![]() ![]() It takes 20-30 seconds to load from the main menu or when heading into a new level. Unfortunately all that power comes at a price, namely dips in frame rate and some lengthy load times. All the returning enemies look & animate well and the flashlight leaves convincing shadows across the level. The Vita was no slouch for the time and Book of Memories shows the kind of potential the tech had. Sometimes, modifiers play a role to make them more dangerous dogs that explode when they die or combustible nurses that set the player on fire. Enemies are a who’s who of evil symbolic folks from the games, with at least one monster from each previous entry present. It’s frustrating to hold two fingers to create a line of damage or steal health from enemies while also trying to do anything else with the front of the system. ![]() Unfortunately, these abilities use the Vita’s cumbersome back touchscreen. Karma abilities help gives some variety to the combat options, and those abilities change depending on your alignment. The front touchscreen, much like with Minecraft on the Vita, gives easy access to health and repair items and the handy mini map. Making use of the Vita’s many features seemed to be a goal for the game. While items exist to repair them, they are limited, and the player can only store a small amount of spare weapons, even after upgrading. Weapons have durability and break after extended use. While each zone is short, there’s no fast travel so hunting for a missing puzzle piece can turn annoying quickly.Ĭombat has some small twists on the dungeon crawler format. The red lever beside the puzzle essentially works as an even bigger hint button that lessens the EXP reward with each use, if the level hint isn’t sufficient enough. Once collected, they are arranged in some order like size or color, according to the level’s hint. Zones are cleared by collecting a random amount of puzzle pieces, locked behind challenge waves of enemies, and a necessary hint. Each dungeon is elementally themed, fire, wood, ice, etc., and each dungeon is broken down into three zones. The player grind their way through seven dungeons, hacking, slashing, and dodging enemies, finding and buying loot, and leveling up. An expansion pack provided some extra classes, including Heather and James, new artifacts, weapons, and other items, as well as offering the chance to reroll your character mid run.įor as much as it wants to be a Silent Hill game, Book of Memories also doesn’t stray far from the Diablo mold. Artifacts, items based on important trinkets from the series, are found throughout the dungeons, and offer stat boosts with some extra if they are equipped in the right inventory slot. However, just like the genre, the class you start with determines your stats, and a charm, chosen out of eight, provides a permanent boost to one stat, as well. The classes, rather than the typical D&D-type roles of the genre, are modeled after Western high school stereotypes, like goths, jocks, and bookworms. It’s not very complex, being limited to gender, skin color, hair, head, costume, and class. Without a set protagonist, the game invites you to insert yourself into Silent Hill and its lore. Starting a new game confronts you with a series first, a character creator. Another dungeon centers around stealing your high school crush back, with a later one featuring the lover they spurned to be with you. The first one focuses on a person who squeezed you out of a promotion at work. Each dungeon tells the story of a person whose life is changed by your meddling with the past. Much to your surprise, the rewrites take hold in reality, at the cost of battling through nightmare dungeons full of monsters and loot when you sleep. When confronted with a tome that looks suspiciously like the Necronomicon, naturally, you take a pen to the paper and start rewriting the parts you don’t like. The titular book arrives at your door one day with a return address of Silent Hill on it, and you find that it contains your whole life written down in it. And then sometimes there’s a game like Silent Hill: Book of Memories, from Wayforward in 2012 for the PS Vita, bringing together the two tastes of ‘psychological survival horror’ and ‘dungeon crawler’ like everybody always wanted. Just like in cooking, it’s a matter of how you do it and what you’re mixing together. A classic like Actraiser fused a city builder with a side scrolling action game to great success. Video games have their fair share of this phenomena, as well, and sometimes it works. It’s inexplicable, but some people seem to like it, even as it turns some others off. Pineapple and ham are both perfectly fine ingredients in most situations, just not on pizza, yet people put them together, on pizza. There are just some flavors that don’t go together. ![]()
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