Reviewed: March 29, 2008
Reviewed by: Megan Dyer

Publisher
Konami

Developer
Climax Studios

Released: March 4, 2008
Genre: Adventure
Players: 1

8
7
8
7
7.2

Supported Features:

The mysterious girl runs away into town, and Travis, fearing that he has hit the girl and she may be hurt, follows her on foot. He then encounters a burning building as he walks into the city limits. The scream of a girl coming from the flames convinces him to run inside to rescue whoever is trapped there. He finds the badly burned body of another young girl laying on the floor in an upstairs room, surrounded by strange occult symbols and candles.

He runs outside with her, passes out on the ground and wakes up on a park bench in Silent Hill, though the town is filled with an eerie mist and a marked lack of any sign of life. Travis decides to go to the hospital to see if the girl from the night before is being treated there, and as any Silent Hill fan knows, this does not bode well for the poor fellow.

Once in the hospital, all hell breaks loose, and Travis finds himself trapped in a terrifying world that can only be escaped from by entering the even more terrifying Otherworld via various mirrors. The few people Travis does encounter are strange themselves, and some of them know him, though he does not know them. Still, there is something familiar about Silent Hill for Travis, something to do with the nightmares that haunt his sleep.

Players, of course, guide Travis back and forth between two dangerous, nightmarish worlds, solving chilling puzzles, wandering through mazes and fighting or outright avoiding monsters and ghosts in an effort to get to the bottom of the mystery that is Silent Hill.

Intriguing, spine tingling stories are a staple of the Silent Hill series, and Origins gives its fans another one, this time in the form of a prequel. While the set up and game controls are largely run of the mill for the series and the game doesn't stray too far into groundbreaking territory, it does offer up some new tidbits here and there.

The fighting system is still the usual “equip whatever can be used as a weapon and beat the crap out of the weirdos” setup, but with a few added twists. For instance, an enemy may grapple with Travis, whereupon the player must press a series of buttons in order to fight it off and not take damage. Some enemies throw projectile attacks at Travis, and careful attention has to be paid to how to approach them without getting hurt.

Barricades can be set up, and some enemies are better off avoided altogether, which may mean walking agonizingly slow in order to not make too much noise running to get their attention, or turning Travis' flashlight off and spending some nail biting moments in the dark. Tons of different objects may be used as weapons, from guns to television sets and, if worse comes to worst, Travis can resort to his bare hands. While the fighting in Origins isn't terribly in depth or innovative, it does mix things up a bit to keep it from being nothing more than a button mashing nightmare.

Controls in Origins aren't perfect, and there are times when there is a slight delay between when a button is pushed and when Travis actually does what he's told. This can get very frustrating when fighting more than one enemy and switching between targets is a necessity. While clunkiness in the controls could be contributed to the fact that Origins is a PSP port, it should also be noted that even though this doesn't make the game unplayable at any point, it is quite frustrating nonetheless.

Most importantly, Origins is a lot of fun overall, and is also quite scary. The story is interesting and immersive enough to encourage braver players to fight through each twisted layer of the game and put together the next piece of the story's puzzle. Silent Hill fans will be familiar with this game almost before they begin in some regards, and some critics may bemoan yet another remix of the typical formula that makes up the Silent Hill series, but that formula has kept fans happy so far, and Origins will too.

The haziness of the atmosphere and the generally disheveled look of the environment gives off the appropriate feelings of isolation and neglect. The world beyond the mirror goes beyond spooky and into horrifying, as grotesque imagery fills the screen. Enemy designs are wonderfully upsetting: crazed, acid spewing monsters in the disfigured form of a human in a straitjacket, large trundling horrors that look pieced together from random body parts, shadow people that can hardly be seen and loom in the glare of Travis' flashlight, and a butcher that is reminiscent of Pyramid Head are some particularly outstanding designs that keep this game terrifying and fun at the same time.

Monsters all twitch, lumber, jerk and attack in their own unique and twisted ways. When an enemy is near, the screen distorts a bit and takes on a scratchy, washed out quality, which is both convenient for the anxious player on the lookout for monsters, and effective at making the game even creepier. These kinds of details are what have long set the Silent Hill series apart from other survival horror games in the past, and Origins displays the same twisted attention to design details as its predecessors.

I also really liked Travis' design. Another everyday Joe trying to survive the horrors of Silent Hill is not exactly surprising, but Travis looks particularly unassuming and normal. A trucker in a baseball cap wearing jeans, a flannel shirt and a vest, Travis looks very obviously plucked from the real world, and thrown into a nightmare that he must somehow get through. His scruffy five o'clock shadow and bleary eyes give the impression that he is a man who does not sleep often and is haunted by something deep rooted and dark—which of course, he is. He looks his part wonderfully however, and I found myself growing concerned for him as the game progressed. He looks like your dad's fishing buddy.

I do have a couple of complaints, as much as I enjoyed the overall visual effect of Origins. While I thought Travis looked great, other characters suffer from a blocky and sometimes stretched look to them, which is a common issue with ports of games from hand-held systems to consoles. The realism of the characters is not as impressive as they have been in past games, even as far back as the second and third titles in the series. Some lines are noticeably blocky, jagged and generally not as clean as they should be, another telltale sign of the PSP to PS2 port. The collision detection in the game occasionally falters as well, leading to enemy bodies falling halfway between solid walls after they have been knocked out, and the occasional general graphics hiccup (pop-in, et cetera). These glitches are few, but when they happen they are, unfortunately, quite noticeable.

Also, it's too damn dark sometimes. While I understand that not being able to see things all that clearly makes them creepier, it also makes playing the game more annoying at a certain extent. I found myself more frustrated than scared at some points, because I just couldn't see clearly enough to tell what was going on. This game would have benefited from an option to lighten the screen for those of us who want to see where Travis is looking as he runs by a precious, precious health drink that may mean the difference between living and dying later on.

Voice acting in Origins is also well done, though not perfect. Characters' inflections and tones are believable for most lines, though occasionally, I found myself wondering why Travis didn't sound more, well, scared, as he damn well should have been. Perhaps the recurring nightmare that he's grown accustomed to has given him nerves of steel, though I still think a note of panic in his voice could have helped made his situation more believable.

There are occasional glitches with the audio, just as there is with the graphics, times when sound effects (such as a door creaking open) are cut off too early. And while most enemies' grunts, growls and gargles are effective in both being scary and icky, I sometimes found myself amused by the sounds the enemies were emitting. For instance, I could have sworn that one enemy enthusiastically screeched, “Oh, hi!” at me as I approached it with my pistol drawn. Maybe I was desperately looking for some levity in the disturbing world of Silent Hill, so it sounded that way to me, but it still gives me a chuckle, which is obviously not the intended response the game makers were looking to elicit.