Psychological terror at its best
The game is divided between a psychotherapy session and "you" remembering the events that took place in Silent Hill. While in therapy you get analyzed (based on your answers, actions and stare) by a psychoanalyst about life, family, commitment and sex through a series of questions and tests. From time to time the doctor will ask you to continue your story and you'll immerse yourself once again in your Silent Hill shattered memories.
The story of the game is similar to the first installment of the series, similar but not exactly the same. You play as Harry Mason, a published writer living in Silent Hill, looking after your daughter Cheryl Mason who disappears after your car crash accident. You get to visit the streets of Silent Hill, the local high school, the hospital, the mall and "The Lighthouse" as in the original one, however places are not exactly the same as they were and neither the support characters (which it's not a bad thing if you take into consideration that this are memories and the game is not intended to be a remake).
So, you go running around solving puzzles and collecting memories that are related to you and what really happened in the crash car accident (I won't say much about this because the ending is quite shocking and I won't ruin it for you) while also looking for your daughter Cheryl, while in this part of the game you won't encounter any enemies and thank God for that.
From time to time you get some sort of "revelation", the world freezes and you're basically in the otherworld. And let me tell you this is one of the most frenetic parts of the game, of any game I've ever played (topped only by being chased by Nemesis in RE3). You go running around in a frozen, dark world with "nightmares" chasing you and jumping on you and you've to shake em' off to continue running from them to reach your goal but most of the time you'll just run in circles and die. It's frustrating but you've infinite continues, it doesn't matter in the end if you die or not and you start at the beginning of the frozen world so you won't have to restart anything, so, relax and enjoy being chased.
Silent Hill: Shattered Memories is one of the few games on the Wii that actually uses the Wiimote as it should be and does it in an very elegant way. I was quite surprised about this. The Wiimote is a flashlight (while you're holding it horizontally) and your cellphone when you receive calls or voice messages. The sound of the calls will come from the Wiimote speaker so you'll have to put the Wiimote on you ear (yes, your ear), to actually listen them. The nunchuck controls are exactly the same as RE4, solid and accurate.
Most of the puzzles and scenes (most of them "inside cars scenes") requires you to interact with objects like you should in real life and the controls once again deliver a well done job.
One of my favorite characters in the original Silent Hill were the nurses, you won't find them in here thus I was a little disappointed. You won't find Samael neither or any other enemy from the previous game (and thank God because you don't have any kind of weapon in this game). But hey, the game is great, it excels itself in its genre, psychological terror, controls are great, graphics are quite good for a Wii game and the ending is quite shocking and a must see if you've played Silent Hill on the PlayStation.
On the other hand the game it's too short (3 - 5 days) and I didn't found any replay value in it. Nevertheless it's an enjoyable ride.
Protip: save your game as often as you can, there's no auto save, neither the saves count matters in the end.