Right now I am a little over an hour and a half in. The puzzles are pure Silent Hill which was the aspect I figured it would be hardest for a new development team to nail. So far I've run into familiar characters among the humans and a mix of the familiar and the unfamiliar among monsters, though its worth noting that the familiar monsters have been beefed up in terms of attacks and speed (when I ran up to one building it seemed like all of the faster enemies I had moved past were hard on my heels and I have no doubt the slower enemies were a ways back, out of sight).
The visuals are amazing. The textures are really sharp (though they are obscured slightly by the grain filter) and the monsters have the moist look we all know and love. What makes Origin the best looking PSP game is the realtime lighting, which is even more impressive in light of the extremely complicated level geometry (everything casts a shadow, and all shadows move depending on the amount of distance/height inbetween them and the light source). The audio/music is as phenomenal as ever, which shouldn't be a surprise since the audio guy of the old games also worked on Origins.
The only complaint I have thus far is the weapons system. Weapons break, which makes more sense in some cases (say, bottles of alcohol) than in others (hammers). While not true in all cases, there is often a correlation inbetween how much damage a weapon does and how quickly it breaks (a bottle can bring down a weaker enemy with a single hit). The whole thing kind of reminds me a bit of MGS3's health system, an interesting twist which will merely irritate most people because it makes things more complicated (though it should be noted that one always seems to have another weapon in one's inventory and weapon switching can be done at the press of a button or through the pause menu).
In Origins, one can always resort to the fists of the main character, but while he can beat a lone nurse to death without too much trouble given a bit of time, often he doesn't have time (anything in earshot will head your way once a fight starts and everything can be pretty fast when it wants to be) and monsters often come in small groups. And against stronger monsters like the goat/anus (a description coined by IGN) fists are pretty ineffective. As is the Silent Hill tradition, projectile weapons are few and far between (I have found one gun and a little bit of ammo for it, as well as a little bit of ammo for a second gun).
In summary, Silent Hill Origins is a quality game worthy of the series that won't convert non-fans, but will allow fans to cleanse their palettes after the atrocity that was SH4.
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