Condemned: Criminal Origins

The Short


Pros
- Gritty, violent fusion of horror and criminal investigation
- Strikes a decent balance between fighting and investigating
- Combat is first-person melee, something unique for a modern setting
- Story is genuinely creepy and compelling
- Areas are dark, tense, and scary
- Wide variety of weapons with varying stats at your disposal

Cons
- Areas can get a little repetitive, especially at the beginning
- Graphics haven't dated particularly well
- Some parts of the game are so dark you can't see anything
- Certain barriers require specific weapons to get through, which can be annoying
- You kill a lot of hobos without repercussion. Does the city just not care?

Get ready to beat down some homeless

The Long

Condemned: Criminal Origins is an interesting game. Created by Monolith, the dudes who made Alien vs Predator 2, Blood, and F.E.A.R., you could say these guys know there way around first-person shooters. But Condemned isn't a shooter, not really. While it does have guns, Condemned is a first-person melee horror game with some extra CSI-esque detective work. It's a brutal, gritty, and often disturbing game that sinks its claws into you and doesn't let go. 

Crime investigation is fun, though at times knowing what to look for can be frustrating

Detective Ethan Thomas is having a crap day. Hot on the trail of a serial killer called the "Match-Maker," another serial killer (creatively titled "Serial Killer X") shows up to the party. After Serial Killer X kills two cops and Ethan is framed for it, he finds himself both running from the cops and hunting down the Serial Killer X in an attempt to clear his name and stop the murders. It's a crazy game that starts fast and just gets wilder, with plenty of creepy-weird things to keep the story moving forward.

Also, clearing his name apparently involves killing lots and lots of homeless people.

With crowbars. Or anything else he can find that causes blunt-force trauma. 

While the game tries to give some justifiable reasoning for Ethan murdering what must be hundreds of hobos (they are on some sort of drug that makes them super aggressive or something), it just didn't fly with me. It's like the whole Nathan Drake thing in Uncharted: how am I supposed to root for this "good guy" when he's a psychopath? Other games usually give me at least a little justification (it's during a war, your character is actually a psychopath, you are killing wild animals instead of people), but Ethan's bloodlust and total lack of diplomacy is unnerving. Which also makes the "finishing moves" he can perform all the more weird. Ethan is supposed to be a straight cop who got framed, but I have my doubts.

The gameplay is a mix of two things: first-person melee weapon combat and CSI investigations. The first-person combat is actually pretty good, if difficult. Ethan has a block ability, but unlike in most games you can't just hold the block button and magically become immune to all hits. Holding the block only makes him hold his weapon up for a second before pulling it down again (and you can use this to "fake out" enemies, and they'll do it to you too). In order to block you have to have some dang precise timing, or else you'll be taking a hit. Same goes for hitting people. You can power-attack through blocks (and the enemies can do it in return), but during the wind-up you are exposed for a moment. It makes fights a sort of delicate dance, with both you and your enemy being on very level ground. Every fight is difficult and requires your full attention, even when you have full health, which makes the game a challenge from start to finish.

It can, however, get unfair when you have multiple enemies ganging up on you, since you are ill-equipped to fight more than one at a time. Luring them away actually works pretty well, but it did lead to several very frustrating deaths.

You also get to play detective.

The investigation portions are a good break from the continuous, never-ending waves of hobos that want your blood. Essentially you are put in an area and are tasked with finding evidence that will eventually help you prove your innocence. You are given a handfull of tools, and it's up to you to figure out which ones are best for the job. It's sort of a puzzle game during these segments, which is kind of cool since they mix well with the horror element. What isn't cool is the lack of direction. Some you'll figure out quickly, others can actually be obscure stumpers. I'd like to think I'm pretty smart, but I got stuck a couple of times not being certain what I was looking for, and without any hints that was straight up frustrating. They streamlined this in the second game (which worked out better), but for now these are either easy enough that you enjoy them, or obscure and lead to frustration.

You start going sort of crazy, too, and seeing all sorts of messed up stuff.

But what about the horror? This was branded as a horror game from the start, is there anything truly scary about this game? Well, I'm going to say "sort of," and offer an explanation.

Condemned is tense. Not since Resident Evil 4 have I been so worried about what might be around a corner or hiding in the darkness. The game is really dark (in terms of lighting and tone), which means often you'll go to an area only to have a crazed hobo come screaming out at you from pitch darkness. The game's lack of music and adherence to total darkness and silence make these encounters nerve-wracking, and since the enemies can be so difficult you are constantly afraid of what might be around the corner. 

So it's tense. But is it scary? Well...a little. I guess. It does do a lot with its environments (though these scary encounters are bordered by a lot of "same" looking places), and the visions help with the weirdness and creepiness. But if I had to be completely honest I'd say it's more a suspenseful game than a scary one. Scary games get under your skin, give you nightmares, make you wish you weren't seeing the things you were seeing. Suspenseful games have you worried for what might kill you or come next, but once you turn the game off you aren't still thinking about it. Condemned has suspense in spades, but it isn't really very scary. Which is fine if that's what you want (I'm all for it), but just keep in mind this is no Silent Hill. 

There are a few guns, but they have very limited ammo. You can flip them around and use them as clubs, though. 

A few other problems drag the experience down. Often you'll find barriers, be they doors or boards or something like it, that require specific melee weapons to break down. This feels particularly "gamey" to me and really breaks the immersion. Having to backtrack (slowly, because Ethan would lose a footrace with a turtle) across an area to find the required item that you know is around somewhere because this is a game and it wouldn't let you get stuck isn't fun, it's tedious. Why can't he just use the metal pipe to force the door open? Whey does he have to get a crowbar? 

The environments also tend to get very repetitive very fast. They do well with darkness to keep the suspense up, as well as throwing a few unique creepy touches along the way, but as a whole a lot of this game just looks the same. It's very gray, very dark, and very similar. It does mix up a little near the end, but for the most part I didn't really feel like I was making much progress because every room and stairway looked so similar. 

The graphics have also not aged very well. This game was a showcase for the Xbox 360 as a release title, but all these years later we see time hasn't been kind to it. Character models look a little weird and "plasticy," effects like fire are weak, the flashlight and lighting isn't all that great, but the biggest offender is (again) the environments. Monolith tries and does alright for the time I suppose, but most of the walls look like the same uniform texture, and since it's that bland "stone gray" for 80% of the game I got really tired of looking at Condemned's ugly face. 

