Live In Your World, Play In Mine: The Build-Your-Own Game Systems

The Unity Engine.

It's purdy.

We're coming a little full circle here. As of this writing, Oddworld: New N Tasty will launch in five days. And...well, just look at this. This is impressive work for the engine to create...and gamers who feel the need to innovate and begin working with developer-level software will find it within a reasonable price. A year of Unity Pro costs as much as your typical phone subscription, or if you have cash to burn, you can dump a full $1,500 to use it as you see fit. Of course, this is just one such option gaining popularity among amateur aspiring game developers. For those on a budget, Steam sells tons of software catered to those wanting to test the waters or begin serious development of an idea.

 For $10 or less per month, you can rent out the Cryengine™, which builds environments as gorgeous as this.

We're...honestly kind of in a mod and do-it-yourself hay-day. I remember purchasing the book of Video Game Careers back at a Gamestop once, and being intrigued by said do-it-yourself section. That was a decade ago, and since then, a plethora of software has come out and become more accessible, if not just outright more powerful. It's available for reasonable rates and prices, and even if you're not doing it for the video game industry, the tools are still potent enough to gain skills in illustration and modeling, audio, programming...the gaming industry has many facets to it, and most if not all of them branch out into other industries looking for those very same skill sets.

Being a 90's kid, I came into the world of gaming around the time Sega Saturn (I will get to that later) and PSX hit the scene. It's funny, looking at games back in the day and remembering how much I admired the graphics at the time. If you had shown any of us how games would look in two decades, we wouldn't have believed you. From 16-bits to the aforementioned pictures I've already shown? Seriously? And the software has gotten to the point where it's commercially available?

And it can actually make full-fledged recreations of classics!?

I constantly reflect on the old stuff because the new stuff keeps getting more and more intense. A lot of stuff is being generated by the public eye, free games constantly get released both in flash form and true stand-alone games. The only thing separating the common man from a big-budget release title is time and manpower, honestly. It could theoretically take ONE game that becomes a smash hit before you become your own company anyway. And before you say that it can't happen...

 It totally can.

But even earlier examples, such as the mod of Half Life called Counter-Strike came about from a garage. It's STILL being played nearly 20 years later, since virtually every computer in the world could run it with ease nowadays. Garry's Mod went commercial as well two years after multiple free updates. The modding community has been in its own element for years now, but with the tools becoming more powerful and more accessible, true retail games are now on the table for people to develop. The only thing holding people back is time.

But even THAT can be mitigated. Sound team can work as D.J.'s, artists can commission their work on Etsy and Deviantart and a million other websites that will sell their works. Programmers never miss a beat going back and forth between projects for work and the game. Design team keeps an eye on their game and can add valuable information from their experience understanding the public eye. The software people use for making the game can actually help them with their jobs; and if some so choose, this could become their full-time job using their creation as part of a portfolio.

Technology keeps advancing. Failed technology of the past is being improved upon; what was once the Virtual Boy is now the Oculus Rift. People keep pushing the idea of full-immersion in a game, and they're getting closer and closer. The Virtuix Omni is a little rough of an idea, but the technology can eventually get that far to have full motion as directed by your physical movement. Reading where your gun is has become trivial, so honestly combining the Oculus Rift with the Virtuix Omni...and you can have an entire entertainment business around interactive games. The only real trick is incorporating full movement with a minimalistic setup; because no matter how you do it, you know you're still in a harness.

While I have a disdain for the influx of Slenderman-style games released, things like the Oculus Rift and Unity engine have allowed people to design basic games and get a feel for how they're done. It's getting pretty crazy, when you consider that the Fifth Generation of games (1993 to 2001) had just begun to spawn things like the Gameboy Color...as late as 1998. We're now in the Eighth Generation, and we now have advanced the portability tech to the point where your phone can essentially have and run every single Gameboy game, NES game, SNES game, Genesis Game, along with a handful of PSX and N64 games and not even bat an eye; and that's just the Seventh Generation talking really, the 8th generation has just gotten started.

Imagine where we'll be when the Ninth or Tenth Generation hits.

They knew all along.

Downpour: Let The IP Go (FINAL)

Let's wrap this up with the final aspect to cover: the characters and story. If you're reading this blog, spoilers come with the territory.

I've already talked about how Murphy Pendleton doesn't fit the story going full-on criminal, so I'm going to avoid that and judge it on the merits of Endings A through C.

The game starts out with Murphy in the prison showers, opening all the showers to steam up the cameras. Sewell leads Napier into a murder. Not ten minutes into the game, we're given a clear-cut scenario of what Pendleton has done, and that Sewell set this all up for him. It's kind of a bait and switch when later, Sewell mentions him going to a maximum security prison...but it's so obvious. A very stern Corrections Officer with a shotgun is giving Murphy a death glare. If you connect the dots early on...a dumpy white guy who's sequestered is obviously someone who other inmates kill on principle (honor among killers, as Max Payne would put it). Later on the bus, Murphy's kid is shown and he clearly is distraught. Those dots obviously mean Napier is a child killer. Nobody really gives a shit about child killers in prison. So why the death glare and maximum security transfer?

 

Oh. It's you.

