Silent Hill Book of Memories is THE WORST Game Ever Made

I'm so happy I didn't pay for this game.  I'm "happy" that it was given to me for free via my PS+ subscription on my Vita before Sony stopped making that a thing.  For a long time I thought that Silent Hill: Homecoming was the worst Silent Hill but this thing really steals this shit show like nothin' else.  But not only is it easily the worst Silent Hill game it is quite possibly the worst video game ever made BAR NONE.  Worse than Hydlide, worse than Action 52, worse than any game you could possibly ever mention.

The story, what little of it I've bothered to pay attention to, is about a guy who gets a book of memories.  The book is sort of like a Death Note but it comes pre written with everything that's happened to you up to that point.  You are then free to change the contents and the book will bend reality to fit whatever it is you wrote in it.  It's actually, in a non-Silent Hill setting, not a bad idea for a plot but that combined with the fact it's told almost entirely through poorly written notes and poorly voiced audio clips makes it completely uninteresting.

Game play wise Book of Memories is a hack and slash game with random dungeons.  Think Diablo but instead of having a huge budget it was made by a team that seem to have been paid about 32p and given a single tube of Pringles to share.  You start by making an incredibly generic looking character and picking a "gift", which ends up doing fucking nothing and then hacking your way through a bunch of dungeons until you reach a boss.  Rinse and repeat until you finish all the worlds.

The combat is clunky, unsatisfying and lacks any challenge whatsoever.  Part of the lack of challenge comes from the fact that your stats and gear don't actually mean ANYTHING.  The only stat that matters is strength and MAYBE if you want to make the game even easier on yourself, throw a few points into vitality.  Strength does the obvious thing of making you hit harder and Vit makes your first aid kits heal for more and makes your character harder to hit.  Couple this with the enemy AI being dumber than a pile of rocks and you've got one really tedious game.  Assuming that you have working fingers and you're more than 6 months old, the only enemies you MIGHT die to are the Bogeymen (From Downpour) because he's got a heal, and an AOE ground pound that takes 70% of your life and the Insane Cancer's (3) that explode when they die and if they hit it does about 90% damage.

The absolute worst part of this game though is the sound design.  There's no point during play you won't be either extremely annoyed or cringing so hard that your body turns inside out.  Go and look up an old game called Dark Castle, either play it yourself or watch the AVGN episode of it or something, but Homecoming sounds almost EXACTLY like that.

This is hands down, the worst game ever made.  The development team behind it should be ashamed.  I don't know diddly jack shit about video game development outside of making text adventures with Python and I could probably shit out a better game in a week doing everything by myself.  The worst part is that it tries to worm itself into the series by changing the character motivations from the first few games but thinking about it just makes me too mad but there's plenty of YouTube content out there that explains that side of it.

If you ever see it on sale, run, run and never look back

The Positives of PT

If you have me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter you might have noticed that I've been raging about PT (Playable Teaser) for the last few days.  Rightly fucking so too because while PT wasn't terrible it just wasn't Silent Hill.  As a stand alone horror game it was fairly effective but since they slapped Silent Hill on the title then it has to be held to a certain standard which I think right now it doesn't meet.

But maybe I should lower the rage gauge for a few moments and have a bit more of an optimistic outlook on this.  First of all, despite all of the failings of PT it's so much better than basically any Silent Hill game shat out by Konami and the Tomm Hulett retard squad in recent years.  I'd be pretty pissed off if I was Tomm because he spent so many years making failed SH game after failed SH game and now Kojima rolls up and makes a DEMO that everyone is saying is the next best thing.  At the very least PT exposed just how much of a talentless shithead Tomm was.  Good riddance.

Now I raged a little bit about Kojima and how he doesn't get Silent Hill or whatever but if you just back up a moment, it's fucking Kojima!  This man is one of the industry greats who's created some of the best games fucking EVER.  If you just ignore "Silent Hills" for a minute and realise that Kojima is behind this damn thing, at least we are guaranteed something that plays well and looks really good.  Even doing just that will be a damn sight better than everything else we've had up to now.

It's pretty clear to see that Kojima does care about the project too.  If there's one thing Kojima is good at it's emotion and detail which is EXACTLY what Silent Hill needs to be effective.  Kojima is also very much aware of his own weaknesses which is probably why he's teamed up with del Toro who's an extremely talented guy and will be easily able to cook up something pretty effective at the very least.

I've also heard a rumor that Kojima is trying to get members of Team Silent on board or at the very least asking them for advice.  If this is true and the original Team Silent are involved or at least helping Kojima with the project then maybe there is a little bit of room for some excitement.

I desperately want all my rage and anger to be horribly misplaced.  I WANT Kojima to give me a big fat slap in the face, the middle finger and show me just how awesome he can make a Silent Hill game.  PT and all the dicksucking on twitter that went with it had me extremely concerned and upset but I'm going to ignore the idiots and put some faith in the talent behind the project. 

I guess I'm very nervously boarding the hype train.

Silent Hill Revelations

Oh man.....

Just what the fuck......

