Has anyone else taken the Nintendo survey about online gaming? I got an email about it today, and it is pretty telling in regards to what they are thinking for future online play. From the survey I get the impression that friend codes aren't going anywhere, but they are considering having a single friend code per person instead of per game, and the ability to add friends more easily. The friend codes are still a bother, but at least it sounds like they are trying to improve.
Okay, they did the "faithful adherence to source material" thing. Too bad they did it in a "ya know, we should put those charcoal briscuit babies in there so people won't wine about them NOT being in here" way.
I had my worries when I realized the script was being written DURING A FEW WEEK'S VACATION, but I passed it off as something "hollywood does". It is unfortunate that this movie seems to be an insult to me. Not 5 minutes into it, they said the name of the movie in a loud voice, in a "oh yeah, we didn't forget the name of the game" way. (Little kid screams the name of the town wanting to go there.)
About 4 times before they even get there, they need to make it a point that Silent Hill is a ghost town. They mention the same stuff over and over again, which basically states they don't trust the viewing audience to have an attention span at all. "The coal fires are still burning under this town, and also the town had a fire years ago, the coal is still smoldering under it, which basically means that under the town, there's a fire, on some coals." It is as though Mojo Jojo wrote a large portion of the dialog.
Pyramid Head was there, but while it SEEMED like he would serve a purpose, it appears he was there ONLY long enough to be called "the demon" and then you never see him again. There's no psychological change, at all, in the main characters to justify his sudden disappearence. They apparently just summoned him up for the purpose of tearing the entire skin off someone and then sent him away. "See? We're cool, we have this guy!"
The art style was perfectly presented. The various nods to the game and the near perfect recreation of the opening part of Silent Hill 1 were great. It is unfortunate that the game suffers in SPITE of the adherence to source material, and it is all because of the major place they strayed, the one place they HAD to stray admittedly, the entire movie script was of course the only way to make a game fun to WATCH, but wow did it suck. Aside from a brief moment here and there of "wow I have no idea what's trying to hurt me" mode, it really sucked. Oh, there's also the fact that while in the games, a lot of stuff is alluded to rather than spelled out, in this game they spell out EVERY detail, over the course of very long interludes in flashback mode. And of course, the obligatory repeating of itself just to make sure I know exactly what their opinion of my intelligence is.
Just to make it clear, the parts of the story that take place with the husband are entirely useless. That is, it goes NOWHERE. He "discovers" some stuff about the town, but it's nothing that the mother doesn't discover on her own anyway and it just plays into that horrible repetition of the obvious (something terrible happened here) the movie does so well. In fact, the entire husband part of the story just ends with the guy being yelled at by a police officer with some job of covering up a conspiracy and him GIVING UP AND GOING HOME.
They had a TWIST ENDING of sorts where it turns out the wife and daughter either A) are dead, B) never left Silent Hill after all, or C) decided their husband was a loser (I wouldn't blame them) and left him after seeing him asleep on the couch. You decide.
In other words, they tried to stay true to source material, but it is unfortunate whoever wrote the script was ONLY trying to get the characters from one thing from the games to another.
As I sit here on my last weekday of Spring Break, I noticed it was your birthday. I don't know much about you other than you worked with Ryan at WalMart, but that doesn't mean I can't say Happy Birthday!
Okay, I know somebody, or a few people, have the archives of RC around, and I was wondering if I could get them from somebody. I was doing some reminiscing tonight with some of the old threads here since I have nothing better to do, and would love to see some of the threads from the old hangout.
I'm embarressed to say, I saw that movie. Worthless as something to watch, but I can't help but think it would make a great game, using the Rev controller.
