What's the consensus on post Team Silent entries in the Silent Hill series?

[Rosenkrantz]

With the SH4 release on GOG I was thinking about replaying Silent Hill series and got curious about the opinion on the Western made entries.

I remember how a lot of fans of the franchise hated everything that was made post Team Silent, even Shattered Memories (despite it being the strongest entry since 3, imo). Obviously, SH2 and SH3 are still fan favourites and among the most celebrated games of the horror genre, but I think some of the negative reception towards later entries was overblown. Did the opinion changed in later years, or these games still hated as much as almost a decade ago?

 

[PS9]

PT is the best

 

[Deleted member 71]

I haven't played them, but I know some of my friends are pretty fond of Origins and Shattered Memories.

Been meaning to give them a shot sometime soon.

 

[toad02]

I liked Shattered Memories back then.

 

[Izanagi89]

...............................................................................I really like Downpour.

 

[Chaos2Frozen]

I've seen people who are willing to defend Shattered Memories and maybe even Downpour.

But I have yet seen anyone ever defend Homecoming.

 

[Laurel]

orign and downpour were alright, shattered memories is whatever, that's all I think :P

 

[Deleted member 50374]

Origins is pretty nice, I would put it next to SH4. Shattered Memories isn't bad, but it's basically an unrelated game that got branded as Silent Hill or something. Downpour is decent, and I'm not commenting on the rest.

 

[Acquiescence]

Shattered Memories (Wii version) in an underappreciated masterpiece. Just gets better and better the more you play it.
Downpour is better than most folks let on. Has some of the best exploration in the entire franchise.
Homecoming is trash.
I played a demo of Book of Memories and that was trash too.
Never played Origins but always wanted to.

 

[Keldroc]

Series ends at 3, as far as I'm concerned. Downpour was almost okay.

Shattered Memories is crap and the praise it gets absolutely confounds me.

 

[liquidtmd]

I appreciated Shattered Memories more than really enjoyed it, and enjoyed Downpour more than I appreciated it

 

[Dreamboum]

I think they are decent. Not deserving of the scorn.

Downpour was actually good.

 

[Gradon]

Origins is the best of the non-Team Silent games imo, it fits with the original 4 really nicely.

Homecoming is the worst SH game, so bad in every way. Unreedemable (apart from that OST).

Shattered Memories is a lovely spin-off esque entry with a very interesting spin of the original game. I definitely recommend it for those that love the original, even if there is no combat and the chase sequences are flawed.

Downpour is decent, just had a lot of performance issues.

 

[Laranja]

I really enjoyed Shattered Memories and PT.

Downpour had some interesting ideas and was decent.

Homecoming was awful.

 

[Schlomo]

Shattered Memories and Downpour are good games IMO.

 

[Xagarath]

Shattered Memories is fantastic - I'd take it over Silent Hill 4.

 

[Vaser]

With the SH4 release on GOG I was thinking about replaying Silent Hill series and got curious about the opinion on the Western made entries.

I remember how a lot of fans of the franchise hated everything that was made post Team Silent, even Shattered Memories (despite it being the strongest entry since 3, imo). Obviously, SH2 and SH3 are still fan favourites and among the most celebrated games of the horror genre, but I think some of the negative reception towards later entries was overblown. Did the opinion changed in later years, or these games still hated as much as almost a decade ago?

Click to shrink...

Homecoming was OK( also my first PS3 game), but Shattered Memories and Downpour were beyond terrible. Never played the Vita game, but I remember thinking it looked bad.
EDIT: oh yeah, forgot about Origins. It's.... OK. Maaaybe a little bit better than Homecoming.

 

[Strings]

 

[Dr. Ludwig]

While I don't think Downpour is good, I do respect and appreciate it for doing things its own way.

Shattered Memories is genuinely interesting. I need to finish it one day...

Homecoming is an irredeemable piece of garbage from top to bottom. No matter what they tell you about its supposed "improved" combat.

 

[danmaku]

I only played Homecoming and Origins and they both feel like fanfiction. You can tell the people who made them really love SH, but they couldn't go beyond repeating the same tropes and style with less talent, like a bland direct-to-video sequel. To be honest, I'm happy Konami stopped trying. SH doesn't need any more sequels.

 

[Dreamboum]

I think the consensus is "everything after 3 doesn't exist" but vocal SH fans are a bit hyperbolic and over their heads

 

[Tomo815]

Downpour is ok in my opinion.

 

[Jawmuncher]

I think they're all solid and I've played al of them including book of memories (but only SH1 & 2 from TS).

They're obviously not as good as SH2 or anything, but I enjoyed them for what they were and them offering something new.

Only homecoming I wasn't a big fan of, just due to too much combat that's not exactly fun.

