Allow me to explain. What the developers kept were small chunks of story: the characters, such as Harry and Cheryl, parts of the story, such as the initial car crash, and the town, Silent Hill. However the plot itself has been abandoned. Cheryl is not Alessa's other self and everything surrounding the cult and the evil of Silent Hill has been replaced with a more M. Night Shaymalan-esque twist to a psychological thriller. What I find troubling is not the fact that they changed the plot or that they reinvented the characters, but rather that changing everything so much renders what they kept meaningless.
It doesn't really matter that Harry Mason is the protagonist or that Cheryl is his daughter. It could just as well have been Johnas McRiter and his daughter Lollipop. Knowing that it's Harry Mason adds nothing from the old story to the new one since so much has been "re-imagined." The same goes for the town of Silent Hill. At first I got a kick out of being in familiar places like Alchimilla Hospital or the Amusement park, but nothing really happens there that would make this places relevant to the new story in relation to the old one. Overall the old story elements feel wallpapered over the game.
The shame is that the game could have been just as good or better if all of the elements were completely original. In fact the old elements only help restrict the story. The game had to be set in Silent Hill where there is a lake, a school , a prison, and so fort. If couldn't be set somewhere else because it's supposed to relate to the original.
Then after selecting chunks of the story to keep the developers gutted everything else. The combat has been replaced with running, the evil corrosive world has been replaced with the more PG ice world, the evil in the town has been replaced with small town secrets, all of the enemies have been replaced by featureless humanoids, and the radio has been replaced by the fact that enemies only appear in the brief sequences where ice covers the place.
Not having combat wasn't as big a deal for me since previous game entries have never been shinning examples of great combat design. The greatest problem I have with this new version is that it's not scary, which is what every silent hill before this accomplished in various degrees. This is a cardinal sin in a horror games if there ever was any. it's like a shooter that doesn't have guns or an RPG without a story or levels.
What Silent Hill games, at least 1-3, have always done well is atmosphere. You feel the oppressive danger lurking behind every door and because combat was never easy it made going into a room seem like a potential life-ender. The radio was also very effective at making the player uneasy and scared. Because you heard the radio before you could see into a room you were always listening to make sure that the room was safe. In some cases the developers messed with you and would place an invisible enemy just to alarm you. The dark corrosive world is exponentially more horrifying than the new ice world as were the old enemies compared to the new ones.
Also SH Shattered Memories is too easy, something that also detracts from the atmosphere. You are only attacked during particular sequences which means that if you are not in the ice world you can feel 100% safe. The sequences themselves were intense until you realized that you can stop the action by zooming into your map. Other than that being thumped to submission and restarting almost immediately was not intense or scary. Even the puzzles, which in previous entries could demand knowledge of Shakespearean books while deciphering a poem, have now been reduced to "remove the lock by clicking on it." It also doesn't help that the game points to the few items you can interact with, meaning you don't even have to search.
The developers also made a big deal of their psychological exam and how it would change your gaming experience. Well if putting on a hat means your gaming experienced has changed than they were right. From the new version this element was the least developed, despite it being almost the main new thing. The changes promised are really more costume changes for the characters than anything else. The puzzles didn't change and neither did the difficulty.
The problem was that there are not enough game elements to provide the promised changes. All you do is run and all the enemies do is chase you. I could imagine this being really great in an earlier entry where your choices could affect the type of enemy that you encountered or the amount and type of ammo/healing item that you found, forcing you to change your strategy and making each play through feel different. However this is not the case in SH SM.
Score:
As a Silent Hill game I would give the game a 2/10 because pasting names over characters is not the right way to re-imagine a work.
As a new game I would give it a 6/10 because everything that it does it does well, but there is not enough to do.
As an experience I would give it a 8/10 because it has some great scripted events that are very well executed and enhanced with a wonderful score.
Final thoughts:
So why not start a new series rather than gutting an old one and calling it "re-imagined?" Well the answer is simple: fanbase. It's easier to sell a game when there already exists a fanbase that is sure to buy it. Creating a new franchise can be a risky business and there are no consumers who are sure to buy it. This has happened a lot in the comic book world where Superman and the old superheroes have gone through a re-invention, usually with a whole new storyline. Again it's a lot easier to sell a Superman comic than a comic by a newcomer.
Climax, the studio that developed Shattered Memories, said it would like to work on another SH game, perhaps for the PS3. I'm not particularly hopeful especially since Akira Yamaoka, the composer and sound designer for the series, has left Konami, but we'll see. Miracles are known to happen.
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