Gamertell

At E3 2009, Konami announced the release of a re-imagining of the original Silent Hill. Silent Hill: Shattered Memories is a pretty good idea, because the development team of the original was pretty limited by the technology at the time. This re-imagining of the original game is coming out for the Wii, PS2 and PSP.

The PS2 choice might be a questionable one, at least.

The choice of the Wii is fine because it offers entirely new possibilities with the motion sensitivity. PSP is an interesting choice because they’re starting to utilize all of the possibilities that the handheld allows for. In terms of controls, regardless of what they port to, they’re jumping from motion controls to a situation where more is actually less. Where most of the control scheme for the Wii would be motion sensitive, they’d have to program entirely new controls for everything from looking around to shaking enemies off. This is the Jumping to the PS2 also puts it in that position since there’s less motion capabilities and more buttons that would lead to the standard gameplay we’ve all grown accustomed to. It would make it harder to make it a more original spin on the world. They would also cause a scaling back graphically to a certain extent.

Putting it out for all of the current generation consoles, rather than one last generation console, with the development of motion sensitivity across the board would’ve been wiser. It would allow for graphics to be further built up to draw the player into the world. For the other current generation consoles that don’t have motion sensitivity (at least not yet), they would just have to program it so that it can be played with the typical gamepad or with motion sensitivity when those components are ready for the public to purchase. At least that way, when the motion sensitivity is released for the 360 and the PS3 you can have a gameplay experience that’s closer to the Wii’s. They’ve just got to think about how to maximize their options with the game.

Sure, they can still scale it back a bit even after they released it for the current gen-consoles, so the PS2 option isn’t closed entirely. They should’ve held off on developing for the PS2 until the big three consoles have their port.

Yes, quite a few people still have a PS2. However, for most of original games in the series other than Silent Hill Origins for the PSP and PS2, there were also a lot of PC and Xbox sales for the franchise. So releasing SHSM for the Wii, PS2 and PSP might end up cutting out part of the franchise’s fan base. This is not to say that the Wii or PSP are bad choices. The Wii gets the audience more involved, which makes it terrifying, and the PSP allows for playing on the go.

Putting it out for the current generations consoles and then the PS2 would be more effective. It’s getting more exposure for the game. It would call all the hardcore gamers and fans of the series, which are spread across almost every console, to get the game. It would also be able to call newer players and attract them into the series if they weren’t already pulled in by past visits to the town.

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