Silent Hill HD Collection is a disgrace

Retr0gamer

Anyone thinking of buying this HD collection should warned, apparently it's terrible. Lots of special effects like the fog have been removed amongst other major issues like framerate problems. Here's a list I got from the HG 101 forums:

> Konami doesn't care about any of their console games besides Metal Gear because they make their real money off of mobile and pachinko games.
> The PS3 version seems to be ragged on the most.
> The bugs render the collection a goddamned mess. They range from horrible framerates to random crashes to puzzles rendered impossible due to a graphical layer being removed to the wrong audio file being played during a scene, spoiling a part of the story.
> While it's important to note that SH2 apparently has a history of being a pain in the ass to port, if the GameTap and Xbox 360 backwards compatibility issues are any indication, SH3 doesn't. That still doesn't excuse the problems with these new ports.
> Some gamers haven't reported any of these bugs/problems, which either means that not all of these copies are as bad as most, or that they're just ignoring the bugs.
> They edited the infamous "rape" scene between Pyramid Head and the mannequins.
> The script for SH3 has had some alterations, but the original subtitles have not been changed to match.
> On a related note, they reused the fonts from the original versions.
> They cut out the self-shadowing effects on characters. If they could do it in 2001-3, why not now?

Also the original Silent Hill 2 art director has said publically that he thinks the HD collections treatments of the games is an absolute disgrace.

It's a real shame because I feel a lot more people should experience the masterpiece that is Silent Hill 2.

deathrider

wrote:

> They edited the infamous "rape" scene between Pyramid Head and the mannequins.

Any more infomation on this part? Edited it how exactly? Have the cut the whole scen out?

Zero-Cool

Wow thats crap! SH 2 is the best of the series. Did I hear amazon stopped selling it because there are so many problems with it?

What 'rape' scene? Where he is stuffing the mannequin down the sink?

deathrider

Is that what's going on there? It's kinda impossible to tell really.

Zero-Cool

Oh Jesus it is! I must have blocked this out when I was a young fella. I remember him just stuffing it down a sink. What a disturbing vid. The 2nd top comment is brilliant

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHxd0TCSzdE

deathrider

Still looks a fair bit more sinister than a sink stuffin', lol.

gizmo

Aye, read about this over the weekend. Looks pretty shocking alright.

jaykhunter

i was more concerned previously reading that the SH2 voice/mocap cast didn't get royalties on the original game and were getting replaced until the story spread all over the net. Are they still revoicing the cast?

Em, i'll hold off until i hear better news about this HD collection. TBH they're very old games, they should remodel the characters and environments and stop being cheapasses.

Touch Fuzzy Get Dizzy

Zero-Cool

There was so much uproar over the voice actor change, Konami added both old and new voice actors so you can choose who you want to hear. Original cast all the way. Konami tried to burn them so bad and now they have 2 sets of voice actors in the game. So rediculous.

I saw a comparison screenshot last week and honestly couldn't tell which was PS2 and which was PS3.

I mean from the pic below, the PS2 version looks way better.

deathrider

sheehy83 wrote: »

There was so much uproar over the voice actor change, Konami added both old and new voice actors so you can choose who you want to hear. Original cast all the way. Konami tried to burn them so bad and now they have 2 sets of voice actors in the game. So rediculous.

According to one of the reviews in one of the links posted above, that's only true about SH2. The third game has no option, and only plays the new recording.

Chairman Meow

Yep, its by all accounts an absolute hatchet job by some no talent hacks.
So what i did instead was get SH 2 & 3 on PC and after some tinkering, they look great, work with a 360 Pad, and are as the developers intended.

I put up a few shots of them in action on the blog, rather than stretch your pages with them, but it looks fantastic on PC for a game 10 years old:

http://printscreenpictures.wordpress.com/2012/03/23/silent-hill-hd/

(seriously this forum needs spoiler boxes that hide pictures or auto resizing a la any other modern forum software!!)

Roar

this is a pretty damning review

http://www.thegamingvault.com/2012/03/review-silent-hill-hd-collection-ps3360/

I'm disappointed as I was looking forward to giving SH2 another run.. Ah well..