In case you weren't sure, meet Anne Cunningham, or the most hard-assed character you'll meet in the game. She's about as subtle as a hyena on laughing gas doing the Can-Can. She obviously knows you, and isolates you at the start of the game for a second before telling you to get on the bus. Not five minutes later, she'll stop you from progressing with a gun. Murphy stops...and instead of telling him to come back over the cliff he just crossed, she decides to both aim a gun at him and cross herself. She reeks of "I have a personal vendetta". It's ironic, considering the positive option here doesn't phase her attitude in the slightest. Murphy has no reason to save her ass, she wants to put him in jail regardless of extreme circumstances.

So Murphy kills a child killer, but two instances indicate that Murphy has killed a CO. This game is so unsubtle it hurts. Once you linked those two together, you can almost see Sewell being the reason for your present company Cunningham hating you. Or, if you can't, she'll make it clear when she's ready to execute you for having a badge on you that you're hiding a cop-killer secret. And if you still can't get it through your skull, Howard the Postman will tell you flat out midway through the game: "Heh, son, in my experience, when someone's THAT angry, it ain't a mistake. It's... personal."

 As for me...I got exposition to deliver.

You getting it yet? This game spells a lot of things out for you. When you go to the orphanage, the nun makes it almost damn near criminally obvious that you need to "accept" this Bogeyman to gain your "Freedom" on the key-chain that Bobby Riggs tells you has the word "Freedom" on it. Hey, remember when Silent Hill flat out told you you every single thing about it? No? That's because the last one to be overtly blunt about it was Homecoming. Silent Hill 2 sets it up the best.

"Sure is quite here, huh?" - "I...guess?"

The game clearly establishes the setup, true. But James' inner monologue is necessary to understanding why he's even here in the first place. If you didn't read the game book, even Harry Mason sums it up for Cybil when she's asking why he's here. But after that, the game is free to let the plot run at it's own pace. You meet Angela, and share a little conversation about what she's doing there as well. James' motivations are made very clear: he's looking for his wife, wants to do anything to be with her again, and doesn't mind the danger. Angela's motivations are clear: she's looking for her mother. Her trip in the graveyard appears to be her checking to see if they were even dead. She also brings up her father and brother, and being unable to find them. Nothing is really clear-cut here; is her family dead? Is she checking the graveyard to be certain they are or aren't? It just appears that she hasn't been home in a while and hasn't seen them since.

Eddie's intro is even better, retching into a toilet due to seeing a guy dead and stuffed into a refrigerator. He's frantic and panicked, claiming he didn't do anything while doing this. James begins to understand slowly that "something brought them all there". James is a surprisingly good guy: he acknowledges Angela's concern, asks if Eddie is okay, warns him to get out of town as soon as possible, and reassures Eddie he'll leave as soon as he's done.

Everything is built up subtly. Even Maria, who is pretty overt to start, is slowly played upon. Her oddly sexual and playful manner is subverted by her ability to open the Heaven's Night strip club. Eddie is subverted by Laura; he talks back and forth between being guilty and not being guilty, being scared and being unforgiven, as if he isn't sure. James is completely subverted throughout the first half of the game, expressing concern for everyone and showing extreme concern for Laura's safety. And it even plays when he DOESN'T express concern for Maria to come with him; and more so if you think about Pyramid Head getting the shot on him on the roof of the Hospital, a punishment for leaning whichever direction James is heading in.

The message on the wall in the bar can be seen, but it's up to you to acknowledge it. Checking up on Maria is your job if you want to. Stopping to listen to certain parts, healing yourself immediately...the game doesn't tell you to do anything, but certain things you do affect how the game plays out. That's why I hate Homecoming, because it had the face of Silent Hill but not the soul. I hate Downpour because it took the face off, and we're left with THIS.

Everything about Silent Hill 2 makes sense after the fact, and is subtly alluded to and played against throughout. Downpour spells everything out for you. I'm not antagonized by a super-pissed cop, I'm not followed by a postman doing a pointless job and telling me the obvious. I'm not told by a DJ that the town has rules you have to follow. I'm figuring it out as I go, realizations dawning on me as time passes. Even if Homecoming did it poorly, it was doing it right. Nothing about Downpour makes me think deeper, since it's already as transparent as the fog itself.

I'm tired of beating on this dead horse. I don't have the patience to go throughout it. Even the ending I gave credit to, Full Circle, makes no sense when I thought about it further. The developers didn't make the poignant scene, the purpose of Murphy Pendleton to even be in Silent Hill open-ended to either a good or bad choice. It's clearly leaning good. It should've shown the scene, but when Coleridge says "Murphy, RUN!", you have Murphy deck him from behind with Sewell watching with approval. There, now you have Murphy locked in a vicious loop of self-denial of what he did to what he HAD to do without losing his own mind. He HAD to kill Napier in his mind, but he DIDN'T have to kill Coleridge.

But even then, this ending is ruined by the aforementioned DJ Bobby Ricks. He is the dumbest character I've ever seen in this series. He wants to escape, keeps playing records and keeps sending out shout-outs to people trying to garner help. The wiki alludes to him being stuck in Silent Hill due to cowardice....but cowardice of what? Wanting to escape but never doing it? Uh...Wiki? Little more info.

"He is never referenced by Murphy again, nor is any clue ever given to where he ended up, why he was in the town, or what he hoped Murphy could do. It is also never stated who called Ricks and told him to send out the messages, whether it was some form of manifestation, the town itself, etc."