For the time, though, this game looked pretty good. 

Condemned: Criminal Origins is still totally worth playing, as is its sequel. It does something very few games have tried: make a modern-setting melee-based first-person horror game with detective elements and a billion hobos. For that alone (and the fact it's extremely intense) you should check it out. Just be sure and sort of squint a little; those graphics aren't going to upgrade themselves.

If you can grab it for $10-$15 I'd say you got a decent deal. It's still a fun horror game despite its age, and the sequel Condemned 2 is also pretty good. 

Three out of five stars. 

Silent Hill Homecoming

The Short


Pros
- Controls are vastly improved; tank controls are gone
- Combat is improved, which is good in a way (more on that later)
- Soundtrack is fantastic, as usual
- Many monsters, especially bosses, are horrific and disgusting
- Story actually sort of makes sense
- Graphics are pretty good
- Transformation to "Nightmare World" are some of the best looking in the series

Cons
- Much more of an action game than any other game in the series
- Flashlight sucks; swear they did this to make it "scarier"
- While the story makes sense, that doesn't stop it from being stupid
- Abundance of gore and disgusting kills makes this feel more like Saw than Silent Hill
- While it tries to emulate the original feel of the Japanese-made Silent Hill games, it feels more like they only understood it on a rudimentary level
- Recycles monsters from previous Silent Hill games, completely missing the point of some (read: why is Pyramid Head in this game?)
- Not scary, actually gets boring, and all the scares are corny "jump" scares
- Ending is determined by completely unrelated binary decisions which can accidentally get you the UFO ending on your first playthrough (added by Paul)

We are again taking a trip to Silent Hill

The Long


Silent Hill Homecoming is the second Silent Hill game made by an American designer rather than a Japanese one, and the first not on a handheld to completely drop the numbers from the title. I remember the team Konami hired to make this game frequently pointed out how they "got" the Silent Hill franchise, as sort of a comfort to fans who were worried about the direction the series has been taking over the past few years. And while it's true that some of the more superficial elements of the Silent Hill series remain intact here (foggy cities, nightmare world, nasty-weird monsters), at it's core Silent Hill Homecoming fails on nearly every level at being a Silent Hill game.

The story actually makes sense this time around. You play as Alex Shepherd (no relation to Commander Shepherd of the Mass Effect series), a soldier who is discharged and sent back home to Shephard's Glen. He goes back to find his brother and father are missing, his mom has gone kind of crazy, and the town is covered in a mysterious fog. Of course nasty monsters are involved, and eventually he ends up in the titular Silent Hill, where he discovers some pretty crazy (if somewhat predictable) things about his past and who he actually is.

Like I said, the story makes sense, and isn't marred by bad translation or anything like that, but that doesn't make it particularly interesting or exciting. The twists are dull, the deaths of main characters have no impact, and I swear you spend a good chunk of your time at the beginning running around and talking to people with nothing scary happening at all. Again, Silent Hill 2 did a lot of this, but Silent Hill 2 also invoked a sense of dread from the very beginning. Homecoming doesn't pull it off, so rather than being "quiet yet tense" moments, most of them are just "silent but boring" moments.

The monster design is a bit "paint-by-numbers" from previous games, but I thought most of them were fine anyway

That actually brings me to the biggest problem with Silent Hill Homecoming, right up front: it isn't scary. At all. It isn't even intense (like Resident Evil 4 was; that game wasn't scary, but it was certainly a tense rush), it's just...dull. Environments, which have always been the biggest cause of scares in Silent Hill games, are boring and unfrightening. If you compared the way the Nightmare world looked in Silent Hill 3 and then at the one in Silent Hill Homecoming (the above screenshot is in Nightmare world), the difference is stark. Gone are the oddly placed wheelchairs, the nasty barbed-wire wrapped around random objects, the strange, twitching monsters in the walls. Instead we get a boring, different-hued version of the regular world. Bland. Considering they now have the power of a more advance generation of consoles, the high-def Silent Hill games could have had some of the most grotesque, twisted, and horrifyingly gritty backgrounds out of the entire series. Instead they go the lazy route, like the developers sort of understood what made the past games good and copied it in the laziest way possible.

They also ripped a lot of stuff (like this enemy) from the Silent Hill movie, which isn't a good thing to draw inspiration from, guys. 

This idea of this being an outsider's interpretation of a Silent Hill game is another massive pitfall. As stated before, it does the Silent Hill 2 thing where there are massive bouts of silence and darkness, with only a few creepy scenes to keep you on edge. This worked in the older games because it successfully combined several primal human fears: being alone, the dark, and being helpless. In Homecoming, you are only rarely alone (it always seems people are tagging along with you for stuff), you never feel helpless because of the new combat (more on that in a second), and...I guess it's dark. But it's a cheap dark. The flashlight in this game is the worst flashlight ever made. In some attempt to bump up scares, they made it so it hardly illuminates everything. Ok, listen, let me tell you what is scary. Having a high-beam flashlight (like in Silent Hill 2 and Silent Hill 3) but at the cost of not seeing anything or hardly anything outside it's beam. That means you are frantically, constantly having to turn to check corners, behind you, and anything else you might have missed. It's that contrast between seeing everything and seeing nothing that freaks you out, because what you are seeing you are paying for with a massive amount of darkness everywhere else.

Having everything be dark isn't scary. The effect is lost. You don't feel like you are actually in the dark, and if you can't see anything it isn't scary. So yeah, you fail Homecoming. Bring a good light back.

The "nurse" design is also ripped from the film, and it made no sense there either. They were a representation of James' suppressed sexuality, a mockery of it. Why are they sporting cleavage and leg for Alex? 

But the biggest kill of tension or any form of fear is the combat. Let me get one thing clear: the combat in the Silent Hill games has always been awful. Your characters have no idea how to fight, handle a gun or a weapon, and it shows. Having to fight down enemies is cumbersome and difficult (which, when combined with Tank controls, makes it even harder). HOWEVER, you may note that while I've complained about bad Tank controls, I never complained about the previous games' combat. This is because it was supposed to be difficult. In all those games, it was a more viable solution to run away (which the excellent Silent Hill: Frozen Memories actually got by eliminating combat entirely) from these monsters, which again added to that helpless feel. When you were really down to the wire you'd have to try and kill the enemies, but I usually spent most time trying to not be noticed and fleeing from the monstrosities. It was really scary knowing there was stuff out there I couldn't kill (which is also why bosses in Silent Hill 3 made no sense).

