RE7 and RE:Vendetta - The future of the franchise

Resident Evil....ah....you always were my favorite. Ever since I was a kid, I jumped into Resident Evil and was immediately freaked out by the mansion, the zombies, the cutscenes. So much so, I didn't jump into the franchise again until RE:2DC hit PSX, and I finally worked up the nerve to start playing it. Ever since, I've loved the series. RE:3 had a fantastic combat system and a good looming threat with Nemesis. RE:4, while goofy, reworked the series into the modern era. RE:CVX was a good update to the classic formula, for what it's worth. The FPS and Arcade adaptions are not to be forgotten in my book.

And then we have RE:Outbreak and File 2. My nostalgia glasses are on for these games in full force, I won't lie. There's lots to love and lots to hate. I love the concept of the rag-tag team of survivors with different strengths/weaknesses trying to survive a nightmare. Too clunky for Capcom to get right though, as once chat in either text or words is involved, you break immersion. I agree with the exclusion and just limiting it to the game itself (in which case, you have to try to interpret what you have to do to survive with the limited voice command set). I still applaud it.

But Resident Evil 5 and 6.....hoo boy. Resident Evil 5 took 4's formula and tried to work it into a serious storyline. 6 did the same thing, and I sorely disagree with the execution being split into horror, action, and....whatever Jake's side was supposed to be with his martial arts. Five was alright for the most part. Six was kinda goofy to take seriously, and considering 4 was camp as all hell, that is saying something.

But now we have 7 and Vendetta. What do I think of 7?

What did I think of Silent Hill PT? You slapped the brand name on it, gave it VERY loose ties to the franchise....when, by all goddamn means, it would've sufficed as it's own IP.  RE:7, in my mind, is way better if you ignore the franchise. And Vendetta? Just watch the scene with Chris and Leon.

Now, DON'T get me wrong. I love this scene. The choreography with Leon is phenomenal, CQC gun work that Hideo Kojima would love to have with Solid Snake. But you notice the flaw yet? Think about it. Think about these characters. Think about what they've already accomplished. Leon has killed several El Gigantes, Tyrants, dozens of zombies and plagas-infected individuals....Chris has done the same, AND punched a boulder off a cliff. Worldwide threats are dime-a-dozen to these individuals.

What's my problem? No more tension.

Tension drives horror. Comic Book logic follows IP logic. "You rarely, if ever, kill off the main protagonists". Back in Resident Evil, you have Chris, Rebecca, Jill, and Barry. Of the original four members, who are still alive? ....So far, all of them. RE2 has Leon, Claire and Ada....and Hunk. Are any of them dead? No. Carlos from RE:3 is a rare exception, but he's hardly made cameos since the game. NO, THE MOVIES DON'T COUNT.

RE:7 has little to do with current RE games on the whole. It loosely ties in with the franchise with the BS of Chris Redfield and the virus outbreak. You could've boiled it down to a FPS with horror elements, much in the same vein as Fatal Frame, but with a camera. They didn't do that. They had to allude.  And that's the problem.

RE:Vendetta is fine to me, even though it's awful to build dramatic tension. Every single notable character in the franchise has enough BOW experience to survive most games or movies. But RE:7 worries me, because it's the problem of Silent Hill PT emphasized.

Stop using the IP.

Stop it.

Your name itself has enough weight to get people to buy into it. Well, okay, that doesn't work for Konami anymore. But come on, Capcom. You have the prestige to just use your name to sell a game. I'd have appreciated RE:7 much more as it's own IP. But using it's brand name and VERY loose ties to the overall universe is pretty weak. Hell, Outlast 2 probably did what you were going through, but better.....a survival horror FPS game through a crazy group of southerners out in the middle of nowhere.

I don't know where RE:8 will go....or if the Franchise will finally take a knee. But I'll be watching.....and currently waiting to see where Death Stranding goes. Fingers crossed, Kojima.

The Silent Hills Cancellation: Diary of a Mad Fan

Let me pose you a simple question. This is a question almost anyone could answer if you looked at it from a reasonable angle. You don't need a fancy business or marketing degree to understand this.

Just hear me out and use your brain to pick a choice at the end.

