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The original Dead Space introduced us to engineer Isaac Clarke, an outer-space Gordon Freeman with an even gorier monster problem. Though his journey was long and rough, Isaac was able to battle his way out of the spaceship from hell and into an uncertain future. Dead Space 2 picks up more or less where the player left off; Isaac has no idea where he is or how he got there. He only knows that he’s back in the bowels of hell, on a strange ship, and he needs to run. This is where Dead Space 2 drops us off, and for the next 8-10 hours, never lets us rest.

Get away from me!

The gameplay in Dead Space 2 is, pardon my pun, out of this world. It’s truly unbelievable how easy they’ve made the controls for the player. While there were a few times I was panicking and kept using health packs that I didn’t need to, overall the game flowed beautifully. The same weapon selection is back from the first game, and honestly I’m glad they didn’t tinker around too much. Something about the 3-laser sighted Plasma Cutter makes me feel safe; like I could remove a fair amount of monster limbs before they had a chance to get to me. There are relatively few games that I’ve beaten and wanted to restart again immediately, but despite the challenges of the final boss battle, the minute my screen hit the ‘Game +’ menu I was ready to get back into things on a harder difficulty. Overall, I’d say the actual gameplay of Dead Space 2 was pretty close to perfect. Of course there were areas that presented more of a challenge than others, but getting through them requires the player to simply think about the challenge differently.

I could go on for days about how fun Dead Space 2 is, but I’d much rather go on for days about how much it scared me. If you played the first game and weren’t scared at all, that’s fine; neither was I. Dead Space 2 plays like it was developed by a system of computers that was powered by full-grown adult nightmares. I am not exaggerating when I say that on my first time through, I spent roughly 80% of it with my gun drawn, inching slowly forward. Whether they’re manipulating shadows and light, making noises and movements just off-camera, or hinting you’re about to be attacked, the game keeps the player on the edge of their seat nearly the entire game. I’m no stranger to the survival horror genre, and this game had me making sure I didn’t play it before I went to sleep.

Gross.

The beloved Necromorphs from the first game are back, but this time they really flesh them out and give them some depth. Within the first 5 minutes of gameplay, a guy who is talking to you is attacked and transformed into a monster right in front of your eyes. Some may call showing the process depraved, but I loved that the developers didn’t shy away from confronting the player so graphically. There are even more disgusting parts later in the game that I don’t want to spoil for you (I hope you’re not squeamish about eyeballs), but some of the game’s best moments come from the subtle scares, like when you first witness the exploding babies in the nursery, or when you meet the raptors in the church – an encounter that ranks in my Top Ten Most Stressful Moments in Gaming. The game also added an interesting element of tunnel-crawling this time around, which fits with the environment while at the same time delivering a brand new level of claustrophobia.

I don’t know how many Xbox 360 games have gone this route, but Dead Space 2 is the first game I’ve owned that has spanned two discs. They give you one hell of a lengthy romp through outer space for your money, which I appreciated. Though at times the story itself seemed a bit jerky (“hurry up and meet this person! Okay, cool – now go meet this other person!”), it was a satisfying tie-in to the first installment. Again, I don’t want to give too much away, but the driving motivation for Isaac Clarke in the first game is back again. Well… kind of.

At times, the original Dead Space suffered from a clunky inability to distinguish between something that’s “challenging” and something that’s “unbearable to the point I don’t want to play anymore”.  Fortunately this was fixed with its sequel, and I never found myself faced with an insurmountable obstacle or an area that wouldn’t let me pass until I honed my cat-like reflexes and ability to memorize a level. Dead Space 2 masters the fine line between thrills and challenges, and rewards the player in key moments of desperation. It doesn’t fall for the same tired mechanic of “no ammo = survival horror”, but instead trains a player on how to manipulate what they find into something that will help them stay alive.

Like I explained earlier, Dead Space 2 had me completing the game and then jumping right back in for more like a darn fool, so I feel like it would be redundant of me to emphasize just how critical this game is for your collection. The folks who made it know what they’re doing; they know how to make a game scary but playable, disgusting but manageable, and challenging but worth it. Dead Space 2 is truly scary, truly twisted, and amazingly fun.