Murphy's comment on Bobby is: "I don't know what his story was, but I am certain as hell he did not fit this place any more than I do. He knew things and his plan sounded solid, but in the end that narrow margin between knowing and doing, that little bit of courage to do things on your own, he lacked. That was what buried him here forever."  

He's stuck in Silent Hill...because he's too scared to get himself unstuck. What the fuck is the point? No, seriously. You make this character, and he dumps plot points, and then he "dies", or is stuck in town until he figures that the best way to escape the town is to escape the town. He's aware of how the town works, but he doesn't figure out how to escape. You literally wrote a plot dump and a plot hole in this character. What.

Making this character...ENTIRELY POINTLESS.

Uggggggggggh. The only positive thing I have to say about this game is the joke ending has the correct Pyramid Head, and is amusing enough to get a smile out of me.

I'm done. I can't talk about Downpour anymore. There's still so much more to talk about, from the design of the city layout, continuing the talk about the characters...but every time I talk about it, my mind just goes back to the first four games. Better characters, proper pacing, subtlety and theming. You could argue my nostalgia refuses to let me accept changes to the formula, but I argue that you could just take this kind of game, and NOT base it in Silent Hill. It could've been an entirely new town; it might as well have been, considering Devil's Pit and the Centennial Building aren't even locations you know of in the series. Drop the Silent Hill name, and build your own franchise if you're going to do it. Because Silent Hill has a standard. It was set with Silent Hill 2, matched by 3, tinkered with by 4. The ball was dropped by Homecoming, and then Downpour decides its fine to kick a Basketball around instead of picking it up and fixing it.

I need to go back to talking about things that don't get me riled up. 

See you in hell, "cupcake".

Downpour: Let The IP Go (part 3)

I feel as though I may have lost focus on the last post. It got so long, and my brain kept going off on tangents relative to the point but not the topic. But that's what Downpour is doing to me right now; the longer I look at this game, the more and more I get irritated that they didn't really fix what was wrong with Homecoming. Homecoming was bad because the combat didn't make the game terribly scary, but it had the right elements despite not being in Silent Hill.

 To be fair, Silent Hill once had a larva/moth boss. Symbolic, yes, but still silly.

Homecoming had an advantage of being primarily at night. Downpour has the disadvantage of being during the day.

Man, I sure hope there isn't a monster sneaking up on me through the super thin fog.

The fog is not claustrophobic enough, it's way too thin. Homecoming?

Oh god I hope there isn't more beyond those archways in the dense as fuck fog.

Do you see where I'm going with this? Downpour can look better, but it doesn't have nearly the same game feel. Back when Silent Hill first hit, the fog was to contain the limitations of the engine. Rendering an entire town to explore on foot needed a buffer, so Silent Hill literally loaded and deconstructed itself as the player walked around as need be, with the fog making sure it wouldn't eat up too much memory. It worked as a gimmick then, but then Silent Hill 2 came around and kept the same deal; if you watch the game without fog, you can see that it loads textures within a certain distance. But the fog is still claustrophobic enough.

Better still, the color scheme of the enemies were shades of grey, making them hard to see in the fog. That's what gave them their edge; and that's what made the radio both an indispensable tool for knowing an enemy was close, but for getting your fear rising KNOWING there was an enemy close, and you were put on edge to prepare to fight it but still trying to scan for it in the fog. I refer you to the prior picture in Downpour. What is the point of a radio in the streets if your line of vision extends far out enough? It helps against the invisible enemies mind you, but the fact that Downpour relies on invisible enemies and cheap attacks to get your tension up is kinda lame. The last invisible enemies came out of Silent Hill, and in that they weren't a threat till the end of the game, and still visible enough to identify in a panic and shoot. Weeping Bats will drop down from the ceiling unexpectedly and without the ability to react or defend against it.

It's also pretty silly that Murphy Pendleton can beat the snot out of them with his bare hands. I don't quite agree with the fact that you should be able to punch these enemies. The only reason why fisticuffs exist in the game is because of the degradable weapons; but why would a weapon degrade that quickly? Why the fuck is a full tang butcher knife breaking apart? Why is a fire axe? These are tools that were designed to take a beating. You're not exactly crushing rocks here with a Sledgehammer, so why is it breaking apart on monster's skulls? Why is a solid piece of metal like a crowbar breaking?

Weapon degradation is bullshit in most cases.

Entire army of aliens beaten over the head, endless destruction caused on the environment, and still fully functional and ready to cave in your skull.

In a game like this, the weapon selection isn't even limited in terms of "finding" them, just in "holding" them. Travis held an arsenal on himself just fine, and it made the weapon degradation thing bullshit due to having several televisions in your pants. This game makes it bullshit because an arsenal can be found anyway. It's not like Alex was armed to the teeth; he had a knife, a blunt weapon, an axe, and 3 guns. Heavy, yes, but it's not impossible to think he could hold onto it. One leg holster, two guns with straps, a knife in its sheathe,  and an axe and crowbar in belt loops. It's not like it ruined the immersion of Silent Hill. But if weapon degradation adds nothing to the horror since an arsenal can be found anyway, why do it?

