029: Silent Hill Shattered Memories, or Harry Runs Away Repeatedly

Welcome back to The SoraRabbit Hole, the Halloween edition! Some of you may have guessed from the hints I’ve been dropping, but I’m revisiting my favorite spooky town this year as well… Silent Hill. Last Halloween I covered one of my favorite games, Silent Hill 2. The more I thought about it, the more I decided I could make this a yearly thing, to play through and review a Silent Hill game each year just in time for Halloween. I strongly considered backtracking and doing the very first Silent Hill this time, seeing as how I jumped over it before, but talking it over with Cocoashade, she convinced me to play one I’ve never played before. So here we are… let’s get to it!

Welcome back to Silent Hill! (Credit: Climax Studios, Konami)

As I mentioned in my first Silent Hill review I’m mainly here to give you the game mechanics, the story, and my thoughts. This will not be a full walkthrough. There’s a lot I missed as I played the game, and there will be a lot that I’ll gloss over for time. This means if you choose to play the game for yourself, there will be plenty still to discover. That said, this post will be rife with spoilers. I will be spoiling the big twist and two of the possible eight endings. (This is because in this game you actually get two endings on each playthrough. I’ll explain more later.)

Silent Hill: Shattered Memories is a survival horror game created by Climax Studios and published by Konami for the Wii in 2009. It later got ports for the PS2 and PSP systems. One interesting thing I want to mention is that this game was designed and written by Sam Barlow. If that name sounds familiar, I just did a mini review of his game Telling Lies in my anniversary post. He’s done some other games I plan to check out. Two of them you may have heard of: Her Story and Aisle.

The Silent Hill team had been kicking around the idea for a while of rebooting the series, revisiting the first game in some way. Since it was the tenth anniversary of the franchise, they decided to do something different rather than a full reboot or a sequel. So this game is considered a reboot/reimagining of Part 1 as well as a separate entity completely. Due to this, it doesn’t fit in exactly with the established canon of the other games.

A little backstory, since I did skip over Part 1 in my reviews… the original Silent Hill features a man named Harry Mason as the playable character. He has a car accident and his daughter Cheryl wanders off. That game concerns Harry searching the town of Silent Hill looking for his daughter. If you have not read my first Silent Hill post (link above) I suggest going through that, as I spend more time on the concepts of the series and my history with it. For this one, I’m going to stay focused on Harry’s journey and the story of Shattered Memories with only a few references to the previous games.

Intriguing… (Credit: Climax Studios, Konami)

When Shattered Memories fires up, you’re faced with a red text card that claims the game psychologically profiles you. This turns out to be true… many of the choices you make in the game, questions you answer, things you witness, pick up, or look at, all work together to assign you a personality score. Small aspects of the game change due to this score, including some of the dialog, the content of the echoes, the appearance of characters, the color of Harry’s old house, and the appearance of the monsters. The ending you get is also impacted. There are several combinations of endings. More on that later.

Harry Mason in a happier time. (Credit: Climax Studios, Konami)

As the game opens, a home movie plays, rewinds, plays again. It depicts Harry and Cheryl heading out for a family outing. “I love my daddy!” Cheryl exclaims over and over. As the game goes on, you continue to notice the VCR effects. Static rolls over the screen, and the in-game menus look like old-style VCR menus.

Once the home movies are done, we find ourselves in a psychiatrist’s office. It’s not stated right away, but this is Doctor Michael Kaufmann, who was the director of the Alchemilla Hospital in Part 1. In Shattered Memories, Dr. Kaufmann is a menacing figure throughout the game, his words carrying a weight and foreboding. Every statement seems loaded and threatening. His role in the game is to give you psychological tests and ask questions, the results of which effect your hidden psychological score and impacts the game. He puts together your Psychological Profile. While in Kaufmann’s office, you can use the motion control to look around, nod or shake your head, and complete tests such as sorting pictures, coloring, and filling out a questionnaire.

The game jumps to a flashback, showing Harry’s car crash. He immediately realizes his seven year-old daughter Cheryl is not in the car. He grabs a flashlight from the glove box and begins to look for her, calling out her name. In this area, an auto junk yard, you get the chance to learn the controls. The Wiimote controls the flashlight and the direction you look. The nunchuck controls your movement.

Not creepy. (Credit: Climax Studios, Konami)

Immediately you are faced with Silent Hill’s signature spooky atmosphere. It’s dark, claustrophobic, and a light snow falls, obscuring the scenery. The background music is minimalistic but recognizably Silent Hill-esque. As in all the Silent Hill games, roadblocks corral you in to the areas you can explore. Joining the usual boarded up and fenced in areas are massive snowbanks, blocking your passage.

