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Silent Hill 3 graphics...I said WOW!
- Thread starter Kraftwerk
- Start date
Typographenia
Member
There's nothing to debate! All the silent hill protagonists are brain dead!Y2Kev said:
At least Heather didn't stick her hand in the toilet.
Visualante
Member
Blows my mind these games aren't on Steam.
Y2Kev said:
It's a typical horror convention. If the characters don't make several dumb decisions, then they wouldn't be in the mess that they're in and there wouldn't be story. For example, who'd actually go to a dark park on their own in the middle of the night when you know you've been haunted by supernatural forces?
Visualante
Member
Yeah I mean even the Ring.. they watch the stupid videotape.Replicant said:
Gentleman Jack
Member
Typographenia said:
Arguably if horror plot protagonists didn't do incredibly stupid things to endanger their survival it'd be hard to put them in such situations long enough to make a novel/film/game out of it. At least the general mystery behind each character in the first 3 games is compelling enough to overlook such stupidity. And as we're constantly talking about the unparalleled work that went into modeling and facial expressions, you can really sense their discomfort, their rage, their quiet anguish, every little delicious emotion in the storytelling that bonds you to them, dumb as they are.
*edit beaten hard*
disappeared
Banned
Y2Kev said:
To be fair, she's 17 at the time of SH3. 17-year-old girls make more stupid decisions than... well they make a lot of stupid decisions.
I never played through any of the Silent Hill games (just too scary for me), but the faces here are amazing. Not just the modeling, but the rigging is superior to most modern games, particularly in the mouth shapes. Why do so many current video game characters have angular mouths that make them talk like ventriloquist dummies?
Fimbulvetr
Member
Y2Kev said:
To be fair,
James is kinda insane.
plagiarize
Banned
they're from the school of thought that seem to defend every single flaw in the first three games as if they aren't really flaws at all, but who crucify every weak part in anything Team Silent didn't make, and who criticise things which are just different rather than worse.legacyzero said:
i love one and three, and i at least like every game in the series, but if you're going to say that the bad gameplay and bad voice acting is a positive in SH2, i don't think you can then say the improved combat in Homecoming is a bad thing (not that homecoming doesn't have plenty of faults too).
yes, SH1 has bad voice acting too, probably the worst, and SH3 isn't exactly the best voice acting either, but at least the gameplay in both of those is more interesting.
there's nothing magical about how SH3 looks so good though. it spends it's polygons really wisely, and good textures will help minimise any game aging.
it's artistic talent imho, not programing talent. the games from this gen that will still look good last gen are going to the be ones with great textures too.
Broder Salsa
Banned
plagiarize said:
As much as I agree with being being assholes at times homecoming combat was terrible and much worse than any of the previous games for me. Was it simple in the first games? Yeah and there wasn't much to do. But it wasn't frustrating or bad in any way which I found homecoming to be, hated every second of the fighting in the game.
Downpours combat looks like a updated version of the older combat which I am fairly excited about, no more of the homecoming bullshit or shattered memories which really missed some kind of combat.
SolidSnakex
Member
Grisby said:
They have combat, but it really isn't a focus in any of the most popular games (SH1-3). You can easily avoid combat for the most part in those games.
googoomuck22
Member
the feeling of being completely powerless is exactly what made silent hill tense and scary. homecoming did itself no favours by improving the combat because it didn't instil that feeling of dread as combat wasn't something you had to really worry about.
Wolfgang Jr
Banned
Typographenia said:
Blue-Steel Scenario-Writer
plagiarize
Banned
the enemies in Homecoming were a lot more threatening than anything in SH2. that's what i don't like about the combat in SH2. the majority of enemies just stand still while you hit them with a pipe. plus the regular enemies are all very similar in 2. you approach them all the same way. they require almost exactly the same tactics.googoomuck22 said:
that wasn't true in 1 and 3. plus, it's scarier to run away from the dogs and the flying monkeys and the big things in 3 than it is to run away from any of the relatively slow bipeds in 2. fighting stuff in 1 and 3 is more fun. avoiding stuff in 1 and 3 is more fun.
i don't think you were remotely 'powerless' in 2.
in homecoming you had to time your counters very well against many of the enemies to avoid taking damage. in 2 you just have to keep hitting 'melee'.
Typographenia
Member
Any given day, people will say the exact same thing about the atmosphere, music, or visual design.googoomuck22 said:
I know, I'm being nit-picky, but it's the entire package that ultimately does that. Having bleh combat isn't what I would consider tense and scary. It's just bleh combat.
The problem with arguing that the feeling of being powerless is that it leads down the exact same road every time. Next it leads to "well, the tank controls are best because they're able to both make fighting scary because it's clumsy, and they can make the presentation scarier due to fixed camera angles." Then it becomes a "well, you just have to run away, because that's how silent hill is supposed to be played. You avoid enemies, not like in Resident Evil."