 Moreover, melee had its disadvantages as well. In previous installments, the melee weapons were hindered by the fact that they had no sense of crowd control. If two Air Screamers and a Groaner hot on  your heels, it was more advantageous to either run or use a gun to quickly even the odds, not try to swing an emergency hammer at them. Some enemies were hard to stun, some were fast to recover. They saved ammo, but came at a cost. Some didn't allow you to strafe, so you sacrificed mobility. However, it seems like all the recent iterations of Silent Hill seem to put an emphasis on melee combat, and severely limit the ammo you're allowed to use.

You want to do that? Fine. Do it like Silent Hill 4 then. Make me work with both weapons that break and have durability to them, and if a limited inventory is a concern, have a drop feature. I never quite understood why some horror games felt the need to limit your inventory, but gave you few ways to empty it out except through backtracking. Less still, that Silent Hill 1-3 didn't restrict your inventory to keep the game paced at your speed, but then decide that a restrictive inventory would be fine in 4.

How about the music? Well...the intro theme isn't bad, except for the fact that it doesn't deal with the protagonist again. But the entire soundtrack...something just doesn't feel right about it, in my opinion. This one you can choose to disagree with me and I won't argue it, but I feel like the soundtrack is the furthest from a Silent Hill game. Nothing really jumps out aside from the title screen. Say what you will about Homecoming, but it had a soundtrack I'd come back to at points. Nothing in Downpour strikes me as something I'd play again and again, nor does it fit the game. Akira Yamaoka is the heart and soul of the Silent Hill soundtrack; he understands how the ambient music is supposed to feel, and throughout the series, has consistently delivered fresh tracks. One moment, he can put forth a track both soothing and unsettling, chaotic and subtle.

The best part about the majority of his tracks are, sometimes, you have NO idea what he's using to make those sounds. That's the charm of his style. It's unsettling, atmospheric, moody, hitting the scenes just right. Moreover, the games make you concentrate on the music because you're listening intently for the radio to go off...and when it's quiet, you're left with nothing but the music and your own footsteps clacking down the hall. Downpour sounds more like a movie soundtrack...it's not like it's incompetent, but even the Silent Hill movie knew to use the tracks from the game instead of coming up with an original score. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Downpour: Let The IP Go (part 2)

Continuing on from the last part of that rant, another big misstep that Downpour continued on from Homecoming was the stupid binary choice system that popped up in three points.

 Wait, I need to tell you that you're an asshole!

Look. If you're going to write for Silent Hill, can you PLEASE not treat us like we're fucking morons? We don't need a binary choice system.

I mean honestly. Back on the PSX, the game flat-out put you on the track toward the worst ending possible. Period. If you went from start to finish, you got the worst ending; and that makes a lot of sense. You did nothing to affect the plot. You charged head-first toward beating the game without taking a moment to try to understand what had happened to the town. If you took a moment to read the book in the Hospital, you realize the red liquid on the ground may be useful later. It fell upon you to collect it and use it. You weren't handed a context choice, you hand wasn't held to make a plot-critical choice. You either collected and used the item at the right moment, or you didn't.

Even though this game gave you the item, YOU still had to remember to use it.

Same goes for the "Motorcycle Puzzle", which leads to Kauffman taking a critical item from you to use later in the game. The good ending requires you to put effort into it, and the best ending requires you to explore and solve the puzzles of the town. Your direct actions affect the ending. Did you make an effort, an impact to the characters within the story? No? Then here's your Bad ending. But hell, even the Bad ending is pretty awesome, implying the entire game was nothing more than a dying man's last deranged thoughts; perhaps a plot he himself was going to write and publish, had he not died.

Doesn't even need to say a word, and has depth to it as a consequence of actions.

But Homecoming and Downpour just hand you these button-press choices. Downpour is a little more clear about what your actions will do, so it's not nearly as annoying as Homecoming was. No, Downpour did not commit a blithering blunder by allowing the very real possibility of the JOKE ENDING BEING ATTAINABLE FROM THE WORD GO. If you choose not to kill Alex's mother or forgive his father, but save the Sheriff (relatively speaking) with a medkit, you get the UFO ending. WHY? Every single Silent Hill game made it so you had to beat the game once to unlock an item to get the joke endings; a tradition upheld again by Downpour (and done well enough, no less). So for the binary choice ending, Downpour gets a better pass than Homecoming.

But the problem with the choice system here is, while it is clear-cut how Murphy will act in the scenario, it's relatively inconsistent with his character in other cutscenes. Early on, you meet another prisoner wailing on what you'd initially perceive as a defenseless woman; and instead of ignoring this violent act, Murphy goes to stop him from wailing on her. This, coming from the guy who started the game with the choice to let a corrections officer doing her job fall.

Murphy will even contradict himself later when it comes to that choice: if you chose to let the officer fall to her death, can Murphy really say he "never hurt anyone who didn't deserve it"? Obviously Cunningham is doing her job as an officer, and Murphy acts stubborn when it comes to being let go. This contradicts her character as well: he left her to die, so why does she show him clemency later? Why doesn't he leave when instructed immediately, and instead shows a hint of compassion for her?

Disregarding even THAT, you could theoretically go the entire game being "Good Guy Murphy" and at the end, decide to kill Cunningham. This nets you the "Full Circle" ending, which implies that Murphy is stuck in a loop like many of the more recent denizens of Silent Hill.

As for me...I still got blogs to type out.