Alex is an ex-soldier, which means he is well equipped and well versed in combat. The system emulates a Zelda-esque formula of locking on and dodging to fight enemies. He can even block attacks. So, basically, they made this an action game (much like Resident Evil 4 did), only without making the enemies harder. Alex has very steady aim (and the game lets you actually aim with a target, unlike previous entries where your character auto-aims and you pray) and ammo is surprisingly plentiful. So I'm never scared of enemies (even nasty bosses) because my guy is a walking badass. Way to kill the mood.

I actually think the bosses look pretty creepy, and are some of the best designs in the game. 

As a final "they thought they got it but they didn't" example: this game is loaded with depraved, gory moments. Now let me get something clear: the previous Silent Hill games had plenty of disturbing imagery and bloody...blood. But it never resorted to having a dude literally cut in half right in front of you when you were strung up, a woman stretched until she snapped on a Saw-esque trap, or having enemies spray blood when you killed them (though the fact that your weapons leave damaging cuts is cool, I guess, but it sort of doesn't fit with the series' past). While the other games were extremely subtle, Homecoming is a punch in the face. While the other games never glorified in their gore and violence (in fact almost all the main characters abhorred what they had to do to survive), the very nature and design of Homecoming is set up so that you cheer with every bloody smack. The feel is completely wrong, for both a Silent Hill game and a survival horror game in general, and it, again, completely kills any tension or mood that might be had.


Silent Hill 3's mirror room is probably one of the scariest, creepiest, nightmare-fueled scenes I have ever seen in a video game. It's done in almost complete silence, with no combat, and as an extremely slow burn. Comparing that to Homecoming is almost impossible; Homecoming's scenes are extremely amateurish in comparison.

And no, I won't link to Silent Hill 3's mirror scene on video, and you shouldn't go looking for it on YouTube, because finding it on accident in the game itself is by far and large the best way to experience it.

What is this, a Silent Hill high school reunion? Why the crap is he here?

As an aside, Pyramid Head is in this game. I shouldn't have to explain why this makes no sense if you read my Silent Hill 2 review, but maybe I will anyway. The enemies in these games have always been twisted to fit the protagonists. More so in Silent Hill 2 than any others, but it still applies for the rest of the games. It also drops a lot of hints that these monsters might be more in their minds than real (Silent Hill 3 does a good job with this) which means each game needs its own unique monsters.

Homecoming apes enemies from almost every other game in the series, including freaking Pyramid Head, whose sole existence in the Silent Hill mythos was to be a representation of everything James in Silent Hill 2 was not. So him being in this game makes no sense at all. The fact that he plays key roles in the story of Homecoming only further accents the fact that the people making this game have no idea how Silent Hill works. 

And look, skinless dogs. That totally fits the Silent Hill world, and hasn't been in any other horror anything ever. 

As a positive point, the graphics are decent (again, especially the boss monsters), though the poor lighting is another knock off its score. The music is excellent as usual, and is probably the only thing really loyal to the source material. While it's a technically competent game, however, high polygon count and bumpmapping doesn't count when your art design sucks, and this is where Silent Hill Homecoming fails. It's just...so boring to look at. And I swear the enemies don't even twitch right.

There's the mandatory wheelchair. I guess this is a real Silent Hill game now. 

Here's the thing: if Silent Hill Homecoming had just marketed itself as an action/horror game and not a Silent Hill game, it might have actually worked. I'm always willing to cut some slack for new horror IPs (there aren't nearly enough), and even ones that are broken I still tend to enjoy playing (see the Saw video game, which is actually pretty good). The controls are fine, the combat plays well, and even though the game isn't very scary they could have made up for it with the action. The problem here is that they had a pedigree to live up to, and they couldn't even begin to approach it.

As it stands it's more like a Chinese bootlegged version of the Silent Hill series rather than an actual entry. If you like horror action games you still will probably enjoy it, just don't think of it as a Silent Hill game. If you want another game in the same vein as the older Silent Hill games, however, you should probably avoid this. It tries its hardest, but in the end it just can't pull it off. If you must have a modern Silent Hill game, try Silent Hill Frozen Memories instead.

If you read the above paragraph and still want to try it, I'd say $10-15 is a fair enough price. Again, there isn't anything particularly broken here fundamentally, it just isn't a great Silent Hill game.

But since it did put "Silent Hill" in its title, it gets judged as one. So it earns two out of five stars. 

Silent Hill 3

The Short


Pros
- Another excellently atmospheric, dark game adhering to the Silent Hill formula
- Direct sequel to the first Silent Hill game
- Heather, a young woman, fits well as a new protagonist for the series
- Improved graphics (particularly the backgrounds/environments) serve to make the game scarier
- "Nightmare" world seems better realized, at least for the first 2/3rds of the game
- The theme park area is my favorite area out of every Silent Hill game
- Voice acting is much improved over Silent Hill 2, and the story actually sort of makes sense...sort of
- Has both a difficulty selector for combat as well as puzzles, if you like your combat light but puzzles difficult
- Perhaps the best soundtrack in the series to date

Cons
- Story loses all the depth that came from Silent Hill 2 in an attempt to be a sequel to Silent Hill
- Can go overboard in its use of blood to try and make things "scarier"
- Ending area is either super dark or super bloody, making the game both hard to see and eliminating most scares
- Controls and combat are still poor
- Bosses are stupid and unnecessary
- While most enemies are excellent, some are stupid, and others are so convoluted you have no idea what they even are

Welcome back to Silent Hill

The Long

I'm not going to hide this: Silent Hill 3 is my favorite Silent Hill game. It was the first one I played to through completion, the first one I played on PC instead of a console, and the first to genuinely be so unnerving I had to put the game down and go to a well-lit location for a few hours. I don't know why this game got under my skin so well (and better so than Silent Hill 2, even), but something about it really freaks me out (even to this day, where I've played through the game at least a half-dozen times), and because of that it's my favorite. 

I can't look at screenshots of the merry-go-round boss/nightmare version because it freaked me out so much when I first played it (and keep in mind, I was like 19 at the time, not a child) that I still have an involuntary reaction of paranoia and fear by just seeing a static picture. The soundtrack disc unnerves me and gives me chills. Seriously, this game messed me up. And that's why I absolutely love it. 