RENT

Raven Software’s latest game Singularity has come down from a long pedigree. They hatched Hexen, which I played back in the early ’90′s, and more recently Wolfenstien which looked good and also has some of the same elements found in this game. Time space phenomenon, and telekinesis gone wild. In a familiar plot device, the artifact known as the Time Manipulation Device or (TMD) is pivotal in the game.

It is nicely detailed right from the start. The Raven logo and the interface show attention and effort. The menus move horizontally with a liquid sound effect that make the motion feel slick. You are inside of some type of ship. Things outside look wrong. The ship is hit by an EMP and then you find your character ship wreaked on a burning dock. Russian scientists have attempted to make a singularity. Time shifts and there’s more fire. You have to save some guy. Time shifts again, you’ve altered the time line somehow. What is going on?

The game is derivative, in a good way for a change. It has many devices similar to Bioshock. There are the taped messages from a despot. The pseudo scientific meltdown of a ranting genius going way over the edge. The capsules that are used as weapon lockers look like that now iconic art-style. Even the color palette is very similar to the first Bioshock. But then you have your horror genre added to the mix. In a way there is a feeling like you got Silent Hill, when you are coming around corners you’ll have no idea what you are going to face. It could be mutants, ghosts, or who knows what will be next to go at you. Some of the enemies have enormous blueish heads and they look like aliens.

This monster mashup has the eeriest soundtrack going. If you turn the music down the ambient sounds has enough moaning and groaning and shrieking screams to keep your all hallows horror thirst satisfied. I immediately recognized some familiar voices from Anime as well. Liam O’Brien from Bleach, and Steven Blum from Cowboy Bebop lend their special masculinity to the voice acting.

The overall theme is done well. It has a story line that is good enough to have come from the old X-Files TV series. It’s dark, the physics is plausible, and it does what it sets out to do. With the lights turned down you will really feel your spine tingle with this game.

The weapons are great. They feel right in your virtual first person hand.  One thing that I thought was odd, but isn’t exactly a flaw, is that at one point you get captured, and loose all your weapons. But shortly later you come across one of those over grown thermoses they call weapons lockers, and low and behold there are all the guns you have unlocked so far. There is a way decent shot gun, and a sweet rifle too besides the machine gun and pistol. You get points to use for upgrades, again like Bioshock.

The weapon controls are good and solid so are the targeting and aiming. It feels balanced. The inventory system is a bit non existent but at least it is better than the one in the last Resident Evil 5. The shooting is very important, it is what makes these games fun, along with the spattering of the shotgun. I would have liked more compass and map views in this game. If they are there I didn’t see them. A toggle for third person would have been nice too. The game is pretty linear. There are tons of locked doors everyplace. It doesn’t seem right. You should be able to shoot your way through where ever you want and blow up the doors with a grenade. The level design could be much better. The environments don’t look bad. The graphics and lighting are good, but it’s patchy as to where it looks that good. It is a shame that the buildings and other features don’t react to the weapons more and destruct.

Why isn’t there a playable female avatar in single player? This is very disappointing. It wouldn’t have taken much to make the choice available for a playable female avatar. Since you don’t actually see your character that much. If they wanted to be stingy with extra programming code that isn’t the right place for developers to choose to conserve on pixels. An alternative would have been to make the slight effort to make the avatar genderless and apply to anybody. Shame, shame.

There maybe lots of borrowed code in this game, but the point is, that it works. If you take and use the Unreal engine, then the rest of the game better look good layered on top of it because you have one of the best sets of tools to start with.

It didn’t hold my attention for long with the multiplayer. It is there and it is standard stuff. You would play as either the Soldiers or the Creatures. There’s the Team Deathmatch, or the Extermination mode.

This game was good, perhaps not in the way it was intended to be. I’d like to see Raven Software get out of the cold war games and just go over to the survival horror genre all the way I think they have the potential to rival Resident Evil, if they would just go for it with a fresh new IP. I’d suggest that you give it Rent as a Halloween season game.

