Does Silent Hill work on the hand held format?
STORY
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The game takes place before the first Silent Hill. You play as Travis Grady, a truck driver on his way to Brahms, cutting through Silent Hill as a short cut. On the way however, a mysterious figure collapes on the road, forcing him to stop. He finds a burning house, and hears a scream inside, which turns out to be a little girl. Having rescued her, Travis collapes and wakes up in Silent Hill. Now, Travis's in persuit of the little girl, trying to see if she's ok. It may for some seem senseless of why Travis's going after the little girl, but as you get deeper into the game, it'll make sense. Further more, it explains some events pretty well, and it's nice to see some old characters, even though the game's a bit light on story this time around. Fans may guess some parts of it, but it's pretty good nevertheless. Fans should be happy with the story as well, since it explains enough to make them happy.
9.0
GAMEPLAY
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The gameplay's the usual Silent Hill style, which is good since it isn't like Silent Hill 4. You move around, fighting monsters, collecting items and solve puzzles, the usual Silent Hill/Resident Evil style. There's a couple of new additions though, you can select your weapons in-game using the D-pad, it's a nice touch, but you have to stand still before you can select them, and during battles, it will be annorying to stop up and select your weapon, since your giving the enemy a chance to attack you, then again, you can always use the menu. Speaking about weapons, there's a lot of weapons, you can use stuff like TV's, spears, katana swords, hammers and much more. Thing is though, the weapons (except the firearms) are breakable, so they'll break after 2 emenys or so. However, this never seem to become a problem, since there's always sticks and what have ya around you. Besides, Travis can hand-to-hand combat, it's weaker than weapons, but it get's the job done. Travis is good a using firearms too. While it is realistic, it certainly does make Travis a less likeable character than the other characters in the Silent Hill universe, since all the other characters weren't experts with firearms. The puzzles in the game are good, but they won't make you search FAQ sites for answers though. There's also quick time events, which requires you to press certain buttons when a enemy grabs you, but the quick time events sucks, if you succed them, all Travis does is pushing the emeny, that's it, no damage is giving, nothing, which makes the quick time events unneccesary. If there's any fault to the gameplay, then it must be the fact, that most of the gameplay hasn't changed a lot, but in defense, the gameplay's the way we like Silent Hill, and after Silent Hill 4, people should be happy for the gameplay. Another bad thing is, that you can go to the underworld anytime you want, through mirrors. Sure you might not look at the mirrors the same way again, but it removes some of the tension, since your able to go there anytime, unlike the previous games, where you got there after a certain event. That being said though, the underworld sections are the best sections in the game. On a side note, if you got scare by the previous games, you should get scared here too, just remember to play with Headphones...... in the dark.
9.5
LENGTH
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The game takes around 5-7 hours to complete the first time through, but if you know what to do, you can complete it in 2 hours. After completing it though, you can get some accolades (think of the Xbox 360 achievements), which gives you costumes. Besides, there's 3 alternate endings. A good, a bad and (finally) a UFO ending, so there's some replay value here. The game chould have been longer though.
8.0
GRAPHICS
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The graphics are beautiful for a PSP game, the character design are good, and the enviroment are depressing, excalty what makes it so good. The underworld is a disturbing as ever. The enviroment is filled with metal fences, holes, blood is everywhere, it's so disturbing, that you wanna go exploring everything in the otherworld, good thing you can always get there then, even though it ruins the tension a bit. The frame rate's solid, it runs smothly all the time, and never dips. See that's how you make graphics on the PSP.
10
SOUND
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The voice acting's good (for once) and the sound effect are good and scary as always. The music's composed by Akira Yamaoka, who makes good music as always. There are a audio blog though, which removes starts removing some sound effects, and them removes every sound, though you can fix this by reloading the game. It's annorying, but it rarely happens.
9.5
OVERALL
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Silent Hill: Origins is a pretty good game, it's defently one of the best for the PSP. While it's not the best in the series, it's refreshing to see the good old Silent Hill gameplay, and familiar locations again. Silent Hill fans will defently be happy for Silent Hill: Origins, while new comers can easily pick this up, and understand most, they still need to play Silent Hill 1 & 3 though.
9.5
Pros:
Good story.
Beautiful graphics.
Good audio.
Good gameplay.
Good replay value.
Good puzzles.
Good controls.
Intersting & disturbing enviroments.
The underworld.
Cons:
5-7 hours short.
Can be completed in 2 hours.
(Rare) audio bug.
Gameplay hasen't changed a lot.
Going to underworld anytime you want removes some tension.
Too easy.
Useless quick time events.