Grave Gamer News & Views — silent hill

What the Hell Happened to Silent Hill: Book of Memories?

Long story short?  Konami happened to Book of Memories.  Longer story follows:

Yet another delay rocks the gaming world, this time on a smaller scale – a handheld scale to be exact.  The PS Vita title was meant to do two things: usher in multiplayer into the strictly solo player franchise and come out in March.  Sadly, the game half failed, ruining the three pack of Hill’s Konami planned for that month.  Book of Memories very quietly slipped into a placeholder date of May 31st with little fanfare and even less surprise given the amount of smoothing the other two March releases could’ve used.

Now, WayForward Technologies’ (they’re pretty badass at small sized titles, check their resume) apparently canonical spinoff has once again shied away from it’s release slate, the first indications coming from Amazon’s new placeholder date of October 31st.  When pressed, Konami found the strength to comment on the game’s status, confirming an October release (maybe) but denying a solid day to expect it out.

WayForward’s pretty busy themselves; with a Double Dragon downloadable remake and an Adventure Time DS game in the works, one has to wonder how focused the development team is on bringing us miniature scares to the Vita.  Likewise, it’s also worth pondering if the frighteningly bad reception the last couple of Silent Hill’s received is causing Konami to delay the title, for fear of disappointing the survival horror masses yet again.

Konami Promises Silent Hill HD Collection and Downpour Patches Are Coming to Town

What a mighty coinky-dink.  I just acquired a copy of Vatra’s Downpour last night.  The game is a sight better than reviews and jilted fans would have you believe, but after a handful of hours guiding Murphy Pendleton through the rainy, foggy streets of the Hill, it quickly became evident who the real villain of the show is: the terrible, glitchy coding.

The HD Collection suffers a worse fate given that gamers already have a bug-free precedent established in their minds when it comes to how SH2 and 3 should play (I’m being told that the audio actually syncs with the action in the PS2 originals – still waiting for confirmation).  The ports and new sequel share overlapping fuck-ups such as frame rate slowdown and jarring crashes whenever trophies are earned.  In my playthrough, Downpour is specifically prone to freeze in place during auto-saves, and the targeting system goes positively ape-shit the moment more than one enemy threatens you.

All in all, I’m confident Konami doesn’t care to have these titles out there like this, which is why they’ve released word on how they intend to rectify this horror:

“…development teams are currently creating online patches for both games, which will fix the frame rate issues, the audio-synching in Silent Hill HD Collection, and the Auto-Save issues in Silent Hill Downpour.”

Since the patches are still being brewed, the company states we’ll see them in the next few weeks.  Remember when games weren’t broken out of box?  No?  Yeah, my memory’s a bit foggy, too.

“Is anything what it seems in this town?”

From Silent Hill: The Arcade Game.

WHY HAS NO ONE TOLD ME ABOUT THIS?!