...which is a nifty ending, honestly. You can choose to help Cunningham, console J.P., be a generally merciful guy, but the final choice to turn heel and kill Cunningham cements you into a loop? I never quite understood why that was the case when I first watched it. They did, to their credit, make sure that Frank Coleridge is killed as well...which leads to the implication that Murphy's denial of the scenario in which he really did kill Frank. It's fitting considering the circumstances to get it, but Murphy's character always felt like he was a good guy, if a little flawed.

Too bad every bad ending you can get is subverted by one flashback shown in the game, as Murphy is dangling from the hand of the clock-tower:  Coleridge saying "Murphy....Run!". That is NOT how a mental block works. It could've had a very simple fix had they made the bad endings result in Murphy doing a heel-turn and committing to killing Coleridge after he said that line. Otherwise, he wouldn't have had that line in his head. His guilt should stem more from the fact that his actions for revenge led to the death of one of a friendly innocent corrections officer, and less for the revenge itself (though it still exists as the double-bogeyman element; while his actions were reprehensible, he acknowledges it won't bring his son back).

Despite this flashback not being a problem in the good endings, I still have a problem with Ending B "Truth and Justice" due to the fact that Murphy's actions are NOT influencing him, but Cunningham. If Murphy (the player) made good choices and kept good karma in regards to the enemies, Cunningham ends up forgiving Murphy in Ending A. But if you made good choices but earned bad karma by killing enemies, then your actions influence her to take revenge. How does that make sense? Moreover, why does Murphy echo the sentiment of JP before he went to go commit suicide? Why, if he made good choices for people yet acted violently against very clear threats against his life, does he feel the need to commit suicide?

When you did this back in Silent Hill 3, it made a lot more sense since they were your own actions influencing what happened, same for Silent Hill 4. If you made certain choices, you influenced the ending appropriately. Be too kill-crazy? Become possessed. Fail to protect Eileen or take care of the hauntings? Make her impossible to save, or doom the apartment to a cursed state even if you save Eileen. The consequences of your actions have to make sense.

Let's show you how it's done.

In Silent Hill 2, this mechanic was entirely subtle...because the game read your actions. Checking certain items, your usage of healing and taking damage, how well you protected Maria, if you read certain items littered around the town...it wasn't choice-based, and it was directly affected by YOU. And how you acted as James Sunderland directly influenced your ending. There was no "Press A or B and make a moral choice", there was "what did you do?" Did you listen to the whole conversation? Did you visit and protect Maria? Did you even CARE?

The developers did. Three endings, all consistent within the psyche of James, influenced by the player. It's that little bit of genius that I appreciate, that piece of storytelling I find that we lack a way to convey properly. Games like The Wolf Among Us, Fallout, Mass Effect and so forth can be well-written games, but I never quite appreciated the "pick-and-choose" way of doing it; it leads to the ability to jump back and forth schizophrenically, leaving your character leaning toward binary good or evil at best...and plain inconsistent at worst. But Silent Hill 2 managed it; they managed to find a way to have a consistent character influenced by you. Rather than a blank slate, or a character forced to say one thing and do another, it kept James' ending consistent with his, or rather your, choices.

Getting back on track, Silent Hill 2 made sense when James wanted to commit suicide. When you read certain items, when you examined certain items, being reckless...when James "acted" like he wanted to die, it made sense. Murphy is consistently trying to survive; why NOW the "someplace I gotta be" line? Even Coleridge spells out his history as "no priors [convictions] and a clean psych." Which, in fact, is the problem of Murphy Pendleton: his character has no real reasons to be in Silent Hill.

He's not cruel, and his one instance of murder was justified mentally by the victim being a pedophile. He has next to no guilt over that man's death whatsoever; it doesn't show up in the enemies, and he'll even recount a similar attitude due to J.P.'s negligence leading to the deaths of children if you choose to taunt him. James' psychological torture came out of a need; a need for absolution, forgiveness, or replacement. Enemies symbolize this, being bound to his guilt and in agony, repressed sexuality and an entity that hounds him and punishes him. The prominent enemy in Downpour are the Screamers, and they have no less than FIVE different speculations in the wiki: sirens from a prison, a murder victim, Cunningham's reaction to her father's death, Pendleton's wife, or Sanchez's psyche.

The Weeping Bats? An invisible enemy that, again, according to the wiki:

"Murphy's wish to hide from the authorities or to escape from his fate in jail." 

"It has also been thought that this monster represents the authority of law enforcement and government officials."

"They also seem to represent prison gangs to an extent, as they are quite persistent when it comes to guarding Monocle Man during the train ride almost as if Monocle Man was their gang leader."

"The Weeping Bats may represent the parents of the children killed in the Devil's Pit Train crash. The Bats only attack Murphy after he knows the truth about John Sater, and appear most frequently on the train ride."

"Part of the Weeping Bat's symbolism is solitary confinement. It is likely for this reason that they were made to be reclusive, bat-inspired creatures."

Do you get the feeling that people are REALLY stretching for good symbolic meanings of these enemies? The Lying Figures from SH2 were simple enough to understand: they writhe in agony, they appear to be constrained, trapped. Take that for what you will, and you can easily apply it to all 3 characters of interest; for James, that could've been his guilt, for Angela, being unable to let go of terrible memories...for Eddie, trapped in a prison of his own flesh that he can't help. BAM. Universal and clear-cut. The Abstract Daddy makes sense to show up near the end of the game since that's when Angela's psyche is breaking down more and more, and is clearly defined for her and relates to James on some levels. The enemy design in Downpour is SO ass-backwards, and that's ironic since Homecoming's enemy design was done CORRECTLY. A little uninspired at times, but the heart of Silent Hill craftsmanship is there in a few.