You create a design for a car. Now, originally it was a bit clunky, and it wasn't visually appealing; however, it was popular for what it was, as despite itself, it was a still a good car. It was your first car, and you built off of it. Your second car is a huge success; it had the right mix of functionality and style, and it led to people taking your brand name seriously. You go on to make a decent third car, but when it came time for the fourth one, you couldn't get some of the parts to function, and it wound up being a little messier than usual. Despite the flaws, your first four cars were good to excellent on the whole.

Then comes the time to make a fifth car. Nothing special, but it still felt like part of your line-up, despite the shift in who's developing it. Around the sixth car, you decide to hire out an entirely new team to make this car, and what occurs is a mess. It's not fuel efficient, it's design is mediocre, and despite trying to convince your market that it *is* apart of your company, they just don't agree with it as you might've hoped. You hire out a new development team again, and get your old development team to try to revamp some of your old designs. While your new car isn't as bad as the last one visually, it still had a lot of internal issues, maybe even more than the last...and a major issue is, you release the car at about the same time as the old designs; and the old team couldn't quite upgrade the old designs to a modern day theme.

You're struggling to keep your market base. You're desperate for a new design idea. Then, as if winning the lottery, you suddenly have extremely skilled people who are willing to help you. They work up a mock prototype that's slick, well-designed and appealing. Focus groups agree with it, and the public consensus is that it's a return to formula that was sorely overdue. It is an extremely popular idea, one that could bring you back into the forefront of the car industry; or at the very least, your section of the industry. It could be so good, it could influence the industry itself to follow suit.

Do you:

A: Let the people work on the project in peace, understanding that any expenditures would be made back threefold.

B: Bring in one or two more creative minds, people who've worked on similar cars in the past, to work with your developers to maximize the potential of the project.

or

C: Burn the design to the ground, alienate your key market base here, and cut all ties with the professionals on the project; so much so, you alienate one from another product line he has worked on for decades. In doing so, he will take the best damn engine your company has ever used with him, design and all.

If you picked A or B, congratulations! You made a good choice as a business. If you said C, congratulations. You are as insane as Konami.

 The most successful horror demo, period.

I don't understand. I can't fathom what would drive a company to make such a choice in the matter, when you have everything to gain and nothing to lose.

"I felt strongly that from now on, mobile will be at the heart of game platforms, and that we need a business strategy which creates games in accordance with observations of consumer usage trends. Arcade games, console games, card games; we need to shift from selling 'physical things' to selling 'intangible things'," -Konami CEO Hideki Hayakawa (GamesIndustry.biz)

The above quote tells me Konami is heading toward the micro-transactions of popular mobile and tablet games, but many parts of the game industry have adopted seriously poor practices of DLC and micro-transactions. There are positive examples, as Valve's Steam platform will almost always offer good deals to compensate for any small purchases (with some of their games having actual Economies they let run themselves for the most part). Hearthstone from Blizzard does not require you to pay to play, and with enough time, you can compete well enough to rank. But for every relatively benign ploy, there's the horrible overpricing of something as simple as skins (Evolve) to just being able to play the way you want to (the new Dirty Bomb game). You could argue that CS:GO does something similar, and that Dirty Bomb is free to play; but Counter-Strike has at least earned a reputation before charging you for optional weapon skins, and Hearthstone lets me play whatever class I want with whatever cards I choose.

But I digress. It's not whether or not I want Konami to stay around; as far as I'm concerned, the name has long since died, with only a few gasps of solid design in-between the mediocre and the misguided games. My concer, is whether or not they let IP's thrive or die to a refusal to let them go. 

Now, here's the kicker. I'm a Silent Hill fan through and through. I love Silent Hill 2 for having subtle mechanics for getting into your head, I love 3 for having great musical backing, and I can appreciate some of the elements even in Homecoming and Downpour for "getting it", even if it's not a constant throughout the game. But you want my opinion on the matter?

Let the series die.

 

No, I am neither insane nor high right now.

 

That might shock some to hear, if they knew how avid a fan I was (or read how much I ranted at something like Downpour). "But why?" It's quite simple, really. You don't need Silent Hill to be Silent Hill. Just look at exhibit A: PT. PT did NOT have to be in Silent Hill. It could've been in any town. It could've been a nice house along the road outside a town. It was self-contained to a room; and the atmosphere was insane. The visuals, disturbing. The audio, disorienting. Every step, every subtle change, every little facet of design and presentation was genuine, fresh, unique.