Find a different bathroom Harry. (Credit: Climax Studios, Konami)

As is expected from a visit to Silent Hill, there are few people to run into. The town appears deserted and fallen into disrepair. The place is lonely and nightmarish, full of shadows and eerie sounds.

Yep… we’re in Silent Hill alright. (Credit: Climax Studios, Konami)

The roadblocks feel as though you are being led somewhere, herded. One thing that becomes evident right away is that there are no monsters lurking around. This game contains no random encounters, unlike the other games in the series. The monsters come in later at specified times, and there are no boss battles. This doesn’t completely cut down on the tension, however. The ambient music, the background noises, and the atmosphere keeps you firmly rooted in the dark world of Silent Hill and worrying about what may come next.

The peaceful streets of Silent Hill. (Credit: Climax Studios, Konami)

Harry continues through the deserted streets, looking for Cheryl. As you focus on things, Harry occasionally will comment on them. (He makes the occasional horndog comment if your gaze lingers on a poster or photo of a female.) Harry’s comments are usually humorous or just idle, but the things you look at do effect the ending the get. Lingering too long on certain things will impact your Psychological Profile. The things Harry chooses to observe shape his personality.

I have so many questions. (Credit: Climax Studios, Konami)

After wandering a bit, Harry finds himself in a shop. This is where the first of the branching paths of the game occur. You can choose to go into the VCR shop or the dress shop. I chose the dress shop. This will be the last time I mention the branching choices, just know that there are several in the game. The path I outline here may differ from your path through the game. The path you choose effects various things later in the game and the path you do not choose is inaccessible in the same playthrough.

Cybil is observant. (Credit: Climax Studios, Konami)

After solving an easy fetch the key puzzle in the dress shop, you come across a diner (or bar) where you meet your next character, a no-nonsense cop from Silent Hill named Cybil Bennett. (Side note: Cybil was featured in Silent Hill Part 1 and also in the Silent Hill movie. In those incarnations, Cybil is an officer from the neighboring town of Brahms. Cybil generally plays a helpful role. In fact, in Part 1 she’s the one who filled Harry in about the town and gave him his handgun.) (Other side note: This is where you see your first impact from the Psychological Profile. Cybil’s appearance is changed depending on what answers you have given so far. For me she had short blonde hair, glasses, and uncoplike cleavage.) Cybil is concerned with Harry upon learning that he’s been in a car accident and is missing his daughter. She looks at his license and sees an address there. Apparently Harry is a Silent Hill resident and he lives on Levin Street. (This is a big deviation from the original, in which Cheryl had asked Harry to take a vacation to the town.)

Harry takes a Candy Crush break. (Credit: Climax Studios, Konami)

At this point your phone starts ringing but whoever it is hangs up. Regardless, now you get access to a vital tool of the game: Harry’s cell phone. It’s a slightly archaic smart phone, but it has the ability to make and receive calls, receive and read texts, a contact list, camera, photo album, a GPS map, and the all-important Save Menu to save your game. As you encounter characters in the game, you can call them. There are also phone numbers posted around town on various signs that you can call.

If you call “Home” from your contact list, you hear what sounds like Cheryl crying. I love this mechanic… to listen to the phone, you hold the Wiimote up to your ear and the sound comes from the built in speakers in the controller.

Harry gets the idea that Cheryl may be back at home, waiting for him. So he sets off on his journey back home. Before leaving the diner, I also found my first Memento, which are the collectibles in the game. The first one was a snow globe. The Mementos are stored in a cardboard box in the pause menu and can be viewed at any time. There are 25 of them, and they serve no function in the game, but they do have an explanation way later, which I’ll cover. (I found 18 of them, incidentally, on my playthrough.)

Ghost Hunters: Silent Hill Edition. (Credit: Climax Studios, Konami)

Backtracking the way you came, you can encounter your first two echoes. Echoes are a game mechanic where staticky distortion (both audial and visual) points you towards an echo from the past. When you are near, your flashlight flickers and your phone emits static (similar to the portable radio in the previous games that warned you of nearby monsters). The effects become greater the closer you get to the echo. When you locate it, the distortion reaches a crescendo and you receive a text message or voicemail that gives you some backstory on characters. The visual echoes generally give you no sound, there is just the staticky outline of a ghost either stationary or moving. Those can be a little difficult to spot.

The first echo is in the playground and appears to be Cheryl sitting on a swing. She is hugging a doll and looks like she’s crying.

Harry goes window shopping. (Credit: Climax Studios, Konami)

In the dress shop I located a red dress and the voicemail I received was from a girl who was excited to wear the dress for the boy she liked.