Sure it's basic...but it looks like it'd be in Silent Hill.

Why Downpour? Why are you letting me defend Homecoming? I should hate Homecoming. But I look at you and you keep driving me to hate you MORE for some reason.

I just spent this entire post ranting about the choice system, the enemies and Murphy Pendleton...and I'm STILL not even done. But after writing all this up, it's pretty surprising how well Silent Hill 2 implemented an ending system that was completely subtle. If only more games could do that.

Downpour: Let The IP Go (Part 1)

Downpour....yooooou.

YOOOOOOOOOOOOU.

Yes. You.

You irritate me Downpour. You had potential. You took a survivalist approach to the game, and outright limited guns and melee weapons to "pick up as you go". You figured it out, you figured out that having limited options in a fight, combined with a protagonist who isn't G.I. Joe adds tension. You figured out that a modicum of atmosphere goes a long way in representing a horror theme. You figured out that a game called "Silent Hill" should probably take place IN THE TOWN, and not a side city called Shepherd's Glen. You got that down, you got exploration in, you made all these advances.

It's weird. By what you normally measure a game by, Downpour should be a step ahead of Homecoming. The graphics are better, Murphy Pendleton is FAR more interesting than Alex Shepherd, as are the supporting cast, the combat has been improved upon...So why do I resent you more? It's hard to quantify why. Homecoming is stupid, almost incompetent as a Silent Hill game, and Downpour is competent, and attempting. But I think if I had to give a reason why...it commits the act of Shyamalan.

The Nostalgia Critic said it best: "Have you NO passion, for possibility? Have you NO understanding, this, barrel of Miyuzaki that you could unleash with this creativity?" I'll give it credit for the joke ending, that one was kind of awesome. But...the level design is too bright, and all you're fighting are humanoids. HUMANOIDS. Say what you will, but Silent Hill ONE had a wide array of enemies you could fight. Silent Hill 3 had the best in my opinion. Look at them.

The common theme throughout the series is simple: keep it inhuman. It can be humanoid, but it has to be disturbing. It has to be unsettling to look at, unnerving to fight. What does Downpour offer? Humans. All with faces. Nothing defining about them, except maybe the torture device on the heads of certain Prisoners. But you can still tell they have faces. The doctors and nurses of Silent Hill 1 at least had a reason at the time, the implications of being possessed by parasitic demons. Even Silent Hill 2, with the fewest in its lineup of lunacy, kept the most human-looking thing relegated to the Nurses; Lying Figure was appropriately inhuman, trapped within a fleshy straitjacket. The Mannequin was no more than two pairs of legs. Pyramid Head kept his helmet on like he was Judge Dredd, even when he dies. But the closer you get to "human", the less "shock" impact a monster will have. The final boss of Downpour is excellent, but god does it ever pound you over the head with overt symbolism. There's no other interpretation other than "suffering guy on life support".

I'm the wheelmaaaaan.

With the Mannequins, they were set up to be a little more vague as well. On the surface, it's a pair of legs on top of a pair of legs. Then you realize James is looking for his deceased wife; this is a "female" kind of enemy...so it stands that it could go to his frustrated libido. The Nurses follow the same theme, but notice Maria shows up before you go there. Then James' libido may get even more frustrated, leading to the sexualization of their chests...but that's the subtle implicit themes following a more likely implicit theme of James' frustrations with the hospital being unable to help his wife on her deathbed. Note again that these have to be implicit, where Downpour's enemies are just explicit "look, I am a prisoner monster rawr".

You can deconstruct Silent Hill monsters like that. The more layers to it, the more interesting it is. That's one of the reasons I hated Homecoming, touting Pyramid Head around and doing absolutely nothing with him. The manifestation of James' own need for punishment makes sense; but Alex is far more deluded, thinking he can save his brother, being completely unaware of what he's done until the very end...unlike James, who figures it out before the end. You could argue that because he's so far gone, only the illusion of punishment lingers in his mind, but at the same time, you could also argue Alex wanted his father to undergo punishment ...and if that's the case, I can't agree with it...I mean, why would Silent Hill accept Alex as a punisher of the guilty? How deluded and unlikeable would Alex have to be as a character?

But I've already taken a few shots at Homecoming. I could deconstruct it further, but lets get back to the topic at hand...The Bogeyman.

Ahm Scurry. Boo.
.

 Guys....look. You DON'T have to make a second or third or millionth Pyramid Head. Hell, why couldn't you just be like Silent Hill 3? Make a Valtiel. Valtiel was one of the best things about Silent Hill 3 in my opinion...because he was there. He did absolutely nothing TO you...if you were lucky. But that was the beauty of him. You saw him in the background, you saw him manipulating things just out of your reach. He disturbed you, but also made you wonder "Why? Why are you here? What are you doing? What are you up to?"

WHY!?
.

That is the question...and you have to interpret it yourself, really. You have to pay attention to what he does, you have to question where he is, and maybe, just maybe....you screw up, and you get a subtle clue, in the creepy throes of death. He's doing everything he needs to do as an element of horror without even being a direct threat: ambiguous motives, inhuman movements, disfigured limbs and hands and feet....always following you, a twitchy decorum to the blood-splattered walls.

