Hello! Welcome fellow bombers to "I need a vacation" my cleverly named blog post about Silent Hill! Over the past month I have been trying to catch up this series, one I missed because when I was young even the sight of a Silent Hill game gave me chills. However, a few years have passed and I've decided to man up, pick up the HD collection and dive into the world of  "Silent Hill". So in theory I will be posting these as I continue on through the series and try to share my opinions and thoughts about the game (and also for your personal enjoyment).I should mention that I actually beat SH2 about a week ago and  just finished Silent Hill 3 about one hour ago so I'm gonna start there and eventually catch up to where I am in homecoming ( which is stuck because I cant get a grasp on the damn combat!) and end with Downpour (which I haven't touched)  I will mostly be mentioning the "highlights" of my playthrough about SH2 and 3.
 
Lets begin    
LAST THING:There be spoils of spoilers ahead

SILENT HILL 2

I just posted a review but I wanted to add just a quick few thoughts about the final hours of the game. 
 

• The game ends very quickly and its definitely for the worst. 

• The Leon segment is kinda cool but also very contrived 

• Boss fights continue to be a hassle 

• There is a ton of great nostalgia near the end of the game 

• Hunters suck ass. 

• A.I still sucks ass. 

• Blowing apart zombies and taking them as meat shields is pretty entertaining 

First off, If you haven't read my first blog click here.  I will be expanding on what I said previously. This is based completely on the PS3 version of the game. I just wanted to write this due to the crazy range of the reviews and a lot of people being on the fence about it. Lets begin
 
    So I have played a bunch more of the single player but I actually restarted the game on a harder difficulty because normal is pretty easy even alone. For some reason I'm getting a bit more fun out of the game do to it being more challenging but maybe thats just how I like my games (played ME3 on hardcore and played Dark Souls).  So the story seems to being going... kinda nowhere. Since I recently played and enjoyed RE2 its kinda cool to make these little references like "Oh thats why the city has no power", this also supports my idea that you need to be a massive RE fan to enjoy this game. All the classes seem different but I'm mainly sticking with the "assault" class because she has an ability to have unlimited ammo for a short time.  
 
     I would like to add that ammo is still an unfortunate issue, when things get really tense and you only have your pistol, it sucks having to run and find it.  Iv'e also discovered the only dodge move is while your sprinting you press X to do this awkward dive thing that doesn't really do anything. Also YOU SHOULD TOTALLY LOOK AT THE MANUAL OF THIS GAME.  Its like a real manual in 2012!!! I figured out that there are 3 variations on the melee.  After you stagger an enemy you have 3 options, pressing X, Triangle or Circle. X simply pushes an enemy to the ground and head stomps them. or if your close to a wall slams their head into that.  Triangle does each characters "special attack" which can be interesting sometimes.  The "scientist" of the group actually sticks a chemical in an enemy that attracts any zombies in the area and is quite useful.  Lastly holding circle down will grab an enemy as a meat shield.  This can seem silly but it is useful in firefights and I believe it also protects against some zombie attacks. 
 
    The combat has gotten a bit crazy, fighting spec ops, zombies, and occasionally lickers at the same time is kinda nuts and awesome.  You can cause spec ops to bleed out which attracts basically all infected to him which is a good strategy to keep the pressure off you. My biggest complaint though is even on normal the humans are bullet sponges, its pretty insane how many bullets these dudes can take.  I understand lickers and zombies but people? Come on. Anyway, I finally had my first boss fight kinda sorta and it was awwwwwffffuuuuulll.  Basically a man stands in a window and shoots his sniper at you and it takes waaaaayyyy to long to actually beat him and move on.  Its extremely tedious and pretty boring.  It doesn't help that after 2 or 3 shots some of the guns become insanely inaccurate.  I have gotten used to the cover system but its still hit or miss. I really don't get why they thought an "auto-cover system" was a good idea.  A.I is still abysmal on your side and spec ops dudes aren't much better. I can say I have gotten used to the shooting mechanic and I feel a little better about it but its still......off.  Probably my biggest complaint about the controls is the way you pick up weapons and revive people.  It is EXTREMELY easy to grab a weapon.  All you have to do is tap the X button and the problem lies where you need to revive a team member which requires you to hold down the X button.  Countless times I have simply picked up a weapon instead of reviving the member I was trying to. To make things worse, that weapon is replaced by your old one so you physically need to find a different position to revive them. Its really annoying and could have been easily solved by changing one button prompt. 
 