This game gets in your head and won't let you go. 

Silent Hill 3 doesn't stray too far from the Silent Hill formula, aside from one major difference: it doesn't start by putting you in Silent Hill. You actually start in a (surprisingly barren) shopping mall in a different town, moving from it to other various locations (including an office building that is under construction) before finally landing in the town of Silent Hill. Unlike Silent Hill and Silent Hill 2, town exploration is not a major part of this game, Silent Hill 3 instead focusing on keeping you in enclosed, tight locations where it can determine when and what you see and keeping the experience tighter overall. Part of me misses the helplessness and feeling of being completely alone that you get from wandering through the fog of Silent Hill, listening intently on your radio for static (a Silent Hill staple that indicates enemies are nearby), but another part of me welcomes this design choice. By streamlining the experience by making it more linear, it allowed the developers to plan for you in every instance, rather than having you wander off. I think Silent Hill 3 struck a good balance between set areas and city exploration, which means the pace never feels tired (like a few parts in Silent Hill 2 where I had no idea where the heck I was supposed to go).

This game wins the award for having disturbing imagery that is never too "in your face" to lose its impact

The story of Silent Hill 3 isn't worth the analysis it's predecessor's did. While Silent Hill 2 did a masterful job combining enemies and environments into the overarching theme of James' story, Silent Hill 3 is just straight horror, back to the roots. It's never really explained what nightmare world is (the altered version of the normal areas you explore) as relevant to Heather, the main character of Silent Hill 3. The enemies don't follow any particular theme (though you could argue most of them have a phallic look about them, which is the opposite of James mostly fighting enemies with feminine traits) or tie in with the story. It's pretty much just that Silent Hill is a f***ed up up place, and so expect to see awful things.

Heather is drawn into this because she's...actually that's a spoiler. Let's just say a religious cult working out of Silent Hill needs her for something, and a private investigator is helping them in trying to get her to Silent Hill. Heather needs to find out exactly what is going on and why she's being drawn into this mess, which of course means she ends up back at the foggy, demon-filled town. 

Unlike Silent Hill 2, I thought the voice acting in Silent Hill 3 was actually pretty good, and the script was decent as well. Heather in particular is believable as a teenage girl, and while it certainly isn't Oscar worthy or anything, I didn't cringe or roll my eyes nearly as much. It works in service to the game and nothing further, which is all it needed. 

The improved lighting and environments make even the tamest rooms seem sinister

What I think is Silent Hill 3's biggest asset is the improved environments. The places you explored in Silent Hill 2 were creepy and dark, but they weren't as densely stocked as they are in Silent Hill 3. I'm going to assume this was more of a perceived graphical limitation rather than an intended design choice, because the environments were still quite good in Silent Hill 2, but they certainly weren't detailed to the same extent. Silent Hill 3 goes overboard, being one of the best looking PS2 games I've played, with the dynamic shadows being as good as anything that's come out in the recent generation of games. I feel the art direction has also improved (for most of the game, more on that in a minute) for environments, making wandering around feel a lot creepier than it did in Silent Hill 2. The tension is elevated to near-intolerable levels in this game, even just running around the regular world, with its signature combination of "weird" and "unnatural" tipping the scales. 

The places you visit are also the best in the series. An amusement park (with an entertaining "haunted house" sequence), the tried-and-true hospital, office building, church, and others. While there were a few from Silent Hill 2 I wish had made a return. I really enjoyed the locations Silent Hill 3 ushered you into. They fit a good balance between "normal" and "creepy," which is what these games work best with. 

The way Silent Hill's brand of enemies twitch and convulse...it's just...urrrrrrggghhh....

If there is any major complaints to be had, it's the developer's overuse of blood. Yeah, I get it, seeing the red stuff sprayed all over can be scary, causing some sort of primal, gut reaction to our bodily fluids being splattered across walls. But in Silent Hill 3 they go completely overboard. Nightmare world this time around has a more "red" aesthetic overall (vs the more "rust/dirty" look of Silent Hill 2), maintaining the "grimy" feeling to a point, but slapping a good coat of blood over it. It actually isn't that bad at first, but by the time you reach the final stage the walls are pulsating with the stuff, and while it's still gross and mortifying, the subtle punch it packed earlier in the game is lost. I think if they could find a happy medium between Silent Hill 2 and Silent Hill 3's uses of blood, we'd have the perfect mix. As it stands, it makes what would have been shocking reveals lessened, and even makes some events comical (blood coming from the bathtub...something right out of a slasher film, not a Silent Hill game).

Yep, they like their blood. 

The bad controls are still here, though I thought they were a little better, but for some inexplicable reason somebody thought the Silent Hill franchise needed more bosses. Let me tell you right now, Konami: these games would probably work better with no bosses at all. Fighting a big enemy at the end of a stage is so trite anyway; it's like he was just waiting there the whole time? And once you are finished you move on? Other games can sort of let it sneak by because they are "gamey" already, but Silent Hill is all about atmosphere and aesthetic, drawing you in and sinking its claws into you. Having stage-end bosses is just stupid. The fact that most of them look dumb doesn't help this, either. 

Sorry, worm-boss, but you really don't belong in this game. 

I think the soundtrack to this game is the best horror game soundtrack ever. Yeah, Silent Hill 2's is second best, but seriously...the music is amazing. Horror usually falls into two categories: random creepy noises or over-the-top orchestrations for high tensity scenes. The Silent Hill games have always done a great job somehow merging these two elements and adding a touch of weirdness that works both as music and as background sounds. Granted, most of the game is played in absolute musical silence (another strength of this series), but when the music does kick in it almost always fits. I wish other games (and movies!) could do horror this well.

Incredible. 

Complaints aside, you already know I love Silent Hill 3. Everything comes together into an amazing package. I'll be more than willing to admit that Silent Hill 2 is actually a superior game from a critical standpoint, but from a personal one Silent Hill 3 is miles above all other horror games for me in terms of personal preference. It's part of the previously mentioned Silent Hill HD Collection, which is starting at $40. Absolutely worth it at that price. I'd also like to say that the PC version is vastly superior in terms of graphics over all other versions (though it does come on seven cd-roms), running at massively high resolutions that really make this game look incredible. I'm hoping the HD collection will retain that same look (having played it on PC first, replaying it on PS2 makes the game appear...kind of crappy), so if you can't decide between the old or new version, go with the new. Assuming they don't somehow botch up the port.