Rating: T for Teen
Genre: Puzzle
Number of Players: 1
Publisher: PlayDead
Release Date: July 21, 2010

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The game follows the journey of a young boy, wandering along the edge of Hell looking for his sister. There is no dialog or voice acting, and the score is resigned to shadows, ideas of music. As you’d expect from Purgatory, all color has been drained from the landscape. What’s left is black, white, and varying shades of grey. The main character himself is nothing more than a silhouette-like boy with piercingly white eyes . While I can’t think of a single other time where a game’s protagonist and all other NPCs show no emotion (and really don’t have faces at all, to be straight about it), somehow they’re able to use this hollowness and contrast to twist the player into caring anyway. Seeing the little boy’s lifeless body being ground up by machines and saw blades, or drown in a lake already filled with tiny carcasses, elicits an intense motivation to solve a current puzzle so the two of you can leave that area immediately.

Run.

Considering all Limbo lacks, parts-wise (dialog, music, etc.), the game feels complete. You are running from the giant spiders because you will die if you don’t. You are rotating the room because it’s the only way you can get to the top. You’re finding a route that goes up because the level is filling with water and you’ll drown if you don’t hurry. It’s all so simple, childlike. Even the journey – a boy looking for his sister – is just unique and wonderful without being bogged down by excess. This simplicity leads to some of the best (and saddest, and scariest) moments of any game before it.  Limbo proves that games don’t need to be colorful and noisy to be interesting.

One of the things I most enjoyed about Limbo was the problem solving. Your character approaches an area where all the pieces of the puzzle you’re facing are laid out before you. The player can try the “run at the problem and figure it out as you go” approach, which ends with a lot of gruesome deaths and frustration, or they can take a second or two to really look at the puzzle. As the game wears on, a lot of the mechanics of certain puzzles become very complicated and lengthy, so the player is rewarded for examining the entire problem before plunging in head first. On the other hand, a couple of the puzzles are unnecessarily hard; too often was I stuck at a ridiculously difficult series of events, where the correct way through to the next area was just timing my jump better, down to fractions of a second. I can understand asking a lot of the player, but do not sacrifice playability for the expectation of the player’s cat-like reflexes. I’d hate to think someone would have to miss out on the Limbo experience because they couldn’t clear the endlessly frustrating electrified mineshaft level.

Don't drown.

As I said earlier, the game scares me. I live for the next big horror moment or event because it’s a rush, but this game is different. It’s hard to describe the feeling it leaves in me, but I keep coming back to “vacant”, “sad”, and “dark”. Early comparisons to 2008’s Xbox Live masterpiece Braid were thrown about, which I can understand, though the experience in action is an altogether different monster. The atmosphere created in the world of Limbo is unsettling and amazing – it’s a gameplay experience unlike any I’ve had before, and I would absolutely recommend it. Play it at night by yourself at first to get the full effect of what the developers are trying to make you feel, but just remember that there’s no shame in waiting until morning and coaxing a friend into being there for support.

Environment/Atmosphere: The Silent Hill staple is fog, fog, and then a little bit more fog. While I’ll admit that graphically the fog looks more realistic, in that they seem to be holding themselves back from going overboard, part of what makes Silent Hill scary is just how overboard they do go with the fog. The misty nothingness could almost be considered another villain, one that shrouds the shrouds the monsters waiting to pounce. I was also put-off to the crows lurking around the deserted city, because non-psychologically-scarring animals just don’t make sense in this environment. Silent Hill is about trauma and repentance and deviant desires and sexuality, so all of the creatures that roam its streets are supposed to mean something to the main character.

While technically from Silent Hill, this dog is not representative of animals in the series.

I’m also hoping that the series doesn’t continue to suffer from the post-movie makeover. Ever since Christophe Gans brought Silent Hill to the masses in 2006, the games since (specifically Silent Hill 5) have been trying to capture certain elements of the movie that were changed from the game, such as the transformation between Normal Silent Hill to Dark Silent Hill. I was a fan of the walls peeling back or melting away when I saw it in theaters, but it doesn’t translate well in the game because it takes away the immediacy of the danger you’re in. When the change would happen in Silent Hill 2 or (my favorite) Silent Hill 3, it would just hit you like a train and then oh man, you’re in trouble now. I hope they don’t lose the industrial feeling of Dark Silent Hill, with the steel framing and pulsating moans. Peeling walls are not scary and they take too long.

