Silent Hill: Shattered Memories is a 2009 survival horror game developed by Climax Studios and published by Konami. It was released in December for the Wii and ported to the PlayStation 2 and PlayStation Portable platforms in January 2010. In April 2014, it appeared on the PlayStation Network in Europe.
Shattered Memories is a reimagination of the first game and retains the premise—Harry Mason's quest to find his missing daughter in the fictitious American town of Silent Hill—but is set in a different fictional universe and has a different plot, and altered characters, alongside new ones. Five endings are available. Gameplay takes place in two parts: a framing, first-person psychotherapy session, and an over-the-shoulder perspective of Harry's journey through Silent Hill, which is periodically interrupted by the occurrence of a shift to a more dangerous environment. Answers given to the psychological tests in the therapy session affect various gameplay elements in Harry's journey.
After designing the Silent Hill prequel (2007), which intentionally replicated elements of the first installment, Climax Studios wanted to try a different approach to creating a title in the series. Among the changes made was the removal of combat and the constant presence of monsters. Akira Yamaoka composed the soundtrack of the game, which was the first in the series to prominently feature dynamic music.
The game received generally positive reviews for its graphics, plot, voice acting, soundtrack, and its use of the Wii Remote, and has been favorably compared to M. Night Shyamalan's visuals. However, some reviewers found the puzzle exploration, chase sequences and psychological elements frustrating, and felt the game was too short. It has been since praised by some reviewers for its unique take on the franchise, clever twists to the original story, atmosphere and mechanics.
Gameplay
Silent Hill: Shattered Memories is a reimagining of the first installment of the series, Silent Hill. It keeps the premise of writer Harry Mason looking for his daughter in Silent Hill after a car crash, although it leads into a different plot. The personalities and roles of characters from the first game have also been changed, and Shattered Memories introduces new characters as well.
Silent Hill: Shattered Memories divides its gameplay between two different settings. The first section is set in a psychotherapist's office and the second in a town called Silent Hill. In the first section, the player interacts with Dr. Michael Kaufmann, who is a therapist NPC, from a first-person perspective. The player responds to Kaufmann's questions and completes a psychological test, fills in a questionnaire or colors pictures. The player's responses to these tests alters aspects of gameplay in the second setting, including the available areas, the physical appearance and behavior of characters encountered, and the physical appearance of the monsters. Shattered Memories returns to Kaufmann's office periodically throughout the game.
In the second setting, the player guides Harry Mason in an over-the-shoulder view as he searches for his missing daughter Cheryl in the snowy town of Silent Hill. Harry is equipped with a smartphone and flashlight: he can use the phone to check his location on a GPS map, take photographs, and make telephone calls. Moving to certain spots with high interference, represented by a lot of radio noise, or by taking pictures of spots where shadowy figures can be seen, unlock various text and voicemail messages that expand the story and occasionally provide clues. To view the details of various documents, the player can zoom in on objects. The game also alters details of gameplay based on what the player views. Throughout his journey, Harry encounters puzzles such as mechanisms, which reward either a key required to progress or a bonus memento. In the Wii version, the Wii Remote is used for puzzle solving and to control the flashlight and cell phone.
The game occasionally shifts to an icy alternate dimension called "Nightmare", where hostile monsters exist. To escape from this dimension, Harry must find a predetermined exit while avoiding the wandering creatures which chase him upon detection. Unlike previous installments in the series, there is no combat element to the gameplay: Harry is weaponless for the entire duration of the game and can only run, hide, slow down the monsters by knocking down objects to block their path, throw off the creatures if they latch onto him, and temporarily ward them off by picking up and using flares found lying on the ground. His running speed and "health" (the amount of damage that he can endure before dying) decrease every time the monsters grab him. In contrast to the previous installments of the series, which featured various types of monsters, Shattered Memories features only one type of humanoid monster, whose physical appearance changes in response to the player's actions inside and outside the Nightmare realm, including their responses to Kaufmann's psychological tests.
Plot The game begins with a psychotherapy session conducted by Dr. Kaufmann, which acts as a frame story for Harry's quest. Suffering from issues with his memory, Harry travels home to search for his seven-year-old daughter Cheryl, hoping that she is already there. His consciousness moves between the in-game real world and Nightmare—a frozen version of the town in which monsters chase him—and finds that another family lives in his house. Police officer Cybil Bennett arrives and decides to take him to the police station, but they become caught in a blizzard, and Harry eventually leaves her car to continue his search. Eventually, Harry finds his way to the local high school, where he learns from a woman named Michelle Valdez that a Cheryl Mason attended school there previously, but then moved. She offers to drive Harry to Cheryl's new address, but after briefly stepping away, he returns to find Michelle has been replaced by Dahlia Mason, who claims to be Harry's lover and acts as if she has been with him the whole time. He accepts the ride, although during another shift to the Nightmare, the car falls into a river. Harry escapes but loses consciousness.