I love the crap out of this game. Writing this review made me want to go play it again. Seriously, go get it, and play it alone in the dark. It'll grab you tight and leave an unforgettable impression.

Five out of five stars. 

OH SWEET BABY MOSES WHY DID I LOOK THIS UP. 

Silent Hill 2

The Long


Pros
- Gritty and horrifying
- Excellent aesthetic
- Adheres to the "less is more" Silent Hill rule
- Story is surprisingly deep and harbors many interesting psychological elements
- Graphics still look good even to this day
- Music is excellent and horrifying
- Enemies are both creepy and tie into the psychological points of the story

Cons
- Clunky combat and controls
- Voice acting works on one level, but ultimately brings the game down
- Story takes some unexplained, crazy turns and can be very convoluted
- Some puzzles are obscure
- Has some really dark moments

Welcome back to Silent Hill

The Long

James Sunderland has a problem. He recently received a message from his wife, Mary, tell him to meet her in their "special place" in the town of Silent Hill. The problem is that Mary has been dead for years. Another problem is that apparently Silent Hill is full of crazy monsters. But we'll get to that.

The Silent Hill series of games are unique in the horror genre as they aim for more subtle, quiet creeping horror rather than being in your face about it. The Resident Evil games are clearly catering for the B-Movie crowd, and the Dead Space game are more a combination of action and gore. Silent Hill has long bouts of silence, lots of dark rooms and corridors, and a gritty camera lens over the whole thing. It isn't really the monsters that freak you out in the Silent Hill games, it's the time between monster encounters. 

Silent Hill 1, 2, and 3 are some of the scariest games I've ever played

It's a Japanese style of horror vs an American one, and I think it works on a more base level. Rather than blood and guts we have enemies that lurch about and twist in unnatural, unnerving ways. You aren't really afraid because your life (or your character's life, rather) is in danger, you are scared because the game sets up an atmosphere of dread. This is, in my opinion, very difficult to do in a video games (Super Metroid is another game that I felt did this very well) making the fact that Silent Hill 2 does it so well a breath of fresh air. Or maybe a breath of metallic, bloody air set alongside a rusted chain-link fence. Something like that.

Silent Hill 2 follows a similar formula as Silent Hill. You are essentially given the entire town of Silent Hill to explore, with its secrets, monsters, and more scattered about the town. After wandering for a bit you explore various buildings (an apartment complex, underground basement, hospital, etc.) in an attempt to find your wife Mary. Again, it's a slow burn. You don't see your first enemy or get your first weapon for at least 15-30 minutes. You don't get the flashlight until probably and hour or so in. The game wants you to soak up it's grimy, fog-filled streets, and its these moments of calm in a horror game that really leave you unstrung. Silent Hill 2 knows the fine balance between the tensions of waiting for something to happen and drawing it out for too long, and it manages to pull it off perfectly.

I have had legitimate nightmares after playing this game. 

But I'm speaking in generals here, so let's get back to specifics. Silent Hill 2 follows James as he makes his way through the town of Silent Hill, and on the way he encounters a handful of odd people who either want to help or hurt him. James is overwhelmed with guilt about the death of his wife, but he seem to not be able to recall exactly why he feels bad about it, and hopes that Silent Hill will hold the answers. He also meets a woman, Maria, who looks surprisingly like his wife, and what happens with her is analogous to what...actually that might be a spoiler. Forget I said anything.

The brilliant part about Silent Hill 2's story (and it's going to be hard to say this without spoiling the ending) is how well everything in this game fits into what happened to James with his wife. The city of Silent Hill in Silent Hill 2 is a representation of everything bad and worrysome about James as a person. After his wife died James felt sexually repressed, unable to be with another woman. Because of this, many enemies in the game are extremely disturbing but highly sexualized. One of the enemies (as seen in the background above) is just two lower halves of women put together. The nurses in the hospital, while being horrid abominations, also sports a lot of leg and cleavage despite being hideous. James is worried about no longer being a man, and also worried about betraying the memory of his wife, which means he's extremely insecure.

Which brings us to Pyramid Head. 

The now-iconic bad guy of the Silent Hill franchise

Pyramid Head is the only male enemy in the entire game [Correction: there are another batch of particularly nasty ones later on, but my comments as follows still stand]. He has (as you can guess) a head of a pyramid, which could make his shape distinctly phallic. He also carries a massive cleaver (phallic) and is completely invulnerable, essentially everything James wishes he was. In one of the most shocking, horrific scenes I've ever seen in a video game (minor spoilers here, but everybody's probably heard of this scene already), the introduction to Pyramid Head is you stumbling upon him raping two of those leg creatures I mentioned before. Yes, in a video game. And nobody apparently complained about it. Huh.

Anyway, after talking about James' sexual frustration, I think it's pretty clear where that analogy was going. The point is that there is an insane amount of depth to Silent Hill 2's imagery, and it is never particularly in your face about it (except maybe the mentioned rape scene), meaning you could play through the entire game and not get it. The game holds up either way, but its great to see video game developers trying something actually make their games have a level of depth beyond the initial layers. 

You can just...stay over there, ok?

It's unfortunate, therefore, that Silent Hill 2 has a myriad of problems to accompany its excellent batch of psychological horror. First off is the voice acting and script. While it's serviceable, I guess, and the disjointed  weirdness fits the game in a sort of "it's bad on purpose" way, I found it pulling me out from the story. There are people who will defend it to death and people who agree with me, so we'll just leave it as "If you like it, fine. If not, it's kind of a massive mess." You can still get the story well enough even if you think the script is awful, it's just a notch off.

The other, perhaps bigger issue is the archaic control schemes. Silent Hill 2 was in the era of horror games where "tank" controls were in full effect. Pressing forward on the stick moves your character forward in whatever direction he is facing, not "up" on screen relative to the camera (which is how most modern games do it). In order to turn you have to have James spin left or right and then move him forward (or find the sweet spot between forward and your direction, which makes him turn like an SUV). It's cumbersome and annoying, though I can understand this early level of hindering your controls to ramp up the tension. But even if that was the intentional point, it's still annoying .

That can't be good. 