Not a good sign… (Credit: Climax Studios, Konami)

As you continue, ice starts to rapidly creep over everything. Signposts twist under the pressure of the encroaching ice.

Good advice Cheryl. (Credit: Climax Studios, Konami)

Another call comes in. This one is from Cheryl and she warns you that you need to run. The phone goes dead and the world continues to freeze over. This is your introduction to the “Icy Death Nightmare”. This is where you encounter the monsters of the game, twisted and viscous creatures called Raw Shocks. As mentioned earlier, there is no combat in this game, not really. You must run and keep running. These areas become mazes where you rush through hallways and rooms, ducking through doors and looking for the exit. The doors you can enter are highlighted with a blue glow. As you go, you can knock things in the monster’s paths to slow them down and occasionally hide. Rarely you can find flares that will shield you from the monsters for a time. (Note that you can’t check your map while the flare is going… but really it’s hard to use the map during these parts anyway. The Raw Shocks are too fast.)

Harry makes a new friend. Note the VCR distortion. (Credit: Climax Studios, Konami)

If the Raw Shocks catch you, you have the opportunity to shake them off or push them a short distance so that you can get away. This is done by moving the Wiimote and nunchuck forcefully in the direction you want the monster to go.

The interesting thing is that the creatures— initially appearing featureless and smooth— change appearance based on your Psychological Profile. (For most of the game my Raw Shocks looked like stitched-together mannikins.)

Aww, it wants a hug. (Credit: Climax Studios, Konami)

On occasion you can get swarmed and it can become more difficult to throw the monsters off of you. You don’t have a health gauge, but the more you are attacked, the weaker Harry gets. You run slower, starting to limp and lurch. The distortion becomes worse, and eventually you collapse under the weight of the Raw Shocks. When this happens, the game reloads your last checkpoint and you continue on.

Doctor Kaufman is creepy. (Credit: Climax Studios, Konami)

Once you locate the exit you find yourself back in the doctor’s office. You answer yes or no questions and color a picture. The colors you choose effect the colors seen in the next scene.

Back on Harry’s journey, he arrives at the house on Levin Street. The house and car are the colors from the picture you just colored, as well as the clothes for the homeowners. That’s right, when Harry knocks on the door he learns another family lives here now. Cybil arrives and decides Harry needs to come in to the station. On the way, the windows freeze over and Cybil gets out of the car. She doesn’t come back, so Harry decides to get out and walk.

Charming decor. (Credit: Climax Studios, Konami)

What follows is a long trek through the woods and the edge of Toluca Lake. (Interestingly, the lake is west of town in this game, whereas in Silent Hill 2, it was to the Northwest.) You visit a few cabins, a pump station, and a lodge. In this area I found a few echoes telling stories of other residents of the town. A girl calling her mom to pick her up from a party in the woods because she feel uncomfortable, a boy who drowned in the pump station, a boy being chastised by his father for not wanting to shoot a deer, and then a couple of important voice messages from a woman to her friend. She talks about how she doesn’t want to be with her husband. He’s decided to take them on a family vacation, and she is dreading it. Her daughter is demanding her attention and the woman is trying to get the father to get out of bed and pay attention to his daughter. The girl somehow injures herself and starts bleeding. The voicemail ends with the woman yelling at her husband. (Starting to see a picture coming together? Not all the echoes are unconnected characters.)

Harry gets his bearings. (Credit: Climax Studios, Konami)

After exploring the area, Cybil calls, upset that Harry wasn’t in the car. She’s worried he’s not in his right mind after his car accident. She tells Harry there is a shelter at the High School gym and he should wait for her there. Thinking Cheryl may be at the shelter, Harry agrees.

In a cabin there is another ghost, which triggers the first echo I mentioned of the family vacation and ice spreads over everything again. It’s time for another Icy Death Nightmare sequence. This one was a bit more difficult for me and I died on my first couple of attempts to get through here. After a few tries I managed to get out, and there’s a puzzle to melt ice sculptures that are blocking your way out. You have to play a child’s toy relating to bird sounds. This is where the second echo about the family vacation comes up, giving a hint about the puzzle. (The toy belongs to the girl who gets hurt in the echo.)

Don’t blink. (Credit: Climax Studios, Konami)

Outside is the Overlook, where I found another echo, this one of a girl getting assaulted in a car. (I suspect the same girl who bought the dress in the earlier echo since the guy mentions her dress.) There’s another Kaufmann sequence, and then Harry climbs a fence into a football field, having to circle around a bit to enter the school. You visit a brothel and a fast food restaurant, then a parking lot, finally finding your way into Midwich High School.

