Silent Hill hits the PSP for a portable horror experience. But is it a "frightful" ride?
People say that the game isn't scary nor fun since its on the PSP. Never underestimate the power of a PSP. You know why?
The game actually is scarier than any other average horror game featured on the console systems. Plug in your headphones and play till you get freaked out.
The thing about this game is that its so memorable. You can instantly recognise famous landmarks from Silent Hill after exploring the foggy streets. It was also the first Silent Hill game I played and was deeply impressed.
The graphics look good and fitted in with the gritty style. All the creatures and monsters looked absolutely horrifying. It also felt creepy exploring dark areas and environments, fearing being attacked at every turn and corner. That why I liked its sense of horror. You never know. I cleared out a corridor full of crazy nurses, entered a room and came out expecting only the dead bodies of the nurses but a new wave of them had appeared (obviously trodding upon the previously killed ones) so it makes you feel uneasy and quick to thing.
The combat system sucked awfully though. It was so terrible.
You were limited with ammo whenever you got a gun but otherwise you had to rely on everyday tools such as spades or portable TVs. You can chuck TVs, pots and so on and also use crowbars, sticks, machettes but the combat still feels rather bland and nothing interesting is to be seen during this combat-involved scenes.
The cutscenes are great and the audio was great. The creepy soundtrack fitted the eerie environments you travelled through and the voice-acting (although not much), was great.
However, some puzzles found in the game was so frustrating that it made you want to quit playing the game. I hated the game in my first run since I didn't know where to go or what to do, mainly because of the awful fixed camera positions which isn't a style I'm used to but when I started the game again, I got passed the puzzles and liked the game. Due to this frustrating moments, it might not appeal to all casual gamers. Not only this, after a certain point if you do manage to keep on going through the hard levels, you'd probably get bored and won't feel motivated to complete the game.
The 6 hour-long campaign would take at least twice as long if its your first run through it since there is a lot of backtracking and exploring to do.
Go for Silent Hill Origins if you want a scary portable game. Otherwise skip it and get Silent Hill 3 which was till to date, the SCARIEST Silent Hill game created.