Do you see why Downpour irritates me? LOOK AT VALTIEL. That's horrifying. Look at the Bogeyman. He's a guy in a trenchcoat wearing a gas mask with a cinder-brick maul. Whoop. De. Shit. Even The Butcher from Origins was a FAR better idea, and that was just a Pyramid Head clone by most respects. Why would you make a human this inhuman element in your game? You should RARELY do that. Back in Silent Hill 1 they did that, but they made it grotesque enough to question it.

Problem 1 : It looks like he's one of the cultists back from Homecoming.

Problem 2 : His choice of weapon is so bland compared to Pyramid Head or The Butcher.

Problem 3 : Too human. The gas mask gives him the element of a face.

Problem 4 : Too bland. He just looks like a normal person.

Now you may think with these four problems I'd be done with him, but I'm not even done yet. These are all artistic issues. I haven't even TACKLED his symbolism and role. Spoiler: it's stupid.
.

Cited from the Silent Hill Wiki:
.

"Its presence is due to a character's lack of personal accountability and short-sightedness. The Bogeyman is an illusion created from the perceptions of the individual to rationalize his or her own crimes and misdeeds by placing the blame on the "Bogeyman" rather than themselves. When Murphy realizes that his actions made him a "Bogeyman" as well, he is able to take accountability for himself and defeat his version of the Bogeyman, retrieving the "freedom" key in the process.

He also could represent destruction brought about by revenge, as the relentless pursuit of vengeance can become just as destructive to oneself as that which caused the revenge-seeking behavior in the first place. "
.

 Ergo, the Bogeyman is the manifestation of judgement. Think about that for a second; would it have been so hard to manipulate "Blind Justice"? This inhuman wretch, wielding a giant maul, face melted or mutilated, blind as justice itself. It would've fit so much better, and have been something much more symbolic of the needs of Murphy and Anne in terms of their inherent desire to deliver their form of vigilante justice, believing that the justice system has failed them both. Moreover, that doubles as a reason for it to HAUNT them both. With Murphy, he knows that he deserves it for the consequences of his actions. With Anne, she is following the same path as Murphy; and when she sees him, that's why she sees him as a monster...a monster she feels she must put down, and a monster she sees as a reflection of her own better judgement coming back on her.

It's too human. It needs to feed into their desires, their deeper pains. It's too bland to get this message across.

And I'm just getting started on this game...

Good Idea Bad Idea: Silent Hill

Oh boy. All right folks, put on your rant-helmet, it's going to be a bumpy ride.

Now Resident Evil: Outbreak was an example of a how a good game gets dragged down by a couple bad ideas. What about a bad game with many bad ideas?

Oh boy.

Look no further than Silent Hill Homecoming. I could give a lot more flak toward Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, but I'm giving it a pass temporarily for two reasons.

1: I haven't played it.
2: It did try to be innovative.

Silent Hill Homecoming is a mess. Some of the intentions for the game were placed right, such as making the protagonist more combat-oriented with a war-themed background. Elements of the game were properly atmospheric, and a couple of the enemies were rather well-designed, like Siam and Scarlet. But Silent Hill Homecoming commits the #1 sin of any horror game: it isn't scary.

You see, horror comes in two flavors: the kind that startles, and the kind that unsettles. You hear this all the time, and it's clear who knows how to exploit which. Startling someone is easy: loud noises, screams, roars...the good kind of horror uses it sparingly, such as Resident Evil with the dogs breaking in through the window. It didn't abuse these, and favored unsettling scares: the first zombie encounter, the journal (itchy tasty), ambient noises and music, traps...best example was in Resident Evil 3, with the Nemesis being an ever-looming threat, his ambient music playing to remind you that you hadn't escaped him by running into the next room.

Silent Hill did this even better, even on the Playstation: crying, creaking, the ghost babies that freaked everyone out the first few times, or just plain cracking glass that made you unsure of what happened, if anything. Silent Hill 3 has, hands down, one of the best scary traps ever made in a video game that I've seen to date. If a game throws you a curveball that make's you helpless, and you're not sure why, you begin to panic. You begin to try everything, do everything in an attempt to evade the danger. Granted, the room could result in a cheap death, but due to the room having nothing at all in it, you could just avoid it. Amnesia: The Dark Descent has this kind of fear down in aces.

Homecoming had very little in the way of creepiness. It's kind of sad when you think about it, because changing the protagonist to a war vet meant that combat would've been easier, and that removes one half of the challenge you had if you were just a single journalist father looking for his daughter, or an ordinary man looking for his wife. They had reasons to run or be poor in combat. Alex Shepherd knows how to fight, to dodge, to deal effective damage with the weapon at hand. They knew this, they limited the amount of ammo he could hold, but that could not stop Alex's knife skills.

You can beat the majority of the enemies in the game with the knife, because you have all the agility and counter-attack potential you'd ever need. Enemies hardly swarm you, most attacking in pairs or trios. The faster the enemy, the more likely you'd be hit; but then you could use your ammunition on them anyway. Not that'd you'd need to, since the designers decided it would be a good idea to add health extending medkits. Now not only do you get a free heal, you get more health and make the enemies less of a threat. When you keep killing the main element of horror in your game, you're doing the Silent Hill games a disservice.