    I didn't touch on the sound or graphics last time so I will give a brief description about those.  The music is strange, the menu music is like mixed with RE5 and dubstepishy music.  I don't think it sounds terrible but its not great.  Other than that I barely notice the music except when moonlight sonata was playing (which scratch that good ole nostalgia). Gun effects sound muffled and bad, the pistol sounds a bit better but its very lacking.  I think melee sounds ok with the slicing of zombies but other than that sound effects aren't good.  Graphics look OK.  Character models look pretty good and zombies come apart pretty nicely.  For the must part close-quarter kills looks good with the occasional visual glitch.  I read a lot of reviews saying there is no atmosphere and I'd say there is a bit but its nothing to write home about.  The environments look ok I guess.  Fire and grenades look like totally fucking garbage though.  They just look fucking terrible and they don't have any sort of punch (thanks to bad sound effect design). To sum up, this is no Resident Evil 5 graphically. 
 
Overall: 
 
I'd say Im enjoying the game more than I previously was on my last write up.  Given I knew this was not a traditional resident evil game by any stretch.  I'd still mostly recommend this to hardcore RE fans only, and it might still be a stretch for 60 bones but I'm feeling a bit better about my purchase after last night.  My next write up will probably be a review of the and right now it would still stand at a 3/5 
 
If you have any other specific questions, feel free to leave me some and I will answer them when I can =).  I hope this is helping my fellow bombers on deciding this purchase

So I just got done playing Raccoon City for probably 2 1/2 hours or so (1 hour campaign, 1 1/2 multiplayer)and I know a lot of people are on the fence about the game due to the reviews. So here are my first impressions. Know that I am a HUGE Resident Evil fan so that already makes this game a bit better for me personally.  OK here we go. 
 
First off, the game starts with you fighting a lot of Special Forces, this is not exactly fun. Their A.I is... well lacking to say the least. They tend to just run right by you on occasion and can be really annoying if they catch you in a melee loop. Also the auto-cover system makes this kinda meh also.  It works probably 70% of the time, but sometimes it seems like you should be able to take cover and you just cant.  I haven't had any trouble getting sucked onto walls because you kinda need to be running right at it, but I can see how it can happen. Finally near the end of my first hour I got to start fighting some zombies and ran into a shit ton of lickers. I gotta say this felt pretty tense and I started to enjoy myself.  With the horde of zombies and bow's around, this is what I picture umbrella going through during the Raccoon City incident. 
 
Lets move on to the combat.  The shooting feels a bit awkward, and it doesn't help that a lot of the guns become really inaccurate if you don't shoot in 3 shot bursts.  I know it seems like this is ok but trust me, it gets kind of annoying especially when your getting swarmed.  Also in cover you sometimes cannot aim which is just utter nonsense. I should also add that I haven't really relied on cover so take that for what you will.  On a positive note the way the side-arm can be handled is quite unique and interesting.  For PS3 if you run out of ammo on a clip you can simply press (and hold)  L2 and your character automatically pulls out their sidearm and aims to the closest target and then you just need to shoot.  You can also control this a bit by pointing the way to aim if the auto lock isn't where you want it. Of course if you just tap L2 you can just switch to the pistol and aim as you please.  Speaking of ammo, you seem to run out.... like a lot and need to scavenge for some.  There tends to be plenty scattered around but in the heat of combat it can be a pain.  There is where melee comes in.  I think its kind of cool much like the side arm stuff, simply press circle and push the left stick where you want to swing.  You have 360 degree control and it has a nice tactile feel to it.  You can also finish enemies off by press X after you have hit an enemy quite a bit. 
Overall the combat feels solid enough, and there are tons of guns and perks to unlock for each specific character. Its not great but it gets the job done. 
 
Finally multiplayer, my biggest surprise 
 
I didn't expect to enjoy any of the multiplayer at all, but I actually enjoyed it quite a bit. The 2 modes I played were Survive and Heroes. Survive is when two teams need to head to a heli pad and hold it off until the chopper arrives. What makes it interesting is there are 8 people playing and only 4 seats on the chopper (which gives you a decent xp bonus if you get in)  This leads to the ending of the match to be quite hectic and awesome (and sometimes a bit stupid since it takes a while to climb into the helicopter). Heroes is an interesting take on team deathmatch. Each person starts with a Main hero or villian (Leon, hunk, Claire etc...) and that is the only time the hero is alive.  Once a hero dies that person then turns into one of the generic solider classes to help support their hero and kill the other. Once the 4 heroes on one side are killed the game is over. 
 
So overall, being a huge Resident Evil fan helps this game a lot (seeing hunters and lickers makes me go nuts because of nostalgia).  Like I said I'm pretty early in but I have had some fun times, but more why the hell did my a.i partner run right into that tripmine times.  Multiplayer seems like it could actually turn out good if they fix some of the connection and lag issues. There is a solid amount of perks and weapons to unlock to keep ya going and if you have friends playing with you in the story or competitive it makes the game much more entertaining. 
So far I'd give the game a 3/5