about a game which I have come to like, mainly because of just the storyline and also I am a complete nerd of the World of Darkness


Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines is a game made in 2004 for the PC based on books known as World of Darkness. In WoD, there are stories/live action roleplay/roleplay/I-don't-know-what-else-to-call-it that braches out to mages, werewolfs, hunters, vampires, ghosts etc etc. This game(obviously) is based on the Vampire's background.


In Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, the opening cutscene starts as you, a human, getting into bed with vampire of an opposite gender. The vampire is all like "Let me show you something~" and you're like "*le gasp!* Nuuuuuu~!!! *screaming*". Anyways, you wake up to find that you have turned into a Vampire. Some vampires ambush you and your Sire, and put into trial. The Prince of LA and the Camarilla, Sebastian LeCroix, says that your Sire has violated a rule of siring a Childe without permission and is executed. When it was about to be your turn to die, Nines from the Anarchs stood up for you and the Prince decided to spare you, and in exchange you will do biddings for him. You're now a fledgling, going around helping your Elders and through your travels you'll meet other vampires, ghost, werewolfs and ZOMBIES!

 "Jeanette Voerman and Velvet Velour. This game is intentionally made to be more for guys.
Side Note: Jeanette has the exact same voice as Azula from Avatar the Last Airbender. Both my favourite characters because of their voice XD Grey DeLisle!"

The first thing you do in the game is to create your character. There isn't much of a customization, rather, you just choose your clan, gender and if you want, history. There are a total of seven clans and I will explain them as short as possible. Ventrue, the high-class and forceful. Tremere, the blood magicians. Nosferatu, the ugly and deformed. Gangrel, the animalistic. Brujah, the fighters. Malkavian, the mentally unstable. Toreador, the beautiful and charming. Each clan has 3 special Discipline(powers). Some would be unique only to them. I play Toreadors the most since dialouge in this game is an important aspect throughout the game. Plus, their logo is pretty 8D

 

"This is the character sheet. You add your stats here. It's too much so I won't explain it."

VtM:B has a interesting game concept, mainly because it is very different from most RPG games, which I highly respect. This is because the term roleplaying, means you take on a character, go on a quest or adventure, interact in people and make decisions and in turn, rewards you with something if you did it correctly. Add those element to a game, and you get VtM:B. You never have to grind mobs to earn experience and there is no leveling system. There is not much of an enemy mobs for you to grind on anyways. Each clan has it's own pros and cons. The Nosferatu and Malkavian would complete sneak quest easily because of Obfuscate. The Toreador and Ventrue would find dialouge options easier due to Toreador's seduction and Ventrue's Dominate. The Brujah, Gangrel and Tremere would find combat easier. 

How you earn experience is based on how you complete a quest. Would you barge in and just kill everyone? Or would you sneak in through a broken window and leave everyone alive? Also, how you interact with people affects the quest too. If you decide to be nice to Jeanette and not to Therese(her sister), you will fail Therese's quest and vice versa. If you're nice to the Prince, you will get a new house, or just have him hate you and trust me, making him hate you feels AWESOME! He's a douche.

The more I talk about the game concept the more it reminds me of Skyrim except for the bottom part of the review o.e... But I like Skyrim too. It's a good game. DAWNGUARD!!

 

"Gameplay can be in first or third person, but it's easier in third person for melee, and first for ranged. And it's kinda bloody." 

Although the storyline and the concept is interesting, for a 2004 game, this has a lot of bugs. It is possible for you to complete your objective and find the doors unable to open. Save your games constantly. Up till now, there are a very very small group of people still doing mods and patches for the game but it isn't enough to fix all of them bugs. Also like I said, it's made in 2004 and I am pretty sure there were much smoother graphics.

With that said, the people who had looked past all these flaws and played the game all wished there was a remake or a sequel, because honestly, the flaws aren't enough to keep you away from this game. It's still fun and intriguing. The environment and the characters have their own personality. There are just enough of side quests to make this worth while, not to mention the rewards are awesome too. I mean Skyrim had loads more side quest to the point where you can never finish them all, that to me is a bit too much.

My final words are, try to play this with an open mind, save constantly and just endure the bugs awhile and play it. It's hard to say type of gamer this game suits as it's very different from a usual game. If you're willing to try(if I am not wrong, I am too lazy and sleepy to check), it can be bought on STEAM for I don't know how much, but it shouldn't be too expensive.

Annnnnnd THE TZIMESCE'S HIDEOUT! 

God Hand

"I shall give you a 9/10 cause you are funny! But you are a bit repetive but the laughs make up for it 8D"

Hello everyone! Today's review would be my second most favourite game "God Hand"! Remember when I said that "Shadow of the Colossus" has not much of button mashing combos, well this game is the contrary. God Hand is created by the makers of Devil May Cry and Resident Evil and God Hand is nothing like them at all. 

In this game you are a laid back, kind of lazy, vigilante named Gene. While saving a girl, he got his right arm chopped off. The girl, revealed to be Olivia, was a member of a clan who protects the God Hands and decides to give him the only one left. Where did the other arm go, that would be revealed later.

I just wanna say first, if you do have an open mind or if you do not have tolerance for randomness or if you're lame and boring, you can stop reading. Okay? Everyone gone? Okay v.v

The game systems is a usual beat'em up game. The interesting concept is that you make your own combo chains. When you defeat enemies some would drop money for you to go to shops and buy an attack, then there would be a combo list for you to chain up those attack, and you have your own combo. Don't have enought money? It's cool, just go to the casino and win some money!