Along the way I found several more echoes. The echoes describe a boy calling a girl frigid. She doesn’t want to have sex in her parent’s house. A man striking an escort, saying with her hair in pigtails, she looks like his daughter. Then the same guy talking to his daughter, asking her why she changed her hair and that he liked her in pigtails. (Shudder.) Early in the school area the echoes talk about something called “The Choking Game” and how teens were dying from playing it. One of the ghosts I photographed was actually hanging himself in the school with his belt. While exploring the High School I found a few more echoes. The boy from earlier dumps his girlfriend by text message. Caitlin— the girl who bought the dress— wants to go to prom with a boy named Mike. He gives a speech at prom about the future. Then Mike and Catlin toast to their own future. They will never be like their parents, never grow old, never be apart. (Very ominous vibes and I can’t help wondering if they play The Choking Game after this…)

The school exploration is a huge segment of the game. I’ll gloss over the details since you really just wander around quite a bit solving a few puzzles. Then you finally reach the gym.

Harry makes a less monstrous friend. (Credit: Climax Studios, Konami)

In the gym there’s a musical number, sung by a new character, a High School graduate named Michelle Valdez. Her appearance varies depending on your Psychological Profile, but for me she was blonde and wearing a pink prom dress and a tiara. Michelle is waiting for her boyfriend, and wondering why no one else has shown up to their High School reunion. Weird. Harry explains his missing daughter problem.

Poor, confused Harry. (Credit: Climax Studios, Konami)

Michelle drops a bombshell. She knew a Cheryl Mason… but this Cheryl was in the grade above her. How can that possibly be? Harry’s Cheryl is only seven. This one is clearly a teenager. A trip to the Principal’s office brings a fun Password puzzle where you have to guess the security questions based on objects around the office. Once you’ve hacked into the mainframe, you see that Cheryl was indeed a student of Midwich High. She moved to a new address on Simmons Street, and a phone number is listed. Harry calls the number, and someone named Dahlia answers, very upset with Harry for calling. Harry then finds himself plunged into another Icy Death Nightmare.

This was even more of a difficult chase sequence for me, mostly due to the circular nature of the maze and the sheer number of Raw Shocks. I found myself swarmed many times before I finally managed to find my way out. But the nightmare wasn’t over… the exit was blocked by another ice sculpture. Harry receives a text demanding he go to three specific locations and take “paparazzi photos” to take someone down. To do this, you have to brave the monsters again and find glowing locations to take the required photos. (I died a few more times attempting this part. Thankfully dying just sends you back to the blocked door to try again.) These photos tell a story that seems to indicate a female student having an affair with a male teacher. The student looks an awful lot like the teen Cheryl from the photo Michelle showed you. And the teacher? Earlier in the school exploration I found a phone number on a desk for a Mr. Gordon. When I called it, there was a message of an angry man asking people to stop calling him and that the girls are “making it all up”. Hmm…

Having taken these pictures, Harry is reunited with Michelle, who leads him to a nightclub she works at called the Balkan. (Side note: This was the name of the cult’s church in Part 1.) Michelle plans to borrow a car at the nightclub and take Harry to Simmons Street. Harry heads off to find a key and the choices made in this search affect later scenes. (I’m not entirely sure in what way, but I’ll experiment next play through.) When you go back down to talk with Michelle, she’s gone and instead you’re faced with a new character who has a familiar name: Dahlia.

Great first impression. (Credit: Climax Studios, Konami)

Harry is understandably confused by the replacement. Dahlia is annoyed with Harry for being confused. Something very odd is going on. So, let’s piece this together… Dahlia is the one who answered the phone when you called the house on Simmons Street. She appears to be very familiar with Harry. Beyond that we have no idea what’s going on. (Another side note: In Part 1 the character of Dahlia was nothing like this. That Dahlia was much older and was the Priestess of the cult. In the movie Dahlia was changed once again to just be a member of the cult.)

Try to keep up Dahlia. (Credit: Climax Studios, Konami)

Dahlia agrees to drive Harry to Simmons Street and after a puzzle to lower the drawbridge, disaster strikes.

Poor Dahlia. (Credit: Climax Studios, Konami)

An Icy Death Nightmare hits and the car goes off the bridge, into the water. Dahlia is frozen solid and Harry has to escape. The car floods with water, but Harry doesn’t drown. Eventually he gets out of the car, heroically leaving Dahlia behind. (Sarcasm.) Unfortunately Harry blacks out. He soon comes to in a wheelchair being pushed along by Cybil. They’re in Alchemilla Hospital, another familiar setting from Part 1. (This time there are no killer zombie nurses, though. Which could be considered a pro or a con, depending on your taste.) Cybil ominously says that she pulled the file on Harry Mason. Before she can elaborate, she freezes solid (are you starting to see a pattern here?) and Harry rolls away in his new wheelchair. There’s more creative use of the motion control to push the wheelchair along the empty hallways.