Gameplay: I really wanted to break this down, but as we were only shown a teaser trailer there’s not much I can say about the gameplay. From this initial video we can see that the camera is over the shoulder, which I personally prefer over the fixed camera perspective.

Characters: The major thing that ruined Silent Hill 5 was the same thing that ruined Resident Evil 5 – too many characters. If you’re making a survival horror game, you almost get a free pass that lets you create as few characters as possible while simultaneously ranking up the scares. With this trailer there are at least three NPCs that our hero has to deal with, and if you ask me that’s three too many. What’s scarier: being alone in a screwed up town being chased by monsters, or hanging out with the local townsfolk and trying to solve puzzles? It’s an element of scary that Konami seemed to embrace at first, and then forget about for 4 games. As far as the main character, whose name is apparently Murphy Pendleton (geez, seriously?), his suit makes him look like he just jumped out of a Fallout Vault, and his appearance makes him look like every other Silent Hill character. Perhaps it’s too early to judge, but I hope they make him more interesting than his name is leading me to believe he’ll be.

Psychology, baby.

Music: If you‘re familiar with the series at all, you know that Akira Yamaoka has provided the scary and ethereal music for every Silent Hill, from the original game to Shattered Memories. For whatever reason, he will not be composing the music for Silent Hill 6, which has me very worried. While the trailer seems to grasp the basics of what Akira was giving us all these years, it sounds more like a movie trailer mixed with a rough cut of the X-Files theme song. The heart of the game is its music, and I hope that whoever is taking over has spent these past couple years with the Silent Hill soundtracks on repeat.

Relation to Kin: So with what seems to be a new developer, a new composer, and a new-ish Silent Hill, is this latest release going to be another nail in the coffin of a series that is only great when Robbie the Rabbit, Pyramid Head, or the PSP are involved? Again, it may be too early to tell. I can only hope that the team making it has spent hours playing all of the old games, and additional hours reading about the psychology behind what makes the games great. Putting in a couple sinkholes and dunking the place in fog do not make the game worthy of a Silent Hill title. Understanding why the characters are called to the town, and subsequently why they’re unable to leave, are what the game is all about. Fingers crossed.

Alan Wake is an episodic thriller brought to you by the great minds at Microsoft Game Studios and Remedy Entertainment.  It might not make you jump, but you probably will want to play with the lights on.

ESRB: M (for Mature)
Players: One
Genre: Action/Thriller
Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios
Developer: Remedy Entertainment
Release Date: May 18, 2010

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Playing out like a bizarre cross between the BBC’s Life on Mars and Konami’s Silent Hill, the game takes you from Alan’s arrival in Bright Falls with his wife Alice through the six episodes where he tries to rescue her after she goes missing.  There a little bit of a lead up to the action as Alan gets a small introduction to some of the locals after they arrive in town, and you head to the cabin where he and Alice are staying.   It’s not exactly a training scenario like we’re used to in some games, but it does give you a bit of time to practice the control set-up before throwing you in to deep.

Once the story starts up proper after Alice’s disappearance, Alan find’s himself awake after a car wreck he doesn’t remember and that’s when the rest of the story starts to emerge.  It’s dark, and that’s not just because it’s nighttime.  This isn’t a survival horror game, but for those of used to the genre, the beginning will feel a bit familiar.  Alan’s a character with a lot of writing cred, but he’s a normal guy without a lot of survival skills.  He’s trim, but not physically fit, and though he’s encouraged to run out of difficult situations, he does get fatigued and will have to stop to catch his breath.

It’s not necessarily surprising that since Alan’s profession as a writer is so played up in the game, that the game’s storyline is one of it’s strongest pieces.  The episodic nature of the game, with recaps at the beginning of each new episode, solidify key pieces of the story.  I also loved that many of the episodes have a sort of cliffhanger, that really sort of helps the television comparison.  The story itself is also prevalent as a collector’s item, with Alan picks up Manuscript pages as he searches for his wife.