 

Other than that, this game is hilarious! It definitely will make you go "Wtf o.e?" in some cutscenes but it is very very worth it and makes you wanna continue the game more. Even though the joke and kid around a lot, they still manage to give a clear storyline on what's going on. You have arms that has the power to give the owner the power of a God or a Demon. One of your enemies, Azel has the other arm and he attacks like he's your evil twin, except he has unlimited charge while you only have limited number of them, unless you buy more of course.

"Gene on the left with the God Hand(The arm in metal braces) and Azel with his Devil Hand(The arm with the tattoo)*duh*)

The enemies and bosses are very standard. Learn their pattern, beat the crap outta them, but the button mashing sequences in this game is awesome. It only happens whe you have beat them enough to the point where they are dizzy and then you activate it by the on-screen prompt. It's not every game you get to spank them to defeat them.

 

 

"Or bust their balls, if that's your thing. This move is called the 'Ball Buster' in game"

And for the finale, I shall show you one of the earlier bosses of the game. This game is now available in Playstation Network for about S$12.00. I'm gonna get this game for my PS3 again when I upgrade my PS3's memory.

 

"What's the name of our boss~?"
"Elvis! E-L-V-I-S~!"

Shadow of the Colossus

I give it a 9.5/10 because I wished it was longer. Otherwise 10/10!

One of the games I played the most when I was in Secondary School was this game, "Shadow of the Colossus". In this game, you control a young guy named Wander, who is trying to revive a girl, Mono, in the Forbidden Land. In order to revive her though, you are instructed by a voice, Dormin (DormiN, NimroD, get the reference? Wiki Nimrod for a bit of history lesson), to kill 16 Colossi. So Wander and his horse, Agro, sets out travelling throughout the Forbidden Land to kill all 16 Colossi... 

 

And that's it... That's basically what you do throughout the game. No side quests. No enemy mobs, except for killing and eating white-tailed lizards and fruits to extend your grip/health bar. All you do is ride horse, find place with shiny sword, go to place, kill colossus, repeat. Now I know it all may sound boring but it's not, mainly because of how well thought out each Colossi is. Sure the game concept is simple, but defeating the Colossi requires a lot of brain power. They don't give you any tutorial on where their weak point is or how to defeat them. The only hint you get is if you run around doing nothing and Dormin would give you a VERY vague hint. Yes he will only give ONE hint and that gets pretty annoying cause he keeps repeating the same thing over and over when you're like "I don't know what to do D8!!!".

The problem I kinda had when I first started out this game was just the controls, I didn't know you could climb onto the Colossus's fur and reach their weak spots, but right after that, the first Colossus is very simple, like a tutorial. It doesn't attack you unless you provoke it like shooting an arrow at him. The second one, and that is pretty simple too, except for the fact that instead of being passive around you like the first one, it attacks you on sight. Now you got him, on to the third. You're then introduced to a new problem. Colossi are moving statues, some part of them are made out of stone, like an armor, so you can't climb some of those unless they have some sort of a ledge. You ain't Ezio, even Ezio needs a ledge to hang on to. So for the third Colossus, you need to start using your head and trick him to break his armor. And I shall not spoil more.

Although all Colossi you meet at first look big and slow, it gets harder from there. There are small agile ones not to mention some can fly, swim, climb walls, dig underground, shoot poison gas, shoot... laser...thingys. IT'S NOT AN EASY GAME WITHOUT A GUIDE! But you should play it without a guide. It's more fun that way.

"Meet Celosia and Cenobia, the more agile Colossi. They run WAY faster than you. Think fast 8D"

So this is my final verdict. If you like a game with a bit of challenge for the brain rather than button mashing combos, enjoy gorgeous scenary/graphics, great and simple storyline (There isn't much dialouge in this game), go get the game. I completed this game numerous times and even bought the HD remake "ICO x Shadow of the Colossus". So happy with it. I think ICO is a good game but not my style of a game so I'm not gonna do a review on it.

Goodnight!

Introductions

Hello there! My name is Luann, occasionally known as Rai/RaiRai and many other nicknames, but for now we shall just stick with Rai. Anyways, this blog is focused on game reviews since I have been gaming since I was 7. I wouldn't do a lot on PC games since I don't really play on my computer a lot until I was about 14, but even then I loved my PS2 more.  

First of all, would I be focusing on the newest, latest, games that is circling all around the internet? No! Of course not! *Causethatwouldbetoomainstream8D*. I would be doing reviews on games that I grew up with and I personally think that are awesome and worth mentioning that you might not have even heard of on the PS1 or the PS2. So, games like Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts and other famous games like that most probably won't be in the review. Some of you guys must be wondering then "Dude D< My PS1 and PS2 are long gone already, I can't get those games!". Well my friend, Playstation Network on your PS3 >> Playstation Classic. Booyah.


Oryoucouldtrysailingthesevenseastogetyourtreasure*hinthint*

Second point is that the only time popular games will appear is if I suddenly feel like doing a PS3 review like Assassin's Creed and Saint's Row, thus the title, Archeo(meaning old) Neo(meaning new). These reviews are all based on my honest opinion why I love/hate these games so be nice to me '^'

All pictures do not belong to me since I suck with making my own v.v


If you liked the reviews here please visit Ivan's Movie Review blog, and Jin's Food Review blog for more reviews. Goodbye!