Introduction
Suicide is a perfectly valid option. Let's Play Silent Hill: Mobile
What is this?
Silent Hill: Mobile, or Silent Hill: Orphan as it's known in the US, is the first in a trilogy of games released initially in 2007 in Europe for cellphones. Due to its release date, I assume it was initially created as a tie in for Silent Hill: Origins. Back in the days of simple 9-key phones, this was not unusual at all.
As far as I can tell researching things, this game did indeed originate in Konami's European division, made up mostly of unknowns from France, and I presume Russia based on names and the fact that the Russian translation seems to be one of the more popular versions floating around out there in webspace. Outside of this series of games, the head of the team is best known for a soccer game, and everyone else has worked on either a couple shovelware titles, or nothing. The Japanese version was released a month later, and the US would not get a release for a whole year, with a large amount of arbitrary changes to the game.
So these are Silent Hill games?
Well...Yes.
While the games hit all the hallmarks of the series, a dark brooding psychological-based plot, an otherworld with bewildering monsters, and most importantly, wandering down halls filled with unopenable doors while checking your map, that ends up being the end of any connections with the rest of the series proper. Also, unlike the main games, the Silent Hill: Mobile series is a point and click adventure, seen from a first person view. There's still combat in the game, but we'll deal with that when we get there.
Of important note on the other hand, fans of the series will notice that several of the characters and locations share their names with important people and places from the main series. This is entirely "coincidental" (read: lazy), and these are NOT the same people. If you'll allow me a small indulgence, I have decided to play by their rules in deciding character portraits.
About this LP
When it comes to Silent Hill, I love the franchise, but am a total wimp at playing horror games myself. That said, I have a weird thing, where I've very slowly found myself working through the series, but have to go in order of release when available. Speaking of, I highly recommend the LPs of the main series in the archives, as well as the currently ongoing LP of the visual novel for the Gameboy Advance that Zackcat is running.
That said, when I got to the mobile games, I found myself staring at a roadblock. First, there were no LPs here on SA or in the archives of the series, so I went looking on youtube. There I discovered firstly that this game is highly inappropriate for that format, due to both being mostly text with static screens, and the low resolution that older cellphones have. On top of all that, the runthroughs of the game available were either A. In a language other than English, which is all I speak, or B. played as speedruns, skipping as much of the text as possible. (Oddly enough, all the walkthroughs of the game recommend this practice as well, explicitly telling you to skip the dialogue. I cannot fathom the logic here.) Well, this left only one course of action: I had to just find and play the games myself. And so with that, I eventually decided to share this series of games with the rest of you!
This Let's Play will be presented in a screenshot format, with transcription from myself. Due to some questionable changes made to the US version of the first game, I will be playing through the European version. I will likely also have a bonus update at one point showing these differences. I have also chosen to trim some fat from the the presentation, in that I won't show you unending images of empty halls we walk down constantly, nor will I be transcribing dull bits that describe things like an uncomfortable looking chair, or say an empty cupboard. There's a lot of that in this game, but at the same time plenty of meaningful or at least halfway-interesting flavor text that I'll be sure to include as we come to it. Trust me, there's still plenty of mundane things to look at without me typing out for the umpteenth time how a window looks so covered in dust and grime it might as well still have curtains on it, or how a door we'll never use is stuck shut.
This game and its sequels have a very opaque and round-about story, that's hard to fully understand even after everything is completed, which is the only point the whole story is even revealed. I suspect that a language difference between the design team and the finished product may have had a hand in this. That said, I would appreciate a NO SPOILERS policy. Discussion and debate meanwhile, are totally encouraged. This is a game that is about 90% plot, and it would be cathartic for me to hear how much others heads start to hurt due to the obtuse style of the plot and many of the puzzles provided.
I would make this a reader-participation playthrough, but the games are so short and mazelike, that there'd be a lot of me responding to suggestions by saying "no we can't do that", or "there's nothing over there". The puzzles in this game boil down to three types: The standard adventure game "use your items" puzzles, infuriating random puzzles that seem designed to get you to read a walkthrough, or just brute force your way through, as there aren't any real clues to solving them, or honestly decent and fun puzzles, which are unfortunately few and far between. With the first type, I plan on simply talking through the logic behind them as we go, which sometimes is a little arbitrary. With the other types, I'll show the puzzle, and hide the solution behind spoilers in case you want to play along at home, though I will very likely complain quite a bit about the former of these two types.
Now then, without further ado, I present Silent Hill: Mobile
Table of Contents
Silent Hill Mobile- Scenario One: Ben Part 1
- Scenario One: Ben Part 2
- Scenario Two: Moon Part 1
- Scenario Two: Moon Part 2
- Scenario Three: Karen