I've seen some pretty bad movies in my time.  I've also seen some really bad video game movies in my time, but this, THIS takes the cake.  When you make a movie of a video game SO BAD that you make Uwe Boll look like a cinematic genius, you have huge problems.

If I was to try and list off all the things that were wrong with this movie I'd probably end up with a list so large that if you printed it on toilet paper the entire city of London would be able to wipe their arses for a week on that one roll.  But the problems can be summed up with bad characters, nonsensical plot and an abundance of "why?" syndrome.

Lets start with the bad characters thing.  The movie claimed that it was going to sort of follow Silent Hill 3, so you have characters like Heather, Harry, Vincent etc. but  the problem is that NONE of these characters, NOT ONE! are how they are in the games.  Heather acts like a fucking  arsehole 100% of the time, Harry isn't dead, and Vincent has been reduced to a pretty boy love interest for Heather.  There are way more problems with the characters than just that, but those three make up the unholy trinity.

The problem is that this movie is so NOT Silent Hill in any way, shape or form that these characters are just reduced to name drops just to give this piece of shit some kind of tenuous link to the Silent Hill.  Even the monsters in this thing are a load of shit with not a single one being remotely scary and whats even worse is that you barely fucking see them.  As shit as the first Silent Hill movie was at least Colin the toilet guy was sort of Silent Hill-esque and Pyramid Head wasn't just acting as evil fairground operator (although he really shouldn't be there at all)

So next is the plot, and I swear to god this is going to be the hardest thing I've ever written on this blog because the plot basically doesn't exist.  The premise for the movie is that Harry and Heather are on the run from the cult because the cult want Heather back to do....something......so they kidnap Harry and Heather goes to Silent  Hill and then some shit happens for some reason involving Not Leonard so she can get a magic quest item to do.......things........then she hugs her evil half to death and Pyramid Head has a fight with a monster from The Suffering.  The End.

There is the chance I missed a few things because I was to busy making notes of everything in this film that pissed me off, but I know 3 or 4 other people who have seen this movie and they all say that the plot is all over the place and makes zero sense.  It's actually rather hard to explain why it just doesn't work, like at all.  It's like the narrative just spins its wheels in place for 1 hour and 20 mins then jets off and does doughnuts for about 5 mins and then spins and crashes into your favourite pet shop where you were going to buy that cute little puppy dog, so then you go home and cry into a bottle of whiskey until eventually you have no choice but fellate a gun barrel but your spirit lingers just long enough for you to realise that no one bothered to come to your funeral because they all disowned you after watching this FUCKING GODDAMN CRAP MOVIE

Sorry, went off on my own nonsensical tangents.

This has already gotten pretty long but the final point is the whole "Why?" syndrome thing I was talking about.  Throughout this film, pretty much the only thing you will be thinking is "Why?"

Why is Pyramid Head operating a merry-go-round?
Why did they bother to reference this, that and the other?
Why is Heather so fucking stupid and unlikable?
Why did they have that pants on head retarded nurse scene?
Why did Pyramid Head suddenly start being a good guy? Why? Why? Why? Why? FUCKING. GODDAMN. WHY?!

The list goes on, but these aren't little nitpicks that can be ignored in the face of an enjoyable movie, they are big glaring problems in the writing that detract from an already shit film and I didn't even mention the bigger problems in the above list.

So yeah, that's it, I'm done.  Remembering this movie just makes me upset, and I didn't even touch upon the thing in the ending that made me want to jump off my 4 storey apartment building.  Just don't watch it, ever.  If you did watch it and you thought it was good, you are wrong.  Please give all your money to my charity and remove yourself from life.

I'm aware this is a long one, so here is a too long; didn't read version on YouTube

Survival Horror making a comeback!?

Survival Horror has been a bit dead for a long long time.

Konami, with the help of Tomm Hulett, has been ruining Silent Hill
Resident Evil turned into a series of bland action games with grotesque monsters
Project Zero (Or Fatal Frame if you're American) hasn't had a main series game outside of Japan since 2005, and nothing since 2008 in Japan
Alone in the Dark was murdered and no one gave a fuck

the list goes on and on...

But then some good things have been happening.  ZombieU came out on the WiiU, which I have yet to play, and while it doesn't look particularly scary, it looks plenty survivaly and with permadeath hanging over you I imagine it would keep you at least somewhat on edge.

On top of that, we have Tomm Hulett leaving Konami, so he's not going to be making any more fucking awful Silent Hill games, so maybe the next person to step up will breathe some life back into things.

Then I came across this article on IGN!

http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/01/31/resident-evil-will-return-to-its-roots

Which is basically a big article of Masachika Kawata saying that Resident Evil needs to go back and stop sucking ass, read it.

Well, nothing concrete has happened yet, but these are good signs if you ask me.  In the meantime we have the Amnesia sequel to look forward too, so maybe after that we can get decent horror games once again

Tomm Hulett Leaves Konami!

Look at him....look at that smug, bald face of his, god damnit I hate him so much.  But today we have good news!

Tomm Hulett has left Konami! Break out the champagne glasses and raise 'em high! This is a great day!  For those that haven't seen my previous posts describing how much I hate this man, he is the guy that basically ran Silent Hill into the ground. 