Harry takes a spill and the Icy Death Nightmare fully begins. The Raw Shocks are back in even greater numbers. Thankfully this running sequence is a bit shorter. When you reach the end of it, you get a text from Dahlia, who just says she has a bad hangover. So obviously she survived that whole thing with the freezing and the drowning. (Silent Hill residents are resilient, huh?)

Harry finds himself in a small room with a hospital bed and a radio. There is a ghost sitting at the bedside and touching it triggers a new echo that gives you a voicemail. A man is speaking to his wife, discussing their daughter and her hospital stay. (From the injury in the other echo?) She’s doing better and they played her song on the radio. She wants to know when her mom will come visit. The context of the message makes it sound like her visit is uncertain. Another message is from the mother’s side, speaking with someone about how she’s not actually planning on visiting her daughter in the hospital. “He’s doing a good job… spoiling her of course.” She’s not going to visit because she doesn’t want to get her daughter’s hopes up. The riddle to get through the next ice sculpture is an easy one. You read songs on a poster and call in to the radio station. The song the little girl requested was not specified, but it’s obvious. “Daddy’s Girl”. (Are you starting to piece together the underlying story here? I know I was by this point. Or at least I thought I was…)

Yeah… kinda guessed that from the crashed car and the bloody head wound. (Credit: Climax Studios, Konami)

Shortly after this puzzle you run across another new character, Lisa Garland. (I say new, but she was also the nurse in Part 1.) Lisa has somehow managed to crash her car into the hospital and has a bloody head injury. She’s a little loopy, but friendly enough. Her appearance and the details of her crash depend on choices you have made up to this point. (Have you noticed that everyone Harry has met so far have been female? Interesting, huh?) Lisa needs to go home to her apartment and Harry decides to help. He accompanies her down the street and to her apartment, where she requests pills. You have to give her the right color pills using some awkward motion controls to dump the pills all over the medicine cabinet. After this is another Kaufmann segment. The Doctor gives off serious creepy and threatening vibes every time he shows up.

As Lisa rests, Harry wanders off to the Toluca Mall, taking a detour through a warehouse. The mall’s doors are locked and Lisa calls (How did she get Harry’s number?) saying that she had a bad nightmare. Harry rushes back to check on her but she’s dead and blood is spreading around her head. Cybil bursts in at that moment and pulls a gun on Harry, trying to arrest him despite his insistence that he didn’t kill Lisa.

Damn it Harry, I can’t take you anywhere. (Credit: Climax Studios, Konami)

Cybil says that you’re not Harry Mason and again before she can elaborate, she freezes solid. Harry is thrown into another Icy Death Nightmare, this time running through a convoluted maze in the mall. At the end is the usual ice sculpture. To get through this one you get an echo about a dad getting gumballs for his daughter. He’s calling her mother again, and the dad seems a little frazzled. The mother again intimates that he’s spoiling her. He tells the daughter to save some gumballs for later and she says she’ll save one for her mom. The dad seems sad about this. The gumball puzzle was fairly easy, and you finally have access to the mall.

As you explore the mall more echoes come. A girl with an obscured face playing with her new pet dog. And then a man in the pet store asking for a dog that looks exactly the same. (Yikes.) A girl is shoplifting, talking about the stupid security guards. And then the security guard admitting to his coworker that he lets her shoplift because he feels sorry for her and she has sad eyes.

At the end of the mall you come across a movie theater. (The arcade games in here are old Konami classics: Contra, Rush ‘n Attack, and Gradius.) There is only one movie playing, a movie called Together Forever. But what’s playing on the screen is the home movie from the beginning of the game. The echoes are going crazy but they don’t trigger anything. The image on the screen changes to little Cheryl’s face, her eyes wide with shock and Harry’s panicked voice saying something I couldn’t make out.

Dahlia doesn’t get any less forward with age. (Credit: Climax Studios, Konami)

After the mall you finally reach Simmons Street. You enter a pawn shop and solve an easy key puzzle. Above the pawn shop is a home. You can see photos of Harry and Cheryl and an old Tookie doll. (The toucan mascot of the mall.) You come to a room but Cheryl is not there. Instead you find a woman who looks like an older version of Dahlia. She seems pretty drugged up and confused as to why Harry is there. She says she’s Harry’s wife, and that Cheryl is at the lighthouse.