Shattered Memories at least had some tension to it. Don't get me wrong, the game still has too many problems, but it kept the enemies mildly threatening. Silent Hill 3 even had the bright idea to give the enemies the occasional GUN. To think that a nurse could be shuffling down a shadowed hallway, ready to take aim and blow a hole clean in your skull and waste your healing supplies...that's tense. When one enemy can even pack an Uzi...well, you better kiss your supplies goodbye.

Homecoming didn't even have the goddamn courtesy to have you fight Pyramid Head. James Sunderland had to fight three of his own personal demons off, but Alex's punishment wasn't nagging him enough to have to face one down? You couldn't have made it at all threatening? This game parades him around, pumps him up as this big badass, and then does absolutely NOTHING with him. How. Do. You. Do. THAT. That'd be like Metal Gears not being fought at all in the whole damn Metal Gear series. You can't just parade a threat around and NOT use it. That's not how an action game works, and that's certainly not how horror games work.

The choices in design here baffle me. You make your protagonist stronger but his weapons weaker. You make the knife the only weapon he needs and make the enemies sparse enough to allow for this. You let him have more HP than he should; you even SHOW how much HP he has, rather than a vague assumption based on the condition of the status screen. An enemy with a glowing weak point, nurses that can be safely avoided with the flashlight turned off...this game did so much hand-holding, you might as well have been doing a tour through Silent Hill, Pyramid Head as your guide.

I could argue that Silent Hill 4, a game that wasn't even intended to BE a Silent Hill game, managed to accomplish it through a limited inventory, a mid-game shock in terms of losing your main source of healing, the persistent threat of ghosts in the same vein as Nemesis...it challenged you if nothing else. Yes, the health bar was there, but it was played on; early on you knew you could regenerate in your home, but then the game removes that element, and suddenly you're watching your health bar with greater scrutiny, keeping and using health items. The mechanics change, but they're for the better. The game let you get a feel for what was going on, and then pulled the rug out from under you in a good way. Granted, Silent Hill 4 is still flawed in many ways, but the positives allow me to forgive it.

Silent Hill Homecoming sold somewhere around 750,000 to a million copies, and it was cancelled for release in Japan. The most amusing part is, no reason was given for a Japanese cancellation. It was just decided. I have my own amused speculations, but I'll leave you to your own thoughts on why they'd reject this game.

Now to tackle Downpour...

Old School - Shivers 2: Harvest of Souls

Oh Sierra. Wherever your mind went, your soul still left an etching in the hourglass of gaming...

Lets wind the clocks back. Sierra Entertainment was "the" point-and-click adventure company. If it had the word "quest" in it back in the 1980's to 90's, it was a damn-near certainty that Sierra was the company behind it. King's Quest, Police Quest, Space Quest...these games could be frustrating endearments in trial and error, but those 78 screens were nothing but quirky goodness.

But when you knew what you were doing, these 78 screens took little time to beat.

While many of the aforementioned games are available on gog.com, alongside other popular titles like Phantasmagoria...there is a series missing. A series I hold very near and dear to my heart...a series that took the time and effort to get a fake band to crank out a soundtrack just to make clues for the game itself. It's that level of charm I don't get to see or experience nowadays, the game that takes the time and effort. Shivers and Shivers 2 are, by and far, my favorite puzzle games.

 But that always bothered me. It took a kickstarter and a lot of love and effort to even see something remotely similar to this, in the form of Tex Murphy. Chris Jones and a lot of original actors came back for one last hurrah to finish the sequel intended for the cliffhanger done in Overseer. Considering that game was released in 1998 and this is now 2014, that says a lot about certain cliques in the gaming world. They're willing to bring an old IP back from the grave.

But that has me thinking. Why don't we see more of this? Why don't more people make these kind of games? Both iterations of Shivers would be unbelievably cheap to make in this day and age; and they wouldn't look terrible at all. The charm after all these years has not faded from the design of Shivers 1 and 2; the atmosphere, the soundtrack, the design...it's all held up well in my humble opinion. The puzzles were challenging but not unbeatable, with a built-in puzzle solver for the second game just in case you were well and truly stuck. Some were simple, and some could stump you for a long while. The acting could be hokey, and it had the odd flaws of old FMV technology that plagued the Sega CD...but it's still forgivable, and the stories are entertaining enough to dig into.

The game was made back in the day with a team of 17 people, so this is within the realm of small-team game production. Tex Murphy was a refreshing glance at the past, but there was something missing from the world itself, that sense of tight, atmospheric design. I won't say the old Tex Murphy games were masterpieces, but I did expect something a little more out of the environments in this day and age. The FMV quality just harshly contrasts this: while the environments are a little cheap, the quality of the cutscenes are damn near flawless in terms of lighting and frame rate.

I want to see it again. I want to see the quirky puzzle games right out of Myst. I want to relive Shivers. I want to be challenged again, not in terms of reflex, not in terms of coordination in a rage game; I want a puzzle game again. I want the puzzle games to evolve past Candy Crush Android/iPhone apps. I want my brain to break trying to understand how the puzzle is to be solved, in a world of pure imagination.

But that's just me. People are free to eat up all the First Person Shooters they'd like. But they're dime a dozen, getting horribly played out. They need a break.