Leave it to a game like Origins to lure you in looking for answers and leave you even more confused than before.
Anyone who's played through the first Silent Hill (you probably should. It helps.) knows who this little girl is gonna catch on quick and know that she's up to no good. Still the mind boggling part is, who is this Travis character? How is he connected? And why is he so boring?! All this and more is answered in Silent Hill: Origins. Unfortunately the games leaves you just about as clueless as Travis most of the time. It does a good job with its presentation, but after that, it's just one Silent Hill cliche after another. Haunted hospitals, General Stores, Apartments and a whole lot of doors that are strangely broken and unable to open.
This is the first flaw in the game. It's brutally linear. The upside is that the lighting and sound in this game is really good, even though they weren't at all updated from the PSP version. Apparently the controls are, which is a good thing, and yet there are still so many little annoying problems. First off, the game seems to beg you to use melee weapons. It has a whole lot of them. They're temporary and random objects, like lamps, portable tvs and night stands which is pretty cool. The only problem is the combat is so slow and so hard to pull off at times, that you'd much rather use the large array of arms the game gives you or just avoid the enemies altogether. This brings us to yet ANOTHER problem. There just isn't enough health and ammo in the game as you had hoped for. If you're not good at avoiding confrontation, which is sometimes impossible, you will spend most of your time with your health in the red and your guns completely empty which leave you defenseless against the big boss fights which are just about the best thing in the game.
The puzzles are also something that left me very surprised. They're pretty intricate to be fair and once you've solved one, you feel very proud of yourself. Too bad the combat wasn't better though, cause otherwise the gameplay wouldn't be something to whine about. The fact that you CAN attack an enemy when they're down on the ground, but you CAN'T actually pull it off is very frustrating. As far as enemies go by the way, there is nothing original about them. They're brainless, and on top of that, they're pretty much a clutter of psycho nurses and limbless deformed creatures. That's about it.
I myself felt that there was a lot of room for improvement here. First of all, the storyline just doesn't make sense. Even Travis knows that. And a game with a lame storyline and lame gameplay can't pass off as a great game. Even if it is kinda spooky. In the case that you're obsessed with Silent Hill, have played the first game, don't have a PSP but do have a PS2, pick this up if you really must, but otherwise I don't see why you'd really like this game at all.