So, how scary are we talking about, really?  If it’s not a survival horror game, and more of a thriller, it’s doing a pretty good job as masquerading as a sort of horror game.  The Dark Presence and the Taken aren’t necessarily scary in themselves, especially when they can be repelled with Alan’s flashlight, at least long enough for him to shoot them.  But, the nighttime setting for the majority of the game, the creepy whispered voices that surround many of the Taken, and the quiet breathing in certain areas definitely pump up the scary aspect.

Though Alan has ability to destroy the Taken with his flashlight, guns and the occasional flash-bang, there are times where it’s better to just run.  Heading towards a Safe Haven (well-lit places) gives him time to heal up or gets him out of a tight spot, at least for a little while.

Play, is pretty simple itself, you don’t have a ton of options when controlling Alan.  There’s a lot of “B” button action for picking up and interacting with items, a little “A” button action for some extended actions, triggers and directions.  The utilization of both triggers felt pretty natural; Alan uses the flashlight and the guns he picks up at the same time, and using both was easy to figure out.  I think the only thing I had a brief issue with was figuring out how to switch weapons (which is done with the d-pad).

Even with how much the light and dark play into the game, the graphics aren’t all that astounding.  They’re great, and on par with most recent games, and I was impressed with the extensive distances in the backgrounds and the reflections in windows and televisions.  But, I often found myself a little put off by a lot of the faces of the characters in the game, most especially Alice’s.  I feel like there’s several games on the 360 doing some really great things with character graphics and that’s a place where graphically, “Alan Wake” doesn’t really match up.

Here’s the thing where I’m super impressed with Alan Wake, there’s a ton of little pieces of the game that make the whole experience fun when the same types of combat over and over gets a little stale.  The collectibles, the radio station inserts and the television episodes and the music give the game an extra boost.  I don’t want to say too much about the music in order to help avoid spoilers.  But, I’m a big fan of the music in this game.  Once the game is out, I want to chat in the forums about some of the music in the game, because while I’m normally a hard rock fan, I found a lot to love about the game’s soundtrack.  There’s a different song at the end of each episode, and tie into the story somehow.  I really can’t tell you how much I loved the music throughout the game, it was definitely one of the high points for me.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed my play through Alan Wake.  Aside from the character models and a what I felt was a sort of ‘huh-what?’ ending it was a great experience.  There WILL be another Alan Wake game, it’ll be interesting to see what happens next, and how it ties-in to the ending from this first one.  Alan Wake provides about 10 hours of exciting, scary and engrossing gaming fun.

PS.  Two other notes:
1)  I’m a bit motion-sensitive which can often be triggered by gaming.  Because the game is over the shoulder, third person I was a little nervous that it’d make me sick.  The only time I really felt that sensitivity though was when Alan was running at night, since the flashlight moves around as he runs.  I avoided running when I could, and the rest of the time it seemed okay.
2)  One of the things I think sets this game apart from a traditional horror game style is not that it’s void of blood and guts, but that there’s not the same ‘jumpy’ nature to this game as there is the majority of horror games.  If you’re not facing them, the game gives you a little heads-up just before a Taken attack, so you don’t have the same jumpy reaction to attacks.   So if that’s one of the things that keeps you from playing scary games, consider giving Alan Wake a try.

And don’t forget to check out the prequel “Bright Falls” on YouTube.  Episode #1 is below:

The Zombie Studios title has you playing Detective Trapp’s estranged son, Michael, who is trying to understand why his father died. Eventually, he finds himself becoming Jigsaw’s next unwilling victim. A series of puzzles is what stands between you and survival.

The game will be released alongside the next Saw film, Saw VII 3D (Really? More 3D movies?), which is out October 22. For more information about the game, please visit www.konami.com/.

10. Date Nights Made Simple. Every so often it’s nice to be treated to a night out on the town, however that doesn’t mean we’re not up for a night in. Order some tasty Chinese, have some beer and drinks in the fridge, and we’re all for gaming and movie all-nighters. You can make it fun by coming up with drinking games (Please drink responsibly!!) or making the loser do the dishes. Just have fun with it and make it an evening about spending time together.