As you can probably guess Old Dahlia freezes solid and you enter another Icy Death Nightmare. The last real one of the game. This part of the game is pretty trippy… it’s like a dream. Harry descends an insanely long staircase with a chasm on one side. At the end there’s a hole that he jumps down, falling for a very long time. At the bottom you go through a few sequences where you find a room with a chair and TV. At first it plays static, then later it shows the home movie of Cheryl repeating “I love my Daddy” in a loop, her voice distorted in different ways with Harry gleefully laughing in the background. It was a pretty chilling effect. You go through a couple of areas where you have to run from Raw Shocks and at the end you finally find Cheryl’s room. But as Harry sadly points out, Cheryl is not in it.

I love this imagery. (Credit: Climax Studios, Konami)

Harry looks sadly at a photo of him and Cheryl. He lies on Cheryl’s bed, letting the photo fall to the floor, where it shatters.

Ominous. (Credit: Climax Studios, Konami)

Another Kaufmann segment and then you’re off to continue your journey. You meet up with your old pal Michelle and you finally get to meet her boyfriend John, who she’s been talking about the entire game. (I honestly was not sure he really existed until this point.) He agrees to drive Harry to the lighthouse. But on the drive a tense conversation takes place and John dumps Michelle, saying they’ve been growing apart for a long time. Upset at her reaction, he gets out of the car and she gets out too, chasing him. Harry exits the car and enters a brief sewer area. (There was a sewer featured prominently in Part 1 also.) Cheryl calls, warning Harry not to come. It’s dangerous.

After the sewer, you’re back in town and you get to hear more of the family on their vacation. After wandering a bit more, you find yourself in Annie’s Bar. (Another location from Part 1.) Inside is Michelle. She’s eating cheesecake and coming to terms with her breakup. (Well, that was fast.) Michelle says Harry will need a boat to get to the lighthouse and there should be one at the jetty behind the Lakeside Amusement Park. Neat, a new objective! (You guessed it: the Lakeside Amusement Park was also in Part 1… a rough confrontation with Cybil happened there. It also featured very prominently— and nightmarishly— in Part 3.)

Kaufmann talks about sex and death after getting himself another drink. He has a lot of liquor bottles for a shrink. The good doctor thinks that people who are getting enough don’t need analysis… which is an interesting stance for an analyst to take.

So welcoming. (Credit: Climax Studios, Konami)

You enter the amusement park and this area was actually surprisingly short. But it’s here that you finally find the cut-out from the opening home movie… where Harry is a knight and Cheryl was a princess being threatened by a dragon.

Why didn’t you think of this several hours ago, Harry? (Credit: Climax Studios, Konami)

In the tunnel of love you get another echo of the vacationing family. The husband and wife share a romantic moment remembering their first date. They almost kiss but they’re interrupted by a passenger in the tunnel. You follow the ghost of a little girl from place to place and get a new echo. The passenger in the tunnel was the little girl, who is very upset and is afraid that she “ruined everything”. So let’s think about this… we know the woman is upset about something the husband did… he hopes a vacation will get them feeling like a family again… from the woman’s point of view he was a negligent father but has stepped up… she also shows signs of impatience and strictness with her daughter… the couple have drifted apart. The girl was in the hospital and the mother was elsewhere… we don’t know the order these things happened in, but a narrative is coming into focus.

Uh… right Dahlia. (Credit: Climax Studios, Konami)

Outside the park you find a convenient boat docked. It’s named the Orpheus. Dahlia, young again, is on the boat getting drunk. Harry gets mad because she doesn’t seem to care about Cheryl. Harry points out that the older woman who looked like Dahlia said she was his wife. He’s understandably confused. He saw her old, saw her die… and here she is. Dahlia sets the boat to head for the lighthouse and starts making out with him. The scene cuts away, implying they have sex.

Getting some Dexter vibes here… (Credit: Climax Studios, Konami)

Harry awakens in his undies and finds the boat (and Dahlia) frozen over. He grabs a Hawaiian shirt (which you should recognize from the home movies) and heads outside. The lake is frozen solid. Dahlia calls and begs Harry to not go. Is this what’s best for Cheryl? “Come back for our daughter’s sake,” she implores, finally admitting the relationship. And then you get an interesting text from Cybil.

Yikes. Too far Cybil. (Credit: Climax Studios, Konami)

It’s a mug shot of Cheryl, looking like she did in the High School photo. Hmm, so Cheryl was obviously the shoplifter we learned about in the mall. And the girl in the paparazzi photos? What could have caused her to act up like this? Fun fact: While I was busy taking the above screenshot, a Raw Shock wandered up and latched onto me. Not cool, Silent Hill. Not cool.