He awakens in a wheelchair pushed by Cybil in the town's hospital. Before Cybil can tell him about his file at the station, the town transitions to the Nightmare. Harry escapes and meets Lisa Garland, a nurse injured in a crash, and escorts her to her home. At her request, Harry gives Lisa pills for her headache, and returns to find her either dead or dying, depending on in-game actions taken by the player. Finding him next to Lisa's corpse, Cybil attempts to arrest him, but is frozen as the Nightmare emerges around them. Harry escapes to Cheryl's home, where he finds an older Dahlia who claims to be his wife and tells him that Cheryl is at the lighthouse. Harry enters the Nightmare, escapes it, and eventually gets a ride from Michelle. Harry finds a young-again Dahlia aboard a boat at a lakeside harbour, who sets the course for the lighthouse and seduces him. Harry wakes, finds an aged Dahlia and the environment covered in ice, and crosses the now-frozen lake but falls into the water and passes out. Harry is dragged ashore near the lighthouse by Cybil, who confronts him with the news that Harry Mason died eighteen years ago in a car accident. As Harry proceeds, he finds "the lighthouse" is the name of Dr. Kaufmann's counseling clinic: the patient in the therapy session is an adult Cheryl, who is in denial over her father's death. Harry enters the office and Cheryl either reconciles herself to his death or continues to cling to her fantasy father.
At the end of the game, an old video clip from Cheryl's camcorder is played. Four variations of this clip are available depending upon the player's actions as Harry. In "Love Lost", Harry packs his luggage in a car and tells Cheryl not to blame herself for her parents' separation. In "Drunk Dad", a drunken Harry yells at Cheryl, demands a beer and blames his drinking on his family. In "Sleaze and Sirens", Harry flirts on his bed with Lisa and Michelle. In "Wicked and Weak", Dahlia verbally abuses Harry and slaps him. In the "UFO" joke ending, Cheryl tells Dr. Kaufmann that she believes Harry was kidnapped by aliens and that Silent Hill is a spaceship. After James Sunderland interrupts, the therapy session continues, revealing Cheryl to be a dog and Dr. Kaufmann to be an alien. Regardless of the ending, the final scene shows Cheryl packing away mementos that the player can collect throughout the game. An additional scene the player can obtain shows her reconciling with Dahlia outside the clinic.
Development Plans for a Silent Hill remake, and speculation about a possible remake based on the Silent Hill film, were circulating as early as 2006. The idea of a remake was also considered early in the development of the prequel game Silent Hill: Origins (2007). After the release of Silent Hill: Origins, Climax pitched two ideas to Konami: Brahms PD and Silent Hill: Cold Heart respectively. Brahms PD followed a detective with amnesia in the neighboring town of Brahms looking for their partner, while Silent Hill: Cold Heart would have followed a mentally disturbed college student and replaced the foggy setting of the former games with ice and snow. Elements from both pitches were used to create the basis for Shattered Memories. Rumours persisted into 2009, and were seemingly confirmed in February when the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) re-rated the original game. The game was officially announced in the May 2009 issue of Nintendo Power.
Climax Studios, the developer of Silent Hill: Origins, developed Shattered Memories with a development team made up of more than 55 members and a supporting network of more than 90 artists. With the completion of Origins - for which they had attempted to closely replicate the atmosphere and gameplay elements of the first Silent Hill game (1999)— Climax Studios wanted to create another horror game. Because of the tenth anniversary of the first Silent Hill installment, Konami thought the time was ideal "to revisit" the game. Climax Studios saw the then-newly introduced Wii platform as a way to reach a wider range of gamers, especially as outside Japan, no Silent Hill title had been exclusively released on a Nintendo platform. Development costs for the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 and their gamers' "mindset" factored into the decision for the gaming platform. Additionally, the developers wanted to use the Wii Remote to incorporate the gameplay elements of the flashlight and radio static. Climax felt that the first game would be a good starting point, instead of continuing any existing storylines or adding onto the mythology of the town. To please fans of the series and bring in new ones, they decided to reimagine the setting and characters, such as Dahlia, who was changed from "a haggard old woman" who led the town's cult into a physically attractive young woman. Game designer Sam Barlow explained in November 2022 that he was not a fan of Silent Hill 3 as he disliked the continuation of Harry and Cheryl Mason's adventures as well as the bad endings in Silent Hill. He felt he could redeem the series by reimagining the first game through Shattered Memories.