[Rant] Silent Hill Arcade: The 'Dumbing Down' of a franchise

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2099net
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[Rant] Silent Hill Arcade: The 'Dumbing Down' of a franchise

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http://www.kotaku.com/photogallery/silenthillthearcade/

What is Konami thinking? Can anyone answer me that?

*sigh*

I remember the great groundbreaking Silent Hill 1 on the PSOne, a game that, while it didn't invent the survival horror genre, certainly rewrote the rules. The game wasn't so much about combat, but about atmosphere and plot.

Then came the - quite frankly - still unbeaten Silent Hill 2. This is without a doubt my favourite computer game of all time. Here was a game which delt with adult concepts in an adult manner - love, loss, guilt, desire, betrayal... the list is almost endless. Plus, although it told a rather straight forward story, it has a level of ambiguity which lets the player ultimately decide James' final fate. It also has moments of combat, even "boss" battles, but these never overwhelm the game, or it's most important asset... it's atmosphere.

Silent Hill 3 is where it all started to go a bit wrong. There's much more emphasis on combat and the puzzels are easier. In fact, the puzzles for the most part are non-existant. It also was a retread of the first game's concepts, and for the most part was pretty redundant for most Silent Hill fans.

I'm torn about Silent Hill 4. Although this wasn't created as a Silent Hill game until later in its development (and I don't believe it was developed by Konami's Team Silent) but it had strong story telling and an atmosphere which were just as good as Silent Hill 2's. But... and its a big but... the fact that most of the "monsters" you fought were ghosts, who constantly resurrected themselves turned most of Silent Hill 4 into a non-stop combat game. A total betrayal of it's roots.

And now we actually get a shooter arcade game. :x

I pray Silent Hill 5 on the "next gen" console[s] is a return to the heights of Silent Hill 2.
Most of my Blu-ray collection some of my UK discs aren't on their database
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