Kojima and Del Toro don't need Silent Hill. Silent Hill needed them. And if that's the case, so be it. They have the creativity and the tools to make their own, brand new horror IP. We don't need James Sunderland or the Mason family, we don't need the town or the fog or the lore. We need a fresh start, a new IP that works with the same concept of disturbing one mentally by playing with psychological thrills. All they need is the backing now, and as of June 12th, it a petition has been backed on change.org to the tune of 166,000 people and growing. Among the people, Del Toro himself has signed it, indicating that he is still interested in taking this project on.

And I hope Kojima and Norman Reedus are as well.

To whomever takes up the project and brings us a fresh new horror IP, I applaud you. I will applaud Kojima, Del Toro and Reedus for sticking it out and bringing it to us. I will applaud everyone who worked on it, with the passion to not let a good idea go to waste due to petty squabbles or poor business practices. Games like these deserve to be made, because they keep the industry from stagnation by cookie-cutter triple-A titles that have to adhere to a formula in order to maintain a profit. They keep people involved and dreaming up their own original games that one day, could be made and popularized.

Sometimes, at the end of the day, it's the only way we can keep the industry listening to us, and what we want.

Kojima Gets It. (Silent Hills)

Hideo Kojima, you magnificent son of a gun. You get it. You did it. You made a demo...that showcased how a Silent Hill game should be done. I can now just point at that demo and say "look at this and do that."

#1 - We'll start with the thing that will give this game the most oomph: The Fox Engine. Take a look at Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes, and you'll understand why this is such a big impact. The lighting and weather effects that the engine can create are phenomenal. In an action game, they make it all the more intense. In a horror game? Same deal, maybe even more so. And we haven't yet seen the full breadth that Kojima will execute for this. The city, though we only catch a glimpse of it at the end, looks beautiful. The ending for this demo makes Downpour's iteration of Silent Hill look like garbage. I can't say for certain, however, if I will enjoy the brightness depicted here. It might just be for showcase sake to have it as well-lit as it was, but if the town flips over to a darker "flashlight only" setting for points, then the Fox Engine will go "Your flashlight will be as effective as a normal one. Have fun wandering the foggy darkness." And that will be GLORIOUS.

#2 - Ambiance is king in a horror game, but so is subtlety. This demo did that extremely well as well. Noises unsettle you, the repetition is done marvelously, and it gives you that proper psychological feel that the protagonist is going deeper into his own psyche...and he won't like what he finds there. The baby? Creepy. The wife? Awesome, though I kinda mind it being a little too human, I'll give it a pass for effective use OUTSIDE the window. Subtle little things like hiding a piece of the puzzle in an inventory screen? Kojima's mark, done in Metal Gear games, but...perhaps not too far out of place here. So long as he doesn't abuse that or "screen-size error messages" (we're not making Eternal Darkness here), he'll do just fine. The full-size visual glitch, however, of the vision breaking up? The right kind of disorienting and paranoid-inducing shenanigans. Subtle additions and subtractions when you're not looking? Fantastic. General lack of jump scares? Perfect. You know a horror game is doing it right when you're perfectly safe...but you don't want to look any harder than you should. There's a second level in an alcove above the entrance area, and it's pitch black. Do YOU want to look up there and check to see if anything is there at any time?

#3 - He used the first game's music. Brownie points. He probably will keep to the theme no doubt, of music and ambient tracks being unsettling noise for the most part.

So overall...I'm happy. Kojima isn't 100% perfect at making a Silent Hill game, and I nitpicked a couple things. A few more people could probably find faults with it as well. But if I'm speaking purely from a "will he do it right" standpoint? This is Kojima. He's done insane things while playing with a story about walking nuclear tanks and cyborg ninjas that can stop a warship the size of five skyscrapers dead in it's tracks. Can you imagine what kind of fucked up shenanigans he'll get into when he has Silent Hill to work with? AND HE PLAYED THE DEMO SUBTLE.

He's got this.

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.