 

[Deleted member 16136]

Bang average and Americanised. Bit of fun if you are bored but just dont feel authentic.

 

[NightShift]

Shattered Memories is great. Better than SH4 at least.

Downpour is still kinda bad but had some good ideas. I'll always respect it for stepping away from the cult shit and trying to tell its own story like what all the Silent Hill sequels should have been about.

Origins and Homecoming are awful. I remember nothing other than the feeling of misery as I was playing them.

Edit: I like that I'm seeing a bit more positivity for Downpour in this thread. I remember going crazy thinking "it wasn't that bad" when it first came out.

 

[DPB]

It's annoying that Homecoming got a PC release and Downpour didn't, I'd gladly swap the two around.

 

[kurahador]

Shattered Memories --- pretty interesting take/adaptation of SH1.
Origins --- a story so tacked down to the ending and feature a more forgettable protagonist, so...meh.
Downpour --- good protagonist and pretty interesting story, but it's not scary at all. felt like playing a less scary Bioshock game.
Homecoming --- bad bad game.
Book of Memories --- terrible and downright insulting. avoid at all cost.

 

[Aostia82]

I liked Shattered Memories back then.

Click to shrink...

me too!

 

[SnatcherHunter]

Nothing touches P.T.

Funny how a demo left a more powerful impact than actual full SH games.

 

[ImboSlice]

Really fond of Downpour. It packed a couple of new ideas, good scares and a decent soundtrack, that was not as much of a derivate as other soundtracks post 3.
Homecoming was pure trash.
Rest was, for me, in the category of "as a SH fan you take what you can get)

 

[Fukuzatsu]

As someone who came into the series pretty late:
Silent Hill 1-4 are all classics in their own right, though quality does vary.
Silent Hill Origins is a step down in quality, but does a decent job mimicking many elements of the original games.
Silent Hill Shattered Memories is a very different but also very creative new take on Silent Hill 1, definitely worth playing.

Silent Hill Homecoming is a game that ultimately suffers from being torn between its identity as (formerly) "Silent Hill V" and "Silent Hill: The Movie: The Game", but does have a number of (admittedly superficial) elements that make it feel a little more similar to the originals relative to Downpour, not least of which includes the Yamaoka soundtrack. Also a few visually interesting areas.

Silent Hill Downpour feels like a genuine attempt to establish a new, westernised standard of what Silent Hill would be going forward, though obviously they didn't make any more. There are fewer elements that tie it to the originals beyond just being a survival horror game that has some portion of the story revolve around Silent Hill, but is almost certainly an all-around more well-made game than Homecoming. The lack of a Yamaoka soundtrack (though the new one is still decent), the semi-open world level design, and the bland monsters do go a long way towards creating a feeling of "generic"-ness, however.

 

[Dascu]

None of them come close to the artistry and mood of SH3 and 4, but Shattered Memories at least had a very nice story and sparks of genuine creative vision.

 

[Patitoloco]

There is none.

Some like Homecoming more, some like Downpour more, some say Shattered Memories is the only one worth it....

By rule of thumb, they're okay, they just don't reach the highs of the Team Silent ones.

 

[OniluapL]

Only played Shattered Memories, but it's incredible and I think it's well-regarded, although many disliked the gameplay.

 

[Deleted member 4494]

I think everything post Silent Hill 3 has something interesting to say about the series, but never says anything full-bodied to the extent that it becomes a major contribution.

the "room" stuff in silent hill 4 was really good and almost prototypical PT. The rest isn't very good. Homecoming made a strong case for evolving combat and did it's best impression of the visual language that it could, but ended up cringey in its poor interpretations. Downpour was forward thinking with game design but was held back so much by technical shortcomings and not having a story to match. Shattered memories is homecomings mirror reflection; seeing what could happen if it leaned away from combat — interesting, but not successful in my opinion. Finally, PT is the best of everything, but at the end of the day it's not a game, just a broken promise. All of these games have value, but none of them can really make a strong case to be better than any mainline SH game that entertains only a number after the title.

 

[Sleepwalker]

I think that the major problem of the western Silent Hills is that they all tried to, in some way, recreate the highs of the Team Silent games instead of pursuing a new vision and interpretation of Silent Hill. The most obvious example is the need to make the main character someone with a dark past who did something bad and is in denial about it a la SH2. Homecoming, Origins and Downpour all had a version of this twist and it quickly became tired and predictable, and predictability is something you don't want in a horror game. Next on the list are the aesthetics, Origins and especially Homecoming leaned in real hard on the mood of the first SH movie, which was already a pastiche of SH tropes. They just lack a clear identity of their own and would have been better games if they did something new and interesting. Instead, they feel like imitations of the classics, and not very good ones at that.