9. Technically Capable. Female gamers know their way around the tech. We can set up a sound system, set schedules on the DVR, we know the difference between RCA, Component and HDMI cables. And if we don’t know, we sure aren’t afraid to learn how.

8. Tour Guide. It’s not easy juggling a strategy guide or running to the laptop/computer to look at a guide while you are being scorched by an evil mage in a dungeon or trying to figure out your next move when the path you came down is suddenly blocked off. Helping you out by looking up hints and reading parts of walkthroughs out for you is fine with us. We just ask that you do the same if we ever need a hand.

7. Puzzle Solvers. You’ve got the lights down low, you’re playing an action-adventure or survival horror game and – WHAM! – you’ve run into a puzzle that you just can’t solve. Luckily, your significant other has been paying attention and is able to figure it out for you. It’s always good to have a second and fresh set of eyes around when you get stumped. We feel exactly the same.

The BioShock inspired "Moral Choices" tee from SplitReason

6. Awesome Presents. You want a game or an accessory for your birthday/anniversary/Valentine’s Day? You got it. We love finding cool t-shirts, hoodies and belt buckles to add to your wardrobe. And if we pick you up an XBL or PSN card, we know you’ll quickly find something to spend it on.

5. No Midnight Launches Alone. Don’t want to stand alone outside GameStop for hours waiting for the next Halo or Modern Warfare title to come out? We’ll be there to keep you company, hold our place in the line if you have to make a bathroom or food run (or vice versa) and convince you that yes, you do want to buy the strategy guide because you’ll be waiting a week for GameFAQs to have a complete walkthrough when one of us inevitably gets stuck.

4. The Cake is Not a Lie. Time and time again, we have proven that we love our significant others through cake. More often than not, gamer couples enjoy gaming related or geek themed baked goods. Just Google “gaming wedding cakes” or “gamer wedding” and you’ll see some awesome cakes, Halo inspired weddings and unique gaming proposals.

3. The Zombie Apocalypse. If movies such as Zombieland and games like Left 4 Dead have taught us anything, its that you can try to survive on your own, but when the zombies start heading for the mall, you want someone by your side to help kill them. It’s just a matter of time, so don’t fight the zombies alone! Begin training for the future now.

2. We understand you. Only a gamer can truly understand the needs of another of our kind. We won’t walk in front of the screen during a boss battle or kick you off the TV to watch a show (every gaming couple knows the importance of the second TV and a DVR). And we will grab a beer for each of us in between rounds of Horde mode. Taking on waves of giant aliens or zombies is a team effort.

It's a Katamari themed wedding!

1. Co-op Partner for Life. Sure, you won’t always want to play co-op, and neither will we. But for the times when your friends have moved onto another game and you want someone to team up with you, we will be there. Just want a sparring partner? We’ve got that covered too. Just keep in mind relationships are give and take, so you’d better be able to take it as well as you can dish it out.

As Resident Evil before it, Silent Hill has gone through some serious ups and downs (though it may be hard mining for material to work with in a location known for absolute nothingness, there is no excuse for Silent Hill 4 : The Room).

Developer: Climax Studios
Genre: Survival Horror
ESRB: M
Number of players: 1
Publisher: Konami
Release Date: January 19th, 2010

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To fans of the series, one bad installment after another seemed like the direction this sleepy town’s story was headed. Like Weezer’s Blue Album, Silent Hill 2 was regarded by most as this sub-genre’s pinnacle of human achievement that has yet to be matched. With the bar set so unbelievably high, it shouldn’t be a surprise that nothing has really compared to the “I can’t sleep without the lights on” horror of James Sunderland’s last trip through small town hell. With that said, Silent Hill has really blossomed on the PSP.

Maybe it’s the difference between being huddled over the modest screen, headphones in, one-joystick playing style, as opposed to conventional console gaming. It adds an extra layer to the madness when the audio is right in your ear, or when the playability area is not large enough to see who’s chasing you. While I believe this contributes to the enjoyment (and why I chose to get Shattered Memories on PSP instead of the Wii [sorry Nintendo]), it really is the return to what made Silent Hill great that allows Shattered Memories to be so brilliant and fun.

