Reviews// Silent Hill HD Collection

Dear Konami,

Hi! How are you doing? It’s been a while since I last wrote, so I figured I’d catch up with you and let you know how your little ones are doing since you let them flee the nest.

First up, you’ll be glad to hear that Downpour's doing alright. Still trying to find his feet a bit, but... well, he’s solid enough. Decent looking lad, tries his best but can be prone to lose it when he's getting near the end of something. You should be proud of him! He'll be popular enough with the folks who've already met his older siblings, so you shouldn’t worry too much about him. He's fine.

The twins are a different matter.

Seriously, Konami… what the hell did you do with them? I know you’ve been concentrating on your other kids a lot more recently. The youngest MGS seems to be turning out nicely, for example, but I heard rumours that you basically farmed out the twins to some babysitter? That’s not good parenting, you know that.

You remember how popular the twins were when they were first allowed out of the house? Man, everyone LOVED them. Two was great with his stories about that bloke with the Pyramid for a head. Oh! Those jokes about the massive chopper too? Hilarious! Good looking lad as well, I seem to recall. That shiny new hardware did him proud. Three was grand as well, definitely a favourite with a lot of people. Everyone talking about her heritage, how she respected the past… great days, yeah?

And now you’ve let them out again. You promised that they were pretty much the same, but they’d grown up a bit. Looked prettier, even! But that’s not true, is it?

Yeah, we know that Two and Three are older now, but we also know that they’re still important to us. We’ve grown to respect our elders. All those memories we had! Two messing about with the nurses. Visiting the fairground with Three. The pair of them had a major effect on an awful lot of people, and now that we get to see them again… well, everyone’s a bit shocked.

Maybe it’s down to the babysitters? I mean, did you get any references? I checked up on these guys and really don’t think that a company called Hijinx can be trusted to deal with the twins in a proper manner – all they’ve done in the past is mess about with frogs and perform a little bit of vandalism! Two and Three are the kind of kids that need you to care about them – they’re a disturbing pair, after all – and you put them in the hands of amateurs? Not good Konami. Not good.

I suppose we should get round to what’s actually up with the twins. First of all… well, it doesn’t look like they’ve been looked after properly. The poor buggers are both pretty shabby looking. Sure, they’re a bit older, but when we’re told they’re going to be all bright and shiny people have certain expectations.

When they showed up at mine I was all excited to see them, but pretty soon I realised that they hadn’t aged that well. I thought you’d organised with Hijinx to give them a bit of a brush up before they came out? Because man… if I didn’t know better, I’d have thought they were just pretending to work on Two and Three then letting them out with barely a clean pair of pants.

Two in particular is pretty odd looking. There’s parts of him that are just… wrong. If you look at him closely it’s almost as if you can see the joins. His clothes are pretty crappy in places. Maybe if we could patch them up a bit that’s be OK, but it’ll take a fair bit of work to sort him out.

Oh, quick question. Is it just me, or has something happened to their voices?

Probably the worst thing about the pair of them is the fact that neither seem to have been told anything about the modern world. I’ve been spending a fair bit of time with Downpour and despite being relatively young, he knows how to cope. He’s able to find his way around a camera, is able to tell you when you need to do something to help him out, that kind of thing, but these two? It’s like they’re stuck in the past.

Maybe it’s a bit too much to ask, but I kind of expected that with you letting them come out to play once more they’d be a little easier to keep under control? I mean, they’re not totally awful, but getting them around takes an awful lot of getting used to. A lot of the time it’s really hard to see what they’re doing as well, and when they get stuck in a corner? Bloody hell, it’s a nightmare!

Anyway, I have no idea what to do with the pair of them. They’re trying, bless them, but they’re uncontrollable messes most of the time and I haven’t even mentioned the fact that Two seems to regularly have convulsions and sometimes kind of locks up – not seen any from Three yet, but I’m not holding out much hope she’ll be unaffected.

It might be an idea to get the Social on that Hijinx lot. They’ve taken two great kids and turned them into a pair of monsters – and that’s not in a good way. I wouldn’t let them take care of any of the other little ones for fear the whole sorry episode will happen again.

Love to the wife. Are you still coming over for the barbeque in June for the Capcoms’ anniversary? Let me know.

Michael

PS: thought I’d wrap up with a couple of pointers.

Pros:
+ The idea of a couple of legends returning to our screens is great!
+ Stories are still as unnerving as ever.
+ Ummm… That’s it.

Cons:
- Laughably ugly in places
- Controls really should have been updated
- A poorly produced, shoddy mess of a thing.

SPOnG Score: 4 out of 10.
And that’s only because I like the stories. You’re better off just firing up your PS2.