The combat is also bland. You get both melee weapons and firearms, but neither work particularly well. James' strategy for killing things either involves auto-aiming at the nearest one and shooting, or swinging wildly in an attempt to hit it (and kicking/stomping the writhing enemy after it goes down). Again, it works in the way that you realize James is not a good fighter, so his cumbersome attacks fit the character. But it also makes certain parts of the game extremely frustrating. Since this game is more about the story and atmosphere rather than combat anyway, I suggest playing through the game on Easy. 

Combat is not a high point of this game.

As stated already, the music and graphics in Silent Hill 2 are excellent, the soundtrack being especially creepy. The graphics are excellent looking for the PS2 era (still holding up well today), and the grainy filters only make the whole thing appear grittier and darker. The music is haunting and chilling, setting the standard for the Silent Hill games having excellent sound design.

This song gives me the chills. 

Despite all the problems, however, if you have any inclination towards horror I heartily suggest getting a copy of Silent Hill 2. There's a reason many people have said it's their favorite game of all time (yes, a horror game with poor gameplay is their favorite game of all time), and that's because it does what matters exceptionally well. It's a beautiful game and a journey into the macabre and terrifying, and it is a trip absolutely worth taking.

It can be hard to get a copy on PS2 or Xbox without paying a fair amount for it, but if you have one of those dang-fangled next-gen consoles you can get the Silent Hill HD Collection coming out on March 20th (which has both this game and the also excellent Silent Hill 3) for only $40 release price. Since that puts each game at about $20 (and gives the graphics a much needed HD boost with widescreen support), that's a very good price for what is easily one of the best horror games ever made. Just be aware that you might not sleep easily after playing it. 

Were I to give it a star rating, it would be five out of five stars. And remember...

Pyramid Head knows where you sleep. 

Plants vs Zombies

The Short


Pros
- Addicting twist on the tower defense genre
- Easy to learn but very difficult to master
- Dozens of plants to choose from
- Charming aesthetic, from the zombies to the plants to the kickin' soundtrack
- A metric butt-ton of game modes including survival, minigames, puzzles, zen garden, and more
- Seriously, this game has more content than three $60 retail games
- Crazy Dave is awesome. The ending song is awesome.
- Horrendously addicting

Cons
- Those damned bungee zombies.
- Unlocking stuff costs lots of money, which lead to some awful microtransactions on the iOS version
- Co-op / Vs modes only available on the PSN and XBLA version
- "Create a Zombie" only available on the PC Game of the Year version
- WHERE THE CRAP IS PLANTS VS ZOMBIES 2?!

If' there's anything zombies hate, it's photosynthesis

The Long

Let's just get this out of the way up front: Plants vs Zombies is pretty much my wife's most favorite video game ever. She's beaten it all the way through at least six times, maybe more since she has it on her iPod touch now. We own this game on every system known to man (except PSN, because we have it on PC, Mac, iPhone, iPod Touch, Android, and XBLA) and for some reason neither of us have gotten bored of it yet. Yes, I'm talking about a tower defense game that's grid-based, where plants battle zombies. Really.

Though it shouldn't come as much of a surprise. PopCap is pretty much rolling in fat cash (and is still an independent developer...so wild) at this point. These are the guys who invented Bejeweled, ok? They also made the Zuma, Bookworm, and tons of other simple, addicting games. Which is why when I first heard of Plants vs Zombies I shrugged it off. Bejeweled? You mean that game my mom plays? Please. 

Zombies also hate chlorophyll. 

It wasn't until we booted it up during a boring evening on vacation that we realized the truth: Plants vs Zombies is freaking amazing. I remember Destructoid gave it a 10/10 and I thought they'd lost their freaking minds. Well guess what, it was totally justified. Plants vs Zombies is an addicting, content rich tower defense game that is both extremely accessible and immensely deep. And here you thought it was just a simple, casual game. 

Plants vs Zombies doesn't do anything particularly new (aside from being freaking incredible) to the tower defense genre. You are given a 9x7 grid (your lawn, though eventually you go to the backyard pool and even on the roof) which you can plant anything on. All plants (except one "super" plant) only take one spot, so you can essentially have a maximum of 63 plants. Zombies come in from the right to individual lanes, never swapping unless (again) you use a particular plant to force them to bounce around like that. You plant your attacking plants on the left and try to kill the zombies before they reach your brains on the left (safely hidden inside the house). It's extremely simple; even my mother could figure it out.

Don't tell my mother I bad-mouthed her in my review. I love you mom!

To plant stuff you need "suns," which you gather by either planting sunflowers (with their adorable grins) or picking them up during daytime levels (which means they were literally dropped from the sun). Having to click on suns keeps it interactive, even during the boring beginning stages of the levels, where you are trying to gain a steady income as fast as possible. After that you have basic pea shooters which will slowly fire on advancing zombies, wall-nuts (which also have adorable grins, just look at them!) that block the zombie's paths, and more. The game keeps introducing a new plant nearly every level, which in turn adds a new strategy to attempt. The pacing is exactly perfect, and by the end you'll be juggling nine different plants, fighting off tons of zombies, and it'll all be completely intuitive. IT may look overwhelming at first, but Plants vs Zombies hits the sweet spot: it's never too hard, and it's never boring. And it rewards you just enough to make you keep on playing for hours and hours on end.

You go from "single, shuffling idiot" to "28 Days Later" pretty quickly

PopCap's other games had the benefit of being straight puzzlers with no determinable goal other than to waste time, meaning they only got old when you were finished with them. Plants vs Zombies, on the other hand, has a definite "end" to it (after maybe 4-5 hours of zombie-pruning mayhem) which would have slowed other developers. They might have just called it good (4-5 hours for a $10-$15 is still a good deal), or maybe have thrown in some junk side content or tacked on competitive multiplayer just for kicks. But this is freaking PopCap, so they go nuts. (or dare I say...Wall-nuts?)

This game has more bonus content than any game ever made in the existence of video games. This is not even an exaggeration. Right after you beat the main game, you can go back and play through it again, but this time with Crazy Dave (your lunatic neighbor) picking your first three plants for you (and often picking garbage, which adds to the challenge). You can collect pots of plants in the single player mode now that you've beaten the game, which are put in your zen garden and are raised to either sell or collect. You have more seed slots to unlock for levels, tons more plants and plant upgrades, and more areas for your zen garden. You have somewhere around 25-30 minigames, all of which are excellent and unique (Zombie Bejeweled is one of my favorites). You have wave based survival modes on all the different landscapes. You have a puzzle mode where you play as the zombies trying to get through the plants. You have a vase-smashing puzzle game that can be quite the challenge (both the puzzles and urn levels have a bunch of pre-set levels as well as infinite modes, and the survival mode can be infinite too). 

