Since I ended up playing two vaguely horror games in the last month or two, I figured it would make sense to review both games at once. Save for a few things (damn grappling,) both games are very similar. Silent Hill: Shattered Memories the latest game in what has been the second most popular horror game series out there, and personally my favorite horror series out there. This one is an innovative new game that retells the original game while doing away with the old cultist and demon storylines in favor of a new psychological emphasis. Deadly Premonitions, on the other hand, is basically a Resident Evil 4 clone with a Twin Peaks-esque setting. The sad thing is that I arguably liked the latter game, a budget title where 50,000 sales at $20 a pop is considered a triumph, the most. Let's compare the issues:
Graphics: Of course Shattered Memories wins this one, despite it being a Wii title and Deadly Premonitions being an Xbox 360 title. For all the arguments about next gen graphics, it ends up not mattering much when the final result on the 360 still looks like Playstation 2 or Dreamcast game. But again, it's a budget title. And while the graphics aren't good, they do work. Most of the game's locations have a handful of textures, true, and the normal character models look awful. But the main characters look emotive and detailed. But you can't beat a nation corrupted into a frozen wasteland and sickly near-humans hunting you down with little to no remorse.
Music and Soundtrack: At this point, the themes of both games start to diverge. Shattered Memories is a grim, unrelenting horror game with chance for brevity (save for the bonus ending involving UFOs.) Deadly Premonitions, on the other hand, loves to inflict mood whiplash. In the first hour, you witness a grisly murder, spend some fun with a crazy FBI agent who psychoanalyzes cartoon characters, shoot up an army of zombies, and have a light breakfast with a funny, hearing-impaired old lady.
Both soundtracks match the theme. Like every Silent Hill game, the music is ambient and meant to inspire dread. It's rare that you want to listen to the music outside of a game (save for Silent Hill 3,) but you remember it while you're playing. Deadly Premonitions meanwhile alternates between ominous music and genuine horror sequences with a catchy whistling theme that wouldn't be out of place on the Andy Griffith show. I'd have to give this one to Deadly Premonitions, simply because some of the songs, like that whistling theme and the game's main theme, won't EVER leave my brain AGAIN.
Controls: This was probably my biggest problem with both games. Deadly Premonition was just pedestrian, more unfinished than anything. That's unsurprising, since it is based on the same mechanics as Resident Evil 4 and its many clones. Aiming at enemies was often a chore, and there were plenty of stupid mechanics. For example, if you open a door, you take a good 20 seconds to carefully poke your way through, but you can just slam through if you're already running when you open it. And figuring out the game's inventory management, let alone flipping items between your inventory to and from the toolbox, was a massive headache. Changing weapons mid-fight in particular is impossible. The only serious complaints are in the action sequences, which appear all the damn place. During chase sequences, you have to use action commands to MOVE.
But it was far more usable than Shattered Memories, which often pissed me off. In normal circumstances, running around and investigating things works fine. The game uses the Wii Remote very cleverly with puzzles as you simulate turning around containers, rotating objects, and unlocking doors manually. In the action sequences, however, the game plummets to a frustrating standstill. When enemies grab you, you have to move both parts of the Wii controller in one direction. The action is jerky, uncomfortable, and HIGHLY inaccurate. Nothing is worse than trying to drive an enemy off you before you die and finding yourself completely unable to do so. Actually, no, there is something much worse than that; getting multiple enemies off of you by trying to drive them off one at a time with more enemies leaping onto you as you stand there, stunned and dying.
Ugh, I'm getting angry just thinking about it. Advantage Deadly Premonitions by default.
Game play: I'll give this one to Deadly Premonitions as well. Most of that is just do to the complexity and ambition of this little game that could. When not dealing with the action sequences, which includes about a half-dozen enemies and even some bosses, you have to puzzle around a mystery, solve puzzles, and just explore the strange town the game takes place in. There are 50 side-quests, all involving helping the local townsfolk, and they include winning quizzes, solving puzzles, exploring hidden locations in the town, simple driving sequences, and even fishing or playing a game of darts. It could take anywhere from 20-40 hours to beat the game.
Shattered Memories is part of a series where the game play experience is not the point. You usually play a poor schmuck incapable of real combat and forced to endure horrible monsters in hell. Shattered Memories is even more like this, with the action sequences clearly separated from the rest of the exploration (most Silent Hill games have both a normal, "foggy" world and a much worse nightmare world, but both have monsters.) And even when you have to deal with monsters, you can't fight them, only run from them. Fleeing invincible monsters is a terrifying experience. The first time. Once they catch you a few times and you die and have to continue, it just gets annoying. And this is beyond the control problems I mentioned above. These escape sequences are just annoying. Quite often, you don't know where you are even supposed to go, so you wander through a quasi-labyrinth only to find yourself going in circles, and now the enemies are on you, and you die and have to try again. Or you are going the right way but there's an enemy in your path, so it catches you and the others get on you while you're stunned. Or, and this is the really frustrating part, you are just running down a long straightaway and they catch you because they're simply faster and you can't do a thing to stop it. You have some options to slow them down, but they're not very useful. Sometimes you can knock something over behind you, which helps for a few seconds, or you can hide someplace, on the rare occasion you can even find one while you're racing through rooms at top speed. Your only real weapon is a road flare that keeps enemies at bay, but you're lucky to find one in every chase sequence.
Outside of the action sequences, the game is more intriguing, despite the total lack of actual threats. But there aren't many to them, and you'll probably find you can beat the game in six hours. That might actually be an advantage, given the nature of the game's plot and theme, but Deadly Premonition nonetheless deserves its victory here.
Story and Theme: Clearly here is where the Shattered Memories team focused their efforts, and it really shows. Outside of the no-combat combat, the game's main gimmick is its psychological experience, demonstrated by an actual therapist who analyzes a series of questions and challenges as if you were the main character. The game itself alters to reflect your responses, with other characters completely changing their personalities to react to you. The game has multiple endings which reflect what, based on your actions, the main character is like.
Deadly Premonitions opts for the more scatter shot approach I mentioned before. With all the eccentric nuts running around, most of the game's interactions are hilarity or just baffling. But then when the central murder plot re-appears, the game gets deathly serious again. The final few chapters are especially shocking. It reminds me a bit of an old Joss Whedon comment (Yes, yes, I know...) To paraphrase, you can't just start with the horror and misery and death before your audience even has a chance to get close to the characters. You have to make them enjoy the characters and the world they live in. Then when you inflict suffering on your creations, it does that much better a job of ripping your audiences' hearts out. And the game manages that quite nicely.
But the innovation of Shattered Memories lets me declare this one the winner. Both are fun head trips, though, that answer some to most of your questions but leave enough mysteries ambiguous that you have to think about the truth well after you're done with the game.
Grappling: It might as well be a major category now. Every damn game, especially ones with horror themes, use it now. Deadly Premonitions wins, because you only get grappled if you fail to deal with an enemy already, and many don't have grapple attacks. With Shattered Memories, the only attack enemies have is grappling, and you will get grappled in every or nearly every action sequence. It went past frustrating into infuriating very quickly.
So despite having better graphics and a better story, Shattered Memories just didn't intrigue me the way Deadly Premonitions did. Granted, I did beat the former game twice, but doing so took me about a third of one completely playthrough of Deadly Premonitions. I won't even say that Deadly Premonitions is the better game, but its weirdness and innovation did a better job of canceling out the bad parts compared to Shattered Memories. Besides, I like fighting horrific abominations! I miss the little guys.
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