You're not disadvantaged at all in a silent hill game, unless you have a starting segment with no weapon. After that, though, you're right as rain for the most part. It confused me when people said that homecoming was giving players too many items because it made the game easier, yet when I play the old games the streets and areas are littered with ammo and health drinks. I think it might be due more to forgetting things, or maybe it's just nostalgia (is that redundant?), but the combat was something more people fought to get working properly than it was something one would see as a "pro" while playing.
As plagiarize mentioned, the enemies were more difficult. I believe it worked fine amping up your ability to react accordingly while giving the enemies a boost. My real complaints about the system was that the animation loop you had to watch on the enemies for an opening was rather janky at times, and running away never worked as well as it should have. Other than that, I really didn't mind being able to fight back more easily.googoomuck22 said:
ScionOfTheRisingSun
Banned
Shadow of the BEAST said:
Shadow of the Damned and El Shaddai. The problem is there is no place for their games in today's expanded market. Look forward for El Shaddai to bomba when released shortly in the overseas market soon just like it did in Japan.
Also, as side note, the PS2 had so many amazing looking game whose visuals hold up fantastically even 10 years later, such as Metal Gear Solid 2, ICO, Shadow of Colossus, Okami, Wind Waker, all due to equal part technical wizardry and skillful choice of art direction.
This why I chuckle every time I hear people say that Japanese developers are struggling this generation because of, well, shaders man! They are so hardcore they eat assembly code for breakfast!
What an absolute rubbish notion, how could they stumble over such trifles when they so succinctly made the transition from 2D to 3D which was a task orders of magnitude more complicated as it required a rethinking of their approach to game design in addition to a paradigm shift in the way games are developed.
They manage that like champs but were stumped by higher fidelity textures and shader effects? Looking at the tendency to overindulge in gritty aestetics, abuse of shiny shaders and bump mapping to the point of most games looking painful to watch I'd say the western devs are not faring very exemplary in that regard.
No, the only problem, if any, is a issue of budgets. I mean just look at Konami, the only Japanese developed series of theirs they allocate a palpable budget for is MGS, the rest is overseas outsourced. The developers continue to be talented, for sure, but there is only so much they can do with the ghetto budgets being thrown around on Japanese home console project this generation.
But just look at what they can do when given a somewhat moderate budget, Valkyria Chronicsles, Bayonetta, Vanquish, Demon's Souls, El Shaddai etc. Then just imagine what they could do with proper funding, like they got just a generation back.
Alas...
HisshouBuraiKen
Member
how the hell do you play the pc versions on a modern pc (quad core, win7 x64)? ive tried restricting it to one core and both still freeze constantly. do i just need to dual boot xp and try there? never had probs on my old laptop.
Whether or not the Team Silent games had subpar combat mechanics is irrelevant to the issue of Homecoming's combat - the fact is that Homecoming tried to improve upon the combat, but failed miserably. The result was a broken, buggy and unpolished combat experience that only highlighted the quality of both the game and Double Helix themselves. E.g. you could get caught in an infinite enemy animation loop or simply mashing the knife constantly to kill off your foes.
SH2 only needs one core and you also have to install the latest patch for it to be compatible with soundcards (just google it). SH3 works flawlessly, so you do not have to go through many hoops to get it to work.
If neither game still do not work, try messing around with the compatibility tab for the .exe files.
HisshouBuraiKen said:
SH2 only needs one core and you also have to install the latest patch for it to be compatible with soundcards (just google it). SH3 works flawlessly, so you do not have to go through many hoops to get it to work.
If neither game still do not work, try messing around with the compatibility tab for the .exe files.
Typographenia
Member
So it plays like the other silent hill games?Lime said:
: P
Like I mentioned earlier in the thread, I still don't think any of the control methods we've seen thus far in the series have been successful. There are bits and pieces in each that do something decent, but none of them have been good enough yet.
Typographenia said:
I agree. None of the games have had serviceable combat (but then again, hopefully you aren't playing a Silent Hill for its combat). Future games should look to ways to improve or use combat in new ways, imo.
A suggestion would be to look to Siren: Blood Curse's combat. I thought it was okay and the way they used sight jacking as a way of unsettling the player was great in concept. It would be interesting to see a Silent Hill game that used its encounters with enemies to scare the player in other ways than "more hp and more damage".
mescalineeyes
Banned
If you are going to dock the real Silent Hill games for the shoddy combat -- which I think suited the game fine -- how about you look at all the games you like and realize that they don't do anything better than Silent Hill except for the combat.
plagiarize
Banned
i just need to feel risk. maybe the SH games need to think about status effects. an enemy with a difficult attack pattern to time, or something like the counter system in homecoming puts more pressure on the fight for me. makes it more involving and scarier.Lime said:
most of the games have one or the other of those things. i'll never really understand why they decided to drastically reduce the number and types of enemies for SH2, i'm just glad that they put more variety into the games that followed it.
