The End is Nigh: Silent Hill: Shattered Memories

‘The End is Nigh’ is a weekly column by Play.tm’s Martin Gaston, pondering the nature of videogame endings and why we do or don’t choose to finish the games we play. This week: the effect Silent Hill: Shattered Memories has on the brain.

There’s a rather substantial twist in Silent Hill: Shattered Memories. I won’t go into it, though I will say it’s even better if you’re familiar with the first game. You spend five hours progressing towards it, get the ta-daaa moment, and then you’re off to the end credits. It’s abrupt.

“This game plays you as much as you play it,” warns an official-looking screen at the start. That’s not entirely true, and while the game might play its users by analysing where their attentions lie and cataloguing their responses, Shattered Memories is actually at its worst when it forces you to play it like a traditional game. It’s far better when you’re experiencing it rather than actually playing it.

There’s a slightly strange cyclical relationship between game and its conclusion. The ending – what Harry Mason and, by extension, the player are attempting to discover for the duration – turns out to be largely unimportant. As far as Shattered Memories is concerned it’s the journey that counts, though it would be impossible to deny that an integral part of said journey is based around inching closer and closer to the ‘truth’ of the ending. The game’s real strength comes from making you guess what exactly is going on in the perpetually creepy town, and whether it’s all part of Harry’s imagination or if there really is some malevolent force out to get him and steal his daughter.

It occasionally segues into ‘nightmare’ sequences where Harry is forced to avoid nameless, faceless monsters and manoeuvre his way to an exit. These moments barely cause any tension as, if you succumb to the nasties, you merely respawn at the start of the sequence and give it another run. It succeeds in making you feel uncomfortable by painting a town outside of its nightmare sequences where nothing ever feels right. The effect is enhanced by showing you competent cutscenes depicting a well-portrayed world: this new Silent Hill isn’t disconcerting because of technical limitations or a set of dodgy actors. It’s creepy by design.

IN LIMITED SUPPLY
Horror contemporaries Resident Evil 5 and Dead Space create tension by limiting your ammo supply. This isn’t ever scary in actual combat, however, as the player is too occupied in action to think about it. The anxiety comes from the moments after and before battles, where you know you don’t have enough bullets to get by and approach every new area with trepidation. It’s this feeling that Shattered Memories is trying to play with. The game has no bullets. It has no monsters outside of its telegraphed nightmare sequences and its highs come from tacit moments with multiple potential inferences. The game shifts itself ever so slightly around the choices of its players and the subtle effects add the finishing touches of bizarre on a quest to find out what on Earth is actually going on.

Harry never feels like an active participant in the discord. He’s rooted in the centre of the tale, but seems to be insulated from all the game’s dramatic actions: you turn up at an area, have a look about with the clever WiiMote flashlight controls and decide everything about the place is all screwed up and maybe, just maybe, the next waypoint will give you some answers. Then it all goes a bit nightmarish, throws in a couple of ‘gamey’ puzzles and meanders about for a bit before letting you get back to soaking up the atmosphere and trying to figure out the story.

It’s an interesting one, let down by some major design flaws but, as an experience, it’s definitely something that feels unique. It’s an acquired taste if there ever was one, but it’s about as close as we’re ever going to get to seeing some of the design ideologies – creating action without guns and atmosphere without shock horror – explored in low-profile indie games attempted in a mainstream Western release. Shattered Memories evoked some of the same feelings of dread I got from Pathologic, for instance, but even then they’re both so unique it feels wrong to try and group them together. Jim Sterling would almost definitely hate it.

It’s worth a go for that alone, really, but there’s also an excellent twist at the end. By Martin Gaston