I didn’t expect a monster attack. You can run, but eventually Harry is swarmed and you get taken down. I had six on me at that point. They get off of Harry and freeze, twisting into weird shapes. The ice cracks and Harry has to swim the rest of the way. At one point I looked under the water and saw a statue of Harry and Cheryl on the lake floor. There’s more creative use of the motion control as you swim for the shore. But it’s too far. Harry tires and his strokes get slower. Eventually he sinks under the water.

Cybil pulls him out and Harry grabs her gun, saying he won’t let her stop him. (Bombshell in 10… 9… 8…) Cybil reminds him that she’s read his file. If he really is Harry Mason, it makes no sense, but she believes him. (3… 2… 1…) You see, Harry Mason was killed in a car crash 18 years ago. (Boom!)

Honestly, I wasn’t too surprised. They’ve really been hinting at this throughout the game, with all the car crashes and accidents. The missing time where Cheryl is grown up? The new family living in their old house? The pieces fall into place. I took a few minutes at this point to review the echoes that I had found. A negligent dad and a failing marriage. Possibly an affair? Something caused the split. He may have drinking and anger issues too. The dad tries harder when his daughter gets hurt and desperately tries to save the marriage with a family vacation but it’s too late. The girl grows up without a father figure (due to his unexpected car accident) and gets in trouble with the law and the other girls at school. Possibly with boys at the school too. (Some of the echoes seem unconnected, so it’s hard to tell which are Cheryl and which are Caitlin or other unnamed characters.) Cheryl has an affair with a teacher old enough to be her father. Her mother is not there for her, possibly developing a drug problem or just can’t get over the divorce. Let’s continue to see if I’m right.

Mementos. (Credit: Climax Studios, Konami)

Cybil wishes Harry luck and he realizes the lighthouse is actually the Lighthouse, Counseling and Family Therapy. The only car in the driveway belongs to an M. Kaufmann. The endgame is so close now. There isn’t much to the Lighthouse. A lobby and a hallway leading to the final door. I got my last Memento here and above is the box filled with the only Mementos I was able to find. I found myself hesitating outside that final door, steeling myself for the ending. (Note that this is just the ending I got… depending on how you play, there are three different ways this next scene can play out.)

The final therapy session. (Credit: Climax Studios, Konami)

When you open the door, it cuts back to Kaufmann’s session, but his face and tone have changed. He’s no longer menacing and ominous. He’s kindly, desperate to help. He says that you need to wake up, stop reliving the scraps of a fantasy life. You never actually knew your father, because how could a child know? You lost your father, but your mother is not as bad as you make her out to be.

Bombshell dropped. (Credit: Climax Studios, Konami)

That’s right, the patient wasn’t Harry… it was Cheryl all along. As Kaufmann talks, imploring for Cheryl to let go of this idealized fantasy of her father and move on with her life, Harry walks in. It’s a very disorienting and effective moment.

From what Kaufmann says we get the final pieces of the story. Harry and Dahlia did split up. Harry did die, leaving Cheryl without a father. The Harry you have been playing as is the idealized Harry from her memories, wandering through Silent Hill, piecing things together and trying to get to Cheryl. The Raw Shocks weren’t actually monsters… they were a symbol of Cheryl’s repression. A tool to keep Harry from getting to her and ending her fantasy. The Icy Death Nightmares came anytime she was getting too close to the truth and wasn’t ready to hear it. Harry was her way of getting ready for those truths. The Mementos you’ve been picking up are her childhood keepsakes which she keeps in a box, obsessing over, representations of her memories of happy times that never truly existed… at least not as she remembered them.

Cheryl makes her choice. (Credit: Climax Studios, Konami)

Harry kneels at her side and Cheryl knows Kaufmann is right. Harry promises her that he’ll always be with her, but he freezes over as the other characters have been doing the entire game. Cheryl leaves the office and walks off with Dahlia.

After this we cut to the home movies, this time watching the entire thing. (This is where the other three endings can come in, so remember, this is just the one I got.) After the trip to the amusement park is over, Harry is packing his things into the car, and saying goodbye. It turns out that was the day Harry and Dahlia split up. Harry tells Cheryl that it’s not her fault and that even though he and her mother don’t love each other anymore, they still love her and always will. The tape cuts to static and the end credits roll with the results of Kaufmann’s analysis of the player. After this Cheryl puts her Mementos back in the box, leaving it on her dresser.