Thanks to this man, and a bunch of people who must have masters degrees in missing the point, Silent Hill went from being one of the greatest Survival Horror series into a chain of shitty not scary action games that even the most brain dead gamer wouldn't find entertaining.  Hell, his latest abomination was a fucking Silent Hill themed dungeon crawl type thing that I've not played yet because I refuse to give Konami money for that.  It might actually be quite good as a game, but the fact that you had the nerve to slap Silent Hill's name all over it just to generate sales really gets under my skin.

Still, not content with just ruining Silent Hill, he's moved on to WayFoward to probably go and ruin something else.  He's gonna have to make something pretty fuckin' spectacular to turn my, and many other fans of Silent Hill, opinions around.  Good luck to you Tomm, maybe now that you're not focused on destroying gaming history, you might be able to produce something worth playing.

Right now, I hate you so much I wrote a Haiku about it

Fuck off Tomm Hulett
You are bad at making games
I hate you so much

Bullshit #9: The Silent Hill HD Collection

Today we have something SO extremely bullshit, that it's caused free game Friday to be cancelled, so if you were expecting a free game this week, go tell Konami about it!

Now I've talked about some shit on this blog, but this takes the 2012 award for most bullshit thing to happen all year.  Now before we get into it, the bullshit about this game comes on 3 levels.  The first level of bullshit is the "this sucks now but it may be sorted one day" bullshit.  The second level is the "I can't believe you fucking did that" bullshit.  The most bullshit level of bullshit is the "I want to stab you in the brain with an icepick" level of bullshit, so let's address each one, one at a time.

So bullshit level 1 (a.k.a. Sucks now but it may be sorted level), is the number of technical bugs that are involved in this game.  The game glitches, freezes, slows down and stuff bugs out all over the place.  The sound doesn't work properly, when you fire guns, the sound just glitches all over the place and the the shell casings play twice or even 8 or 9 times in quick succession.  Even worse than that is  the fog, oh god is it FUCKING AWFUL.

There is a picture that was shown to Masahiro Ito (the art guy) before the game came out, and it still looked like that after release, you can see the goddamn floating bit of rope because they were using fog to make up for any limitations like that.  A google search or a youtube search can get you all the other weird fog glitches, and the fucking fog was one of the most important parts of the games look and feel, if you can't get that right WHY IN THE FUCK would you even bother to release.  That's not even all the problems as well, I've not even mentioned the mixed up eye texture (google that one to have your mind blown on just how bad this remake job was)

But you know what? These problems are all technical and can be sorted with patches.  In fact, there was a patch that helped with a few of these problems, but I think there are still a shitton of issues.  So even if you set aside the game not working properly, lets move on to the deeper layers of bullshit.

So level 2 (a.k.a. I can't believe you fucking did that) is the changes to the voice acting and general design of the game.

The changes to the design of the town are pretty bad.  One thing that really helped the atmosphere of the game was just how dirty everything looked, even when you weren't in a nightmare, but for some reason, probably for the purpose of making it all "HD" and shit, it just looks boring and uninteresting.  But apart from the art being changed, the voices were changed and THIS is the biggest offender.  It's not that the voice acting is bad on its own, they gave solid performances, but when you put those performances into a Silent Hill game, they are fucking muffgabage.  Team Silent carefully picked its team of actors to give the characters a certain feel, and the new performances just shat all over that.  Finally, the way they up scaled the scenes is fucking stupid.  They put these weird borders on everything, most notably the scene in the hotel where you watch the tape of Jame's wife, where they put this really stupid fucking TV border round the whole thing and it crops out half the fucking video.  Whoever decided that is a wanker and I want to beat him with a bag of frozen bread until he gets a concussion.

The final level of bullshit (a.k.a Stab you in the brain with an icepick) comes entirely from this man.

This is Tomm Hulett, he works for Konami as what I think is the guy in charge of Silent Hill nowadays, and is the grand master of missing the point.  I don't like this man, he is a stain on the gaming industry and his bravado is offensive to basically anyone who has to listen to it.  He claims that nobody loves Silent Hill as much as he does, and has said other things like the gameplay in the old games being shit, or the voice acting being bad etc.

Basically, his very existence in Konami is a giant middle finger to the original Team Silent.  This man remade Silent Hill 2 and 3, not because he wanted to bring these great games to a new age, but because he thought he could "improve" them and get rich and famous off the back of someone else's  work.  The funny thing is, the "improvements" this scumbag made to these games has just enraged fans and to be quite honest, the fact he felt like he needed to make improvements at all is really offensive to the original Japanese team and the only real way for him to apologise for this "remake" is to get on his knees and cut his own stomach open.

Fuck this remake
Fuck Tomm Hulett (Book of Origins looks shit too by the way)
and fuck everything that western developers like him have done to this series

God. Damnit.

Note
I'm linking to a really good channel on youtube called TwinPerfect.  These 3 guys did a series on Silent Hill called The Real Silent Hill Experience, and I recommend that you watch it, if you're a fan or even just to learn about what you're missing out on.
http://www.youtube.com/user/TwinPerfectChannel