SH2 with enemies that functioned like the ones in SH3 would be a better game all around.
i'm only pointing out that the combat in SH2 falls short (for me) compared to the combat in SH1 and SH3. and pointing out flaws in the game doesn't mean that i don't like the games inspite of those flaws... but if we're going to talk about which game we like best in the series, i think we should give one game a pass in one area, and then criticise another in that area like Twin Perfect do.mescalineeyes said:
improved gameplay wouldn't take away from what SH2 did right. i know, because the improved gameplay in SH3 didn't.
every game in the series has its flaws. i like them all inspite of those flaws... but the Team Silent die hards will try to explain away every flaw in the early games, espescially 2. 'oh it makes sense for the voice acting to be bad cause it gives the game a weird feel, and the combat shouldn't be hard because James is inventing these things to confront' as if they think that their favourite game ever having a flaw or two completely invalidates that they enjoy it so much.
it doesn't, it just invalidates your attempts at nit picking the later games in the series.
if you want to argue that what SH2 does well, completely overcomes the things it doesn't, that's absolutely fine... but Twin Perfect's obsession with presenting their opinions as facts makes such subjective points difficult for them to accept.
i just get frustrated seeing people slamming the combat in Homecoming *in isolation*.
i'm not 'scoring' them. i don't think that for every negative you have to subtract an arbitrary number of points from a full 100%. the combat doesn't prevent me from enjoying the series. hopefully it never will... but i've never met anyone who played the games because of the combat rather than inspite of it, and i do believe that they could do something better than what we've had that wouldn't undermine the atmosphere.
plagiarize said:
I think the complaints about combat levelled against Homecoming is rather indicative of the game as a whole: it represents many of the flaws and failures of the game, such as unpolished, buggy and an unnecessary design focus on something that shouldn't be prioritised when they cannot even get the storytelling or visuals up to par. So when people complain about the combat in Homecoming, it has also something to do with what the combat represents in terms of Double Helix' incompetence and complete failure as a game developer. Because the combat in Homecoming is terrible, like they didn't even get it through Quality Assurance.
mescalineeyes
Banned
plagiarize said:
my post did not deserve a response this well thought-out and eloquent.
that being said, Homecoming failed at literally everything it set out to do. The improved combat just made it more prevalent how ridiculous it is to even bother with changing the mechanics of the real Silent Hill games. Leave the combat barebones, a bit shit but scarce.
Make a game that means something.
SolsticeZero
Banned
I would punch a baby in the face if this team would get back together to make another Silent Hill
SneakyStephan
Banned
Anteater said:2003 game
2011 game
I feel kind of sad :lol
It's uncanny.
I feel incredibly guilty for not playing this on ps2 back in the day, I loved the heck out of SH1, but there were just too many amazing games to play that some managed to slip by me.
Going to pick this up on pc.
Acquiescence
Member
Little bit of trivia for ya - Richard Grosse, the guy who provided the voicework for Douglas, was the villain in this movie...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fE-6iX7hyo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fE-6iX7hyo
legacyzero
Banned
Acquiescence said:
"Seduced by the DARK SIDE, he was."
LOL
ScionOfTheRisingSun
Banned
Solstice said:
You are doing it wrong, you should punch babies in the face UNTIL it happens.
Typographenia
Member
Very great post, as Mescaline stated.plagiarize said:
You're right about them, though. For example, they state early on in the 1-3 videos that the tank controls are a bit difficult getting used to, but you should stick with them. Later, they say that homecoming has the worst controls of all time, and it's completely unacceptable. Tank control apologists annoy me, and I don't even mind tank controls.
This is why konami would never make that happen! Won't somebody think of the children!?Solstice said:
mescalineeyes
Banned
People complaining about tank controls should know you can set the controls to 3D.
angular graphics
Banned
johntown
Banned
Homecoming had some pretty bad controls but the worst has to be Orgins. The thing that makes them so bad in Orgins are the awkward camera angles. I still like the game but the controls are horrible.Typographenia said:
I don't think any real Silent Hill fan gets one of these games and expects the controls to be on par with Devil May Cry and Ninja Gaiden. You just expect tank controls and learn to appreciate them.
Melchiah
Member
angular graphics said:
Whoa! Thank you very much!
TheJollyCorner
Member
Acquiescence said:
I thought the 'first option' was negotiation?
LOL fuck it... get the grenades!
plagiarize
Banned
if you're a fan of survival horror at all, you can obviously put up with bad controls.johntown said:
sometimes i have to remind myself that pretty much every survival horror game HAS bad controls, and that it doesn't stop them being bad controls. when the most recent Alone in the Dark came out, the bad controls didn't even register with me until i saw people bitching about them.
some have okay controls, but i can only think of one that has what i'd call good controls, and that's Dead Space 2.
johntown
Banned
I think I am pretty safe in saying the newest Alone in the Dark had the worst controls of all time of any game.plagiarize said:
I love survival horror and I am used to the unpolished controls. Alone in the Dark is what got me started in survival horror games but the latest one has to be one of.....if not the worst game I have ever played.