Curtain drop. (Credit: Climax Studios, Konami)

And there you have it… Silent Hill: Shattered Memories. This game has received a mixed reception by fans. What did I think? The downsides I can see: The game is short. Many standard elements of the Silent Hill series— combat, resource management, cults and demons… they’re all absent. The elimination of the random monster encounters does cut some of the tension from the game, but I feel it encourages exploration. Sometimes the voices on the messages cut out through the Wiimote speakers… but maybe my batteries are low? The motion control is a little sensitive, as I mentioned earlier, making it too easy for your flashlight to flail about wildly. It was a tad linear compared to the previous installments. I mean, all Silent Hill games are technically linear, but there wasn’t much exploration in this one. You’re basically herded in a somewhat straight line from beginning to end.

The upsides: The story is fantastic. The twist at the end floored me. I did not see it coming, for all the time I spent turning it over in my head trying to anticipate how it would all turn out. The replay value on this is great, as there are so many different endings and different psychological impacts to be discovered— the short length actually helps the replay value in my opinion as it doesn’t take long to play through and see a different ending. The graphics and voice work were great. I enjoyed the novelty of the motion control (the phone usage was especially well designed) aside from the sensitivity. The chase scenes were fun, although I can see how they might get old. Above all, I enjoyed the journey… seeking out echoes, speculating on who the characters are and how they might factor in to the story, wondering when I would see the NPCs again, and speculating on how Harry’s journey would end.

I kind of rushed through this game because I started it late and wanted to get this post done by Halloween. I’m sure I missed some echoes and mementos. I only got a couple of ghost photos, so I’m sure there are plenty more of those. I will play again soon and take my time exploring. I’ll also make other choices to get different endings. I for sure want to see the UFO ending. I’m really looking forward to my next couple of playthroughs, seeing what other Mementos and echoes I can locate, what other pieces of the story I can uncover.

Many of the characters and settings of the first game return, but without the backstory of the tragic Alessa and her cult leader mother Dahlia Gillespie. In Part 1 Harry was a blank slate, pretty generic so he could act as a vessel for the player. In this, Harry has some depth. He’s just as desperate to find his daughter as the Harry Mason we knew before, but he has a bit more personality. And yet, who is he really? He seems single-mindedly devoted to his daughter, gentlemanly around women, and understanding. But the echoes show another Harry… one we may never know besides these small glimpses.

So what WAS the truth? Was Harry a good dad? Negligent? A womanizer? A drunk that crashed his car? Was he the one at fault or was it Dahlia? Did he ruin Cheryl’s life? There are no cut and dry answers, because just like in real life, the blame is shared and everyone has layers to them. How it turns out, what you take away from it… it all depends on how you play it, how you interpret it. How your surrogate Daddy acts throughout the game and how your Cheryl answers (or doesn’t answer) the doctor. Her truth is all that really matters, because all along, even though you didn’t realize it… this was Cheryl’s story, not Harry’s.

“Cheryl isn’t here.” (Credit: Climax Studios, Konami)

So what conclusions did I draw during my time as Harry and Cheryl? That the truth is likely all the endings put together. People are complicated. There is no black and white. Harry was a loving husband and devoted father. He was also a selfish cheater and neglected his daughter in favor of womanizing and alcohol. But when the time came… he tried. He made an effort to support and love his daughter and reconcile with his wife. But it was too little too late… the damage had already been done. He died… an accident? Drunk driving? We may never know. Cybil read the files, but she’s not telling.

Despite my own conclusions and speculation my ending shows what conclusion Cheryl drew. That her memory of her father is idealized and impossible. She finally watched to the end of the video, not just rewinding to see the happy parts, but straight through to the end to see a father who— regardless of the circumstances or the blame— left her. This is the truth of it, and she needs to let go of her fantasy and heal. But not all the memories are harmful. She’ll keep the good memories neatly tucked away in that box so she can revisit them when she needs to. They’ll always be a part of her… just like Harry will be.

Thank you for joining me on this year’s trip into Silent Hill. As I said, I plan to make this an annual Halloween tradition. I plan to play and review a Silent Hill game every year until I run out of them. (Still not sure how the heck I’ll do Origins and Book of Memories, considering I have those on the Vita, but I’ll figure something out. I would appreciate any suggestions anyone may have on how to get good screenshots from a Vita.) Next year I just may go back to the beginning of it all and replay Part 1. I almost did this time, but I left it up to Cocoashade and she suggested this one. I figured why not? I had a heck of a time locating a copy of this one and I already threw off the order by starting with Part 2! I may put it up for a vote on Twitter. If you have a preference, let me know via comment or tweet.

And so this year’s visit to Silent Hill has come to an end. I hope you enjoyed Harry and Cheryl’s journey as much as I have. It’s certainly not one I’m going to forget. It left an impression on me. I’m glad I got the ending I did. Hopefully Cheryl can live her life now. Until next time, keep looking for treasures… and keep them neatly in your own Memento box.