My time with The Medium has convinced me that if videogames ever hope to be held in the same regard as literature and cinema on the storytelling front, they need editors – someone whose entire job is to determine what stays and what goes, and to arrange the remaining pieces into something focused and coherent.
HIGH Confronting the Childeater.
LOW The final confrontation has bad timing.
WTF The return of Agent Bolt Cutters.
HIGH Helping Lea free the dolls.
LOW Dying repeatedly in a late-game “escape” segment because I couldn’t see where I was going.
WTF I haven’t done this much climbing in a horror game since Cursed Mountain.
In this piece, Darren sat down to talk with renowned videogame sound director Akira Yamaoka, who is incredibly well known for work on many titles ranging from the classic Silent Hill series to more recent titles like Shadows of the Damned and Killer is Dead. Darren took this chance to find out from the man himself how he views his role as a sound director, how he feels about being tied so strongly to his work on Konami’s seminal horror series, and a number of other topics besides.
HIGH Finding my first flamethrower. Burn, motha*#@&$!
LOW The first two hours of play before GameFAQs.
WTF Why is so much vital info unexplained?
Survival horror games aren't what they used to be. Once upon a time, they were about survival and horror. It makes sense. It's what the genre is called, after all. These titles would encompass qualities of mystery and exploration as the player fought to stay alive with every step. Over the years, they've increasingly become about action, gunfights, and an overload of cheap jump scares. I prefer the former, despite a plethora of the latter.
I'm still between review games at the moment, so I started playing Silent Hill: Book of Memories on Vita. I liked the demo and I'm a big fan of dungeon crawlers and Roguelikes when they're done well, so despite all of the negative talk I heard, I decided to go for it. I'm about ten levels into the campaign so far, and I think it's actually pretty good—but that statement needs some qualification.
HIGH The Hansel and Gretel play sequence—it's a cool setpiece that pays off in an even cooler way.
LOW Too close to call—clunky combat or the occasional crashes.
WTF Why are there so few enemy types in this game?
Dynasty Warriors wouldn't generally be considered broken, but it has been negatively seen by a large portion of critics out there. This series saw its best ratings early on, but as time passed, the ratings continued to drop. Warriors (as a whole) isn't safe from the ire of the gaming masses, but it's still a game that I love to call my guilty pleasure.
HIGH A great game-ending twist.
LOW Almost every nightmare sequence is perfectly awful.
WTF It seems this therapist is a session drinker.
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