The outliers, for me, are Shattered Memories and Downpour, which are (what a surprise) my favorites of the western games. Shattered Memories had a really cool concept and vibe, although the segmented gameplay where you're in any kind of real danger for maybe a third of the game crippled the fear factor the game otherwise might have had. Downpour also had a very distinct feel to it and the expanded town exploration was a great feature I hope we'll see again (if we ever get a new game lol), but it also suffered of not being that scary, thanks to its lacklustre creature design. Not to mention the ill choice to make the main character's past be decided by the players actions which made the narrative pretty unsatisfying.

Overall, the less these games tried to rethread the Team Silent classics, the better they got for me. This is why the cancellation of PT stings to this day, as it finally felt like the series would go somewhere unique and interesting. I hope that one day, we'll get a new bold entry to the series that will feel fresh and daring, like the old ones did.

 

[Hayeya]

I liked Homecoming for what it was: A Silent hill game made by new Devs, the atmosphere was ok.

 

[Peter Ian Staker]

Outside of Shattered Memories trying some interesting new stuff(and PT if you count it I guess) there just isn't much good to write home about post SH4.
It's mostly rehashing SH 1 and 2 without really understanding what made those games work.

 

[werezompire]

I liked Book of Memories for what it is (a cross between a survival horror game and a roguelike). Main problem IMO is that the load times between stages are rather long since it has to generate the stage.

 

[Bradford]

Origins feels like a very weird mixture of what didn't work from The Room mixed with a more traditional Silent Hill game. Homecoming is bland and generic, with very bad combat and design changes. Shattered Memories is an interesting but flawed game. Downpour feels like a Showtime TV show adaptation of Silent Hill -- very bombastic with lots of design trends that flatten the experience. It isn't bad, but it feels like a weird direction for Silent Hill.

Book of Memories is trash. PT is excellent.

 

[Arcia]

Origins is decent. Probably the closest you can get to the atmosphere and gameplay of the original games. Shattered Memories is very different from a gameplay perspective, but it is also good because it tried something pretty neat with the story and succeeded in surprising me.

Homecoming is a terribly written, buggy trash fire from top to bottom.

Never played Downpour but people I respect the opinion of say it's pretty underwhelming.

Edit: Also sidenote, Silent Hill 4 is a terrible game. Outside of the first person stuff in the apartment the rest of the game is tedious and clearly rushed in production. Sound effects seem like placeholders half the time, areas are tiny with no puzzles, you have to repeat every level again half way through the game, and the voice acting is awful. Shattered Memories and Origins are better games than The Room.

 

[Syagrius]

Shattered Memories is great, I haven't played other post Team Silent games.

 

[ghostcrew]

Shattered Memories is great and Downpour is pretty good.

I probably wouldn't go any further than that with any other games. But those two are certainly worth trying.

 

[Athrum]

I kinda like Homecoming, it's basically SH2 again, just with more combat.
Didn't finish Downpour.

 

[Tak(●´ϖ`●)]

Book of Memories was such a gem.

 

[CannonFodder52]

I actually just playing through Origins, Homecoming and Downpour this year.
None of them are in the same league as the tremendous Team Silent releases. I think Shattered Memories is the only really great game of the bunch, though it's been the longest since I've played that one. Origins is pretty fun, especially if you view it like a fan game, and as a way to play some new dungeons in an similar style to the PS2 gameplay and engine. I thought Homecoming was horrible, pretty much only worth checking out for the soundtrack. Downpour is a game with a lot of cool ideas and poor execution. I believe it had former Mafia 1 devs and the eurojank is visible, but I'd strongly contend that is worth checking out.

Origins: 6.5
Shattered Memories: 8.5
Homecoming: 3
Downpour: 7

 

[vodalus]

Downpour was a good game too bad it runs so terribly.

 

[CatAssTrophy]

Awful. Some may have worked okay as games, but none were good SH games. PT worked really well but without seeing more of what their plans were with Silent Hills it's hard to say if it would have been a good SH game.

I'm a SH 1-3 purist and nothing is going to change that I'm afraid.

 

[nemorrhoids]

Having watched some LP's of most of the post-Team Silent ones (pretty negative LP's at that), I feel pretty confident that I can say they are... not great. They seem "fine", for the most part, but pretty much lack the subtlety and thought of the older titles. Competently made western-survival horror games, but not necessarily deserving of the then-prestigious Silent Hill title.

 

[Cerulean_skylark]

Love for shattered memories stuns me.

That game hates women. Most characters exist to simply escort harry to the next location. the acting is terrible like, even for silent hill it's hammy. It lacks any of the edge of the games it's emulating. And there are no puzzles because everything was designed as just a "manipulate the wiimote" gimmick.