[quote name='donssword']The first 3 SH games, all taken together, are really landmark games, each in their own ways. Honestly, I am not sure what else Konami can do with the series without it seeming like a retread. . . . Personally, I'm happy they are trying to push SH drastically in another direction--I think it is the only avenue still open for new ideas and gameplay.[/QUOTE]
The problem isn't that Silent Hill games are played out. The problem is Konami's choice of developers after the departure of the original team. I don't know how hard they tried to get
Team Silent to return to the franchise, but the idea of getting the original crew to do a technologically and conceptually updated version of the original game would have been
awesome -- particularly if gifted members like Toyama were able to infuse it with the same level of sadness, dread and emotional disintegration, while adding Toyama's newfound finesse and conceptual virtuosity.
The problem isn't that Climax gnaws desiccated donkey pizzles -- they're good at what they do -- it's that they're inappropriate for this particular series. I happened to enjoy Silent Hill Origins, but that was because of the technical ingenuity (getting the SH world to fit on the PSP) and combat perks (such as unlimited ammo once you visit a certain set of stairs). Everyone who loved SH 1 and 2 agreed the emphasis on combat was out of character, and that the game had atmosphere, but it was nothing like the atmosphere of the original games. Things were too straightforward, too easily explained, too external. Fear, aggression and panic were central; sadness, emotional decay and dread took a pronounced backseat. Homecoming tried to address some of these issues, but it didn't succeed, in my opinion, and was far less fun to play than Origins. This is because Climax was told (or decided) to focus on precisely the aspects of survival horror that American studios never seem to get right, and to forsake what they're truly good at, which is everything Silent Hill games don't need.
You don't get a bunch of winner-take-all action-oriented devs to do a game that's supposed to feel a bit like suicide. Japanese culture has an entirely different idea of the nobility of the act (Mishima) than we do, and Silent Hill games should have that sense of slow suicide, the sense that every emtional attachment is slowly being pulled away. Commercial Japanese storytellers are also better at leaving unresolved irrational elements in the landscape, to jar and disturb the player in ways that aren't completely understood. Res Evil is about victory in a scary dystopian setting -- Climax might have done well with that. Silent Hill is about falling apart while still struggling to uphold lost ideals, loyalties to the dead, and concern for the missing -- all with the sense that the player might not make it and might not even want to make it.
My only hope for this remake is that Konami fixes whatever incompatibilities made Sony pull the original SH from PSN, and that the original game -- playable on the PS3 and the PSP -- is offered in tandem with the release of Shattered Memories. That would be a nice way of compensating fans of SH2 who never got to play the first installment.
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ing hate Konami. Why do they keep doing this to Silent Hill?? 
sure do, the CIA and 