The first Silent Hill for the PSP, Silent Hill : Origins, tells the story of a lonely trucker named Travis. His own horrible life, the worst parts trapped in his subconscious until wrecking his rig in Silent Hill, shape the town into the manic Nurse-inhabited hell hole we all know and love. Interesting, fun, and deeply disturbing, Origins invited the player back to the town and let them know that things were going to be cool again. Shattered Memories finds us hanging out with original protagonist Harry Mason, as well as most of the other characters from the first game, re-imagined for this installment.

The phone plays a huge part in Shattered Memories. Clunky at times, though it's interesting calling the various phone numbers scattered around the city, and it adds an extra layer to the creepiness.

Without giving too much away, Harry crashes his car, loses his daughter, and tries to find her in Silent Hill. While this sounds exactly like every other Silent Hill game (except for 4, which I’ve already explained is dead to me), Harry’s adventure is set apart by the fact that there’s no combat. None, whatsoever. There are definitely creepy alleyways and dark halls that I proceeded into with caution, but all of the enemies have been consigned to specific Dark Silent Hill times. Believe me, this is awesome. I understand that this is a horror game, and as such, there needs to be a certain level of tension that comes with every new corner, but for too long did I loathe trying to get something done and being unable to do it because I was once again chased off by those unyielding, armless torso monsters. A game can be scary without bothering you every 5 minutes. With Shattered Memories, I was able to explore and interact with my environment. Every time I was too comfortable in my superiority, the game would transform into Dark Silent Hill and the chase was on. The fact that my character was defenseless added to the dread.

Another interest mechanic employed by the developers was the psychological aspect of this installment. Actions having consequences is all the rage these days, but I’ve never seen it employed on such a bare-bones level like this game. Throughout the story, there are brief first-person respites in a psychologist’s office, where he’ll ask you questions about seemingly random things, ranging from high school memories to color association. This, coupled with things the player looks at specifically while in-game (like spending a little too much time looking at the row of alcohol bottles, or women in lingerie), creates a unique experience for every player. Not only does it affect the ending, but there are also subtle differences along the way. It’s worth playing again at least once to answer the questions differently for a new experience.

Perhaps this is what the developers were counting on, the person wanting to play the game over immediately, which is why the game clocks in at about 10 hours of active gameplay. I have nothing against games that cut out all of the BS and don’t waste my time by just getting to the point and leaving me satisfied, but if you’re going to make it short, at least include something along the lines of Game+ or unlockables. When I beat Shattered Memories in a day, I was a bit shocked but figured that by beating it I surely unlocked a new outfit or something that would further entice me to play again. Imagine my disappointment when I got to just play the game over again without any bonus for beating it the first time.

This happens far too often.

The Dark Silent Hill levels were different and cool (they’re ice levels, get it?), but got really frustrating after a while. I was fine with the premise of it, but Dark Silent Hill involved running through a maze of doors to an appropriate destination. It was the kind of Silent Hill maze where the doors don’t make sense and never lead you to where you think you’re going. It’s tedious running through door after door after door, running into the same swarms of naked ladies when you’re just trying to find where you were 10 minutes ago. While there are a couple hang ups (and what game doesn’t have them), Shattered Memories was much more than just a guy with a flashlight who doesn’t know when to come in from the weather. The final scenes of Harry falling, the water to the lighthouse, and the psychologists office are all very powerful and emotional. Rarely does a game strike a chord like that within me, but for a game that spends most of its time finding out what makes the player tick, it’s hardly a surprise.

While I would hesitate before spending the $30 for a new copy (equating to about $3 an hour), I’d definitely recommend adding Shattered Memories to your PSP library. Support a company when they get it right, so we have better luck getting more quality installments in the future.

Rating: M for Mature
Genre: Survival Horror
Publisher: Konami
Release Date: December 8th, 2009

RENT

We here at GamingAngels are huge fans of the survival horror genre, so it would just be wrong of us not to post the trailer for Deadly Premonition, an Xbox 360 exclusive title coming from Ignition Entertainment. Check out the trailer below & let us know what you think. Deadly Premonition will be available on Feb 23rd. Check out the website or follow Agent York on Twitter to learn more about the game.