All this in a game that started life at a $15 price tag. Normal $60 games don't give this much crap out!

Hecks yes, Beghouled is rad. 

I'll say it again: this game is extremely addicting. The gameplay is tight, has tons of variety, and the tons of modes are just icing on the cake. All this content would be useless if the underlying game sucked, and it most certainly doesn't. You thought a 9x7 grid would mean the game was gimped and stupid? Well you are gimped and stupid, valued reader! Because this game is better than any other tower defense game ever made. Yes, I just brought that to the table. Prove me wrong, dear reader (in the comments, please :P)!

There are a few nitpicks I have. PopCap keeps releasing this dang thing on any platform that can even remotely support it, often adding stuff each time. For example, the XBLA Version, while suffering from not having mouse controls (which it still works quite well on a controller, by the way) does add full co-op support for every part of the game, which is really cool because I could finally play alongside my wife. It also adds a vs mode that's more like a competitive puzzle game, where one person plays as the plants and the other the zombies. It's pretty fun too, but neither of these modes are on any other versions besides the PSN and XBLA version.

The same goes for "Create a Zombie" mode, which is admittedly just a gimmick bonus, but that's only in the Game of the Year version on the PC. Sad times.

The flavor text for the plants and zombies is hilarious too (screenshot from iOS version)

The iOS and Android versions also have an annoyance: in-game microtransactions. Unlike the PC/XBLA/PSN versions, the minigames on iOS and Android require in-game currency to buy. Which you can earn pretty quickly if you know how to manipulate the Zen Garden, but the amount of cash required is still astronomical. It gives you the offer to buy in game coins for $1 increments, which I suppose is fair since the game is $10 on XBLA/PSN/PC and the iOS version is $3 (except I was an early adapter and paid $6), but the whole microtransaction thing still bugs me. I really hate it, in case you were wondering, but in this instance it doesn't do enough to damage the experience. It does mean most of the content is locked by a money-gate, though, so keep that in mind.

Lastly, the DS version looks way the crap worse than the other versions. Even the iOS/Android versions look way better (they technically run at a higher resolution than the XBLA/PSN versions, though they are scrunched down a little to fit on the screen). I suppose I should finally finally note that I consider the iPad/Android Tablet version of this game to be, by far, the best way to play the game. Picking up suns with touch is intuitive and excellent, the touch controls flawless in every way, which makes this easily a killer app for both iPhones and iPads (and Android phones and Android Tablets).

There is seriously so much crap to unlock (screenshot from iOS version)

I'm pretty sure you can guess what my closing remarks are going to be. Let me put it this way: this game was selling for $2 on sale on Steam the other day. TWO DOLLARS. It's on portable devices for freaking $3. You can buy it anywhere else for $10. You can even play a rather extensive demo for free in your web browser right now on PopCap's website. This game is insanely cheap and straight up amazing. I'm pretty sure you can afford it, so what are you waiting for? Go out there and buy it! And if you are thinking to yourself, "hmm, I wonder if this game is worth $10 or if I should wait for another Steam sale?" then you need to get your life in order and freaking go buy it this very second. I give you my personal Nathan guarantee that this game is worth every penny. I have yet to see someone I've recommended this game to come back disappointed. Plus, your kids can play it! And it's a way better game to have them play than that crappy Angry Birds game, let me tell you that much.

Make Plants vs Zombies 2 PopCap. You can have all my money. But while I'm waiting, I'm going to go beat Plants vs Zombies on my iPhone again. 

Five out of five starflowers. 

More like a billion out of five starflowers. 

Dead Space 2

The Short


Pros
- Fast paced, visceral bloody violence like the first game
- Controls are tightened and improved from the last game
- More weapons and upgrades
- Set on a massive space station, its environments are far more varied than the first game
- Crazy story that expands on the original
- Isaac finally talks
- Same integrated UI, "strategic dismemberment," and general polish from the first game
- Great graphics, horrifying enemies, and everything else combines to make quite the thrill ride

Cons
- Despite Isaac finally taking, he doesn't really say anything meaningful
- Game is very much more "action" than "horror."
- Some of the enemies and gory events are borderline crass
- Has a multiplayer mode that nobody plays, even though it isn't particularly awful
- Gets so over the top and unrealistic at times you'll swear you are playing a Call of Duty game
- Only a handful of new enemies, with the basic staples being recycles from the first game
- Why are there so many closets for enemies to jump out of? And why would they wait in a boring closet, anyway, when they could just be running up and eating my face?

Isaac's back and ready to slice-n-dice.

Warning: Like the first review, this one contains screenshots that are both violent and disturbing

The Long

It's been often stated that if Dead Space is Ridley Scott's Alien, than Dead Space 2 is James Cameron's Aliens. It's an adept analogy, as the Aliens movies are perhaps the best horror movies set in space, and the  Dead Space games are the best horror games set in space. Like Alien, the first Dead Space was somewhat slow, put you on a single ship, and eased you into the horror elements before blowing you away. Dead Space 2 is Aliens, which was released with the tagline "This Time It's War." It is war, and Isaac is ready to blow some Necromorph scum's arms, legs, and whatever other nasty things pop out of them off on his quest to get rid of the bastards once and for all.

Dead Space 2 is much more an action game than Dead Space, and is certainly less subtle. While Dead Space started with a slow build, where you crash-land on the spaceship and walk around in the dark for a while, Dead Space 2 starts with a dude's head exploding about two inches from your face before he turns into a bloodthirsty, violent Necromorph.

I wasn't kidding with that content warning

From that point the game turns "on" and does not turn "off" again until the credits are rolling. Dead Space 2 is a good deal more an action game than the first Dead Space, and because of it a lot of the "horror" elements are gone. Dead Space was scary in the same ways the Silent Hill games are scary: during the quiet moments in the dark, as you collect your thoughts about what might be lurking out there in the dark, scared to continue forward. Dead Space 2 says "screw that, cut 'em up!" and sends you forward with a boatload of weapons to blast zombies to pieces. Which I'm totally fine with. Unlike Resident Evil 5, which tried to blend action and horror and failed (mostly on the "action" side), Dead Space 2 accepts the fact that it's action first, horror second and rolls with it. Which makes it work.

