Silent Hill: Book of Memories

Silent Hill's town with its foggy deserted streets, thick horror atmosphere and unpleasant freaks was the setting for a world on the brink of madness. A world where you could easily lose your mind.

Virtually every chapter (Shattered Memories excluded) in the horror series featured a new nightmare to be overcome by a new hero. One thing all the games had in common: psychological thrills, the alternate dimension called the Other World and grotesque freaks. And then of course - the mood. Creeping horror, nightmarish visions.

It is therefore a bit of a shock to hear what Silent Hill: Book of Memories offers. WayForward Technologies has shaken these traditions, and the competent developer, who usually offers pixelated heroes and heroines, is now ready for a detour.

Certainly, they've shown with Shantae for Nintendo DS and iOS that they can deliver captivating adventures for handheld devices, but Silent Hill: Book of Memories for PS Vita is quite different from what many fans expect in the series.

The third person perspective is mostly replaced with a top-down view, while the moderate pace is switched out for a hack 'n' slash dungeon crawler.

Wait. No need to run away screaming.WayForward almost manages to sell the change, and you see the inspiration behind the shift.

When the Book of Memories starts up, you've a lot of cosmetic choices to pick from to build your character, and these affect gameplay.

First you choose their particular strength, then what typical American college 'class' they are: goth, rock star, sports fan, bookworm. Then, in the best Sims-style, dress your chosen character, fix hair, face and skin color and you can choose a name. In other words, total RPG class system.

My character is named Jim, and Joe College is now ready for battle. Jim gets on his birthday a mysterious package from an equally mysterious postman (as some will surely recognize from Downpour). Of course, this package contains a large and heavy yellowed book that do more than just read.

Jim soon realises that it can fulfil his wildest wishes as long as he writes in it. But when he sleeps, he's pulled a series of nightmares filled full of cruelty, monsters, puzzles, flickering TV screens. The usual.

The soundtrack is excellent and well suited to the different worlds that include classic (but slightly generic) dungeon-styles: old castles, swamps, overgrown forests and shingles. Ambient grunts and groans intermingle with guitar-synth.

Book of Memories has all the markings of a dungeon crawler. There are plenty of rooms, loot, a currency, a shop and bosses. So far so good.

Silent Hill: Book of Memories exhibits many good elements that make the first half hour of the game's lifespan really interesting. The story build up's fine, and you're interested in following the protagonists' lives and developments.

The core mechanics work satisfactorily, the menus are well-produced and delivered through a series of tabs at a touch of the Vita's Start button.

It will not be long before we again encounter the mysterious postman that, in this game, becomes your go-to guy for equipment, ability purchases, ammo and various buffs between nightmares. Again, all typical of a loot adventure.

Where it all starts to come crashing down is three or four hours into the game. Each dungeon (or zone as it is called here) represents one person and some memories of the protagonist's life, and while the story follows this, the spaces are generated randomly.

As you might have guessed it results in one of two emotions: if you are a glass-is-half-full type, it means an endless adventure. Half empty, and it means lack of empathetic design.

At the beginning of the stages there's a overarching goal. Each area has around twenty to thirty rooms, one of which is a save point, another a weapon shed, a third a puzzle and the fourth a girl ghost who helps shape the course of the story depending on how you respond to her.

Then there are rooms where the doors are locked, and of course, drawers or cupboards contain the corresponding keys. Some rooms offer so-called challenges. Here you can either smash a pile of nurses, shoot some bats, slaughter some dogs, or otherwise tidy the room to get a puzzle piece. Once you have collected all the puzzle pieces, you whiz off to the puzzle room that serves as exit, and bingo you are on to the next level.

The problem is that these rooms just feel like what they are: a bunch of randomly generated areas that after a while just offers what feels like repetition. They say of course that hell is something to suffer forever, and relive your worst moments again and again, but I'm sure that WayForward could have convinced me otherwise.

While they do try, with lost notes building the story in franchise tradition, while flickering TVs provide personal stories as dialogue, bu the tenth level I've lost patience. Clear a room, look in cupboards, open door, save, purchase, upgrade, do a puzzle, repeat. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Boss. Repeat, repeat, repeat.

Of course all dungeon crawlers boil down to this description, and in a way there's nothing wrong with it. The problem is that the Book of Memories offers so much of the same in such rapid succession that it quickly becomes tiring.

Now there is one thing that can always save such a dungeon crawler, and it's multiplayer. In Silent Hill: Book of Memories, you can go online and play four players together.

It is easy to set up, and you can for example, choose whether its just friends that can help. You can communicate with chat or with simple commands. Unfortunately, you can not go through other players, often resulting in a player accidentally blocking your path. This also applies to computer-controlled friendlies, which can become a problem in itself.

As I said, it is possible to play multiplayer, though you hardly need help in the game's first half. I died only twice, and then it was only because the touch-selection screen closed my equipment bag rather than using the health item due to the icons being side by side.

However in the game's latter half, you begin to see some clever mechanics come through. Monsters are grouped in particular classes, and these groups will attack each other, which you can use to your advantage to thin the herd before cleaning up the dregs. Melee, which earlier felt more a lesson in button bashing, needs to be coupled with parrying, and given the different groups you have to think carefully when entering combat.

Grading Book of Memories is a little difficult. On one hand, its makes for a decent play, especially the deeper you get into it. It's solidly built, but takes forever to get started. Predictable, yet with a story that you're bothered to find more out about. The music sets a good mood, while lighting effects and enemy design is decent. There's an easy and fun multiplayer, and does do the impossible: transforming a known horror game series into a dungeon crawler while retaining core elements of the franchise.

In the end, however, some minor problems pulls it down. But as a dungeon crawler fan, I still caught myself returning more often than I had expected to just dig deeper into the portable nightmare.

However, you can calmly wait until the game lands in your local retailer's discount offers. Come that point - and if you're a dungeon crawl and series fan - then this Silent Hill is worth a visit.