Silent Hill Origins Review

Condemnation

With that in mind, it's absolutely no surprise to see the gameplay formula reprised to such an extent that there's a permanent sense of deja vu as you traipse through the foggy streets of Silent Hill. Apart from wondering, again,when the earthquake hit, you'll positively roll your eyes when you find yourself working your way through another disgustingly grimy hospital or gloomy sanitarium. As usual, it's a game of patience and persistence, with an awful lot of time spent clicking on everything, trying door handles, flicking to the map screen and trying to work out where you haven't been. It's a curiously moreish experience, but a rather obsessive compulsive oddity - a bit like finding the urge to empty out your sock drawer to pair up all the odd ones.

Hands free: Incredibly, Travis also had room for a TV, toaster, 4 hammers, a drip stand, rifle, shogun, pistol, and other random tat upon his person.

Along the way, you'll pick up mysterious objects, solve the odd mildly taxing riddle, read a few sheets of discarded journals (which act as the main narrative device), and dodge a plethora of writhing, slimy monsters with slow, predictable attack patterns. But because you're also pretty cack in the combat stakes, it's just as well that the whole affair is plodding and as unwieldy as ever. Melee combat has been tweaked a touch, and you'll appreciate the fact that you can dish some meaty punches if called upon, while a ludicrous inventory system allows you to carry any number of TVs, hammers, scalpels, drip stands and other assorted guff to wield at said monsters when the moment takes you.

As for armed combat, your infinite backpack also allows Travis to pick up a service pistol, shotgun, rifle and others, and dish out the pain more effectively than trying to swish a jagged bit of wood around. With an auto-aim system, all you have to do is point and shoot, regardless of how helpful the dynamic camera angle is being. It's just as well, really, as you'd have no chance of getting a shot on target otherwise. But, as with all survival horror games, exceptionally limited ammo forces you to pick and choose what you want to blast into chunks - and, in most cases, you're often better off just running past your slow-moving adversaries until you face-off against the inevitable boss monster. Sometimes, though, if you let a monster get too close, or one takes you by surprise, you'll find yourself having to hammer the X button to fend them off. Yeuch.

Get the balance right

During your travels you'll also nip between a light (well, ok then, gloomy) and dark world every time you touch a mirror, which means you're constantly poking around hellish versions of the same location, getting new keys to unlock doors in the 'other world' and popping back and forth before you can finally get all the bits you need to solve whatever riddle is holding you back. And then you face a boss. And then get to explore a new area. And so the formula goes on until it's finally over.

And given the game is very much a reprise of everything Silent Hill fans have already experienced several times over, little old-school design decisions like badly spaced save points make it slightly less fun than it could be. Numerous times, I found myself having replay large sections because I overlooked saving it before a facing a particularly dangerous part. Why on Earth could they not have introduced automatic checkpointing pre-boss fights, for example? Being faithful to the gameplay, puzzles and combat is one thing. Being faithful to old school flaws for the sake of authenticity is misguided at best.

Fog off: draw distance has never been an issue with Silent Hill games.

Visually, Origins also stays very true to the Silent Hill legacy, with delightfully detailed environments, gruesome character designs and that omnipresent atmosphere of rank decay. Sadly, where is doesn't quite hit the mark is in the human characters, which are nowhere near as detailed or as stunningly lifelike as Team Silent managed on Silent Hill 2 and 3 (4 was a Silent Hill game in name only). To an extent you can blame this on the PSP's relative limitations, but there's no reason Climax couldn't have gone that extra mile to maintain the standards. Still, despite Travis' low poly head, it's not a total deal breaker, but does remove some of the classy style synonymous with all the other games to date.

Just can't get enough

Perhaps the true saving grace for Origins is the involvement of audio wunderkind Akira Yamaoka. It cannot be overstated how important his chilling, ethereal soundtrack contributions add something utterly unique to the game, and Origins is no exception. Even when you're coldly reflecting on a rather samey gameplay experience, the fact that he's got yet more audio tricks up his sleeve transforms the atmosphere into something quite terrifying. Playing the game, as recommended, in the dark with headphones on, is sinister beyond belief if you're also on your own while playing it.