That isn't to say there aren't some tense, shocking scenes in this game. And yes, screwing this up does exactly what you think it does. 

This is evidenced by the fact that the controls are much improved over the last game. While Dead Space's gameplay was far from bad, it could be clunky at time. Isaac was wearing a heavy suit, which made him less versatile and speedy than say, Master Chief. In Dead Space 2 Isaac has a newer, lighter suit, and the gameplay changes respectively. Melee and stomping is better and faster. Isaac seems to move at a slightly better clip (though I still have to hold a button to run. Why? We have analog controls now, people.), the shooting seems tighter, and overall it just plays great. I'd say after Gears of War, Dead Space 2 is probably the best controlled third-person shooter out there. Which is good, since you still have to be shooting with the precision of a surgeon in order to blast the limbs off the numerous types of Necromorphs that want to make you lunch. The zero-g controls have also been dramatically improved, letting you float around rather than leaping like a crazy person from platform to platform. 

Most everything good has carried over from the first game. The "Hudless UI," where everything is displayed on Isaac's suit, is back in full force with a few subtle improvements that make reading his various meters easier. The graphics still look fantastic, with the enemies being horrible monstrosities, the environments being extremely detailed down to every splatter of crimson blood, and the effects being flashy and satisfying. Guns handle well (with a few newcomers like one that shoots javalins), though your original Plasma Cutter is still the best weapon in the game. 

So what's new? Well, zombie kids for starters

Visceral Games pretty much took everything about Dead Space and improved it. People complained because you spent the whole game on one ship, so they gave you a whole space station to explore. You go to various districts ranging from a residential area, a space-church, an elementary school, a biological lab, a computer mainframe, and more. You also spend a good deal of time back out in space, and these are some of the most awesome, gorgeous moments of the game. People complained because there wasn't enough enemies. So they added tons more: packs of zombie kids, a new type of zombie baby, a zombie that charges you like a velociraptor from Jurassic Park, a zombie that barfs acidic goo on you that slows you down, and more. People complained that most of the game was Isaac being bossed around, so they...actually that didn't change too much. But it does lead into another big change: Isaac actually talks in this game!

Silent protagonist no longer. 

Yep. Despite being mute in the first game, Isaac is chatty in this one (which makes it seem, in retrospect, that he was just giving everybody the silent treatment in game numero uno). This means he can decide things for himself and tell these things to other people, as well as have a deeper interaction with other characters and be more involved in the story. I think it's an improvement story-wise, but character-wise Isaac just isn't very interesting. He switches between moping about his dead girlfriend to yelling cuss words at people he doesn't get along with, and there really isn't much variance. He's also a cold-hard killer, doing some nasty things and making some tough decisions, but never really having a sort of personal reconciliation about it. Come on, dude. You can't get over your dead girlfriend, but you kill both zombies and people in this game, but you hardly bat an eye? It's like they gave you a voice just to push the story further, not develop your character...oh yeah, that's exactly why they did it. Hmm. 

That's fine, though, because I liked Dead Space 2's story. I mean, it's not going to win a pulitzer or something, but like Mass Effect, Dead Space has a relatively deep mythology that has plenty of resources for mining. Think I'm actually part of a bigger, living universe is a big step in immersing me in the game (and it's clear they want me immersed, based on the HUDless UI and the fact that it's a creepy horror game), and the story does that well enough. There's also a rather sad moment (which the screenshot above depicts) that actually made me feel some genuine emotion, so kudos to you Dead Space 2. You did alright. 

Now back to murderin' 

There is very little about Dead Space 2 I didn't like. The graphics, sound, and voice acting are all exceptional. The shooting is fun and provides a great mix of tension and adrenaline pumping zombie blasting. The minimal puzzles are easy and non-frustrating, and the story wasn't world-shattering but it was still worth a run-through if you liked the first game. Dead Space 2 also had a rather crazy nod back to the first game about 2/3 of the way through, which is probably my single most favorite moment in the entire game. If you played the first game and loved it, prepare yourself for a treat.

Again, there isn't much I didn't like, but there were a few things. A few parts, especially the beginning, feel a lot like the first Dead Space. Your first weapon in the Plasma Cutter, everybody won't shut up about cutting off the baddies' limbs, etc. Another problem was there never seemed to be enough stores. I kept filling up on health and ammo and wanting to dump it off, and in the first game the stores seemed well paced so that I wasn't throwing items away. In Dead Space 2, I kept having to leave presents behind, which made me sad. The infant baby enemies (a new enemy type) seemed really crass. I won't say they crossed a line or anything (I mean, come on, it's a Dead Space game), but it seemed more like they were being tasteless to try and prove how "hardcore" they were, rather than actually provide genuine scares. The last thing is kind of a silly one: enemies seem to pop out of closets from everywhere. Yeah, it's a genre staple but come on. I began to predict when enemies would pop out of walls or from the ceilings just because they use the exact same time-lull between incidents. Mix it up, guys.

Nothing bad happened here. Nope. 

The game also has a multiplayer mode that I'm certain nobody played. I booted it up for about two matches: it's essentially Left 4 Dead's multiplayer mode but with Dead Space enemies instead of Left 4 Dead enemies. Which sounds fine in theory, sure, but again...nobody is playing it. It seemed like kind of a tacked on addition, and there is certainly a large disconnect between it and the single player story. Maybe next time a co-op mode would be a better idea? Just don't, for the love of all that is good, make your main game mandatory co-op. We all saw what happened to that other action-horror franchise when they did that.

Dead Space 2 is just a really, really solid game

You really should try Dead Space 2 out if you are a fan of horror or action games in the slightest. Though you should play it after the first one; unlike many "second" games (like Gears of War 2) that make the first game look kind of pale in comparison, Dead Space was already on a platform so freaking high that Dead Space 2 just sort of stands alongside it rather than knocking it off. Both games are absolutely fantastic, and with a third one for sure on the way I really can't way to see how this all ends.

Steam sells this game frequently during sales for only $5 on computer, which also has better graphics. On a console you are looking anywhere from $20-30, which is still a very fair price. Even though this game is much more about action than horror than the first one, it's still a kick-ass game, so grab your Plasma Cutter and slice up a few more Necromorphs. 

Five out of five stars.