ShadowHearth

sheehy83 wrote: »

Oh Jesus it is! I must have blocked this out when I was a young fella. I remember him just stuffing it down a sink. What a disturbing vid. The 2nd top comment is brilliant

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHxd0TCSzdE

its quite amazing how many kids were playing these games back in the day and no one became a mass murderer, but now in video game you show small bit of blood - there will be mass murder spree... :rolleyes:

Retr0gamer

TBH Silent Hill is far more tastfully done than the likes of Call of Duty but definitely more disturbing.

The thing about Silent Hill 2 is that everything factors into the story even the enemies. Pyramid Head is a phallic symbol of raw male sexual lust while the mannaquin is a perverted form of James desires (why it's only made of sexy female legs).

cherryghost

Thank god I still have my PS2 and SH on standby. Was gonna dive into this. Thanks for the heads up RG

ShadowHearth

cherryghost wrote: »

Thank god I still have my PS2 and SH on standby. Was gonna dive into this. Thanks for the heads up RG

*hugs his first release 60gb PS3, which can play ps1 ps2 ps3 games.

will have to look in to ebay to get more ps2 game i have missed in years. believe it or not i still havent played SH2! :eek:

i played first and third, but i dont know how could i managed to skip second. seeing that the newest one is pure shiet too, i will have to go a bit retro!

chrislad

Disappointing. Was looking forward to this. Haven't played Silent Hill 2 in years and I have never had the pleasure of 3.

calex71

I'll be keeping my money in my pocket so, I'd heard it had some issues and thought I'd be able to over look them but this was delayed it's release several times, and they still manage to release it botched.

Downpour isn't looking much better, but it's a more tempting prospect at this point.

Cherry_Cola

That's a shame as I was really looking forward to this. Will more than likely try and get those PC versions working as they look fantastic plus the 360 controller is a good plus.

Doge

Sera wrote: »

sheehy83 wrote: »

There was so much uproar over the voice actor change, Konami added both old and new voice actors so you can choose who you want to hear. Original cast all the way. Konami tried to burn them so bad and now they have 2 sets of voice actors in the game. So rediculous.

I saw a comparison screenshot last week and honestly couldn't tell which was PS2 and which was PS3.

I mean from the pic BELOW, the PS2 version looks way better.

God damnit! He has Invert Y axis enabled too!!!!

Does this board look like a flight simulator to you me boyyyy? :P

ancapailldorcha

You'd think if they were being lazy, they could just take the originals and transfer them verbatim to PS3. Idiots.

Zero-Cool

waveform wrote: »

[QUOTE=Sera;77788394

God damnit! He has Invert Y axis enabled too!!!!

Does this board look like a flight simulator to you me boyyyy? :P[/Quote

At first I was like 'ha?' But when I posted that, I added the comment about the pic when I was in the reply screen when that pic was actually below it aaaaaahhhhhh

noodler

Funny looking ocean.

Really funny that they thought they could release it like this.

cherryghost

ShadowHearth wrote: »

*hugs his first release 60gb PS3, which can play ps1 ps2 ps3 games.

will have to look in to ebay to get more ps2 game i have missed in years. believe it or not i still havent played SH2! :eek:

i played first and third, but i dont know how could i managed to skip second. seeing that the newest one is pure shiet too, i will have to go a bit retro!

If you want to borrow SH2 I can post it off to you if you want?

penev10

I knew I held on to SH2+3 for a reason! Bar the MGS collection I haven't been impressed with the quality of the recent HD rehashes. RE4 and RE:CV were another disappointment that they could've done alot more with.

All remakes should take Resident Evil on the Gamecube as the bar to aim for.

Chairman Meow

Cherry_Cola wrote: »

That's a shame as I was really looking forward to this. Will more than likely try and get those PC versions working as they look fantastic plus the 360 controller is a good plus.

Its great on PC, plus, it has quicksave!! Id really recommend them. Im gonna do an article tomorrow about how to get them working on Win7 and whatnot as they are a bit fiddly but once you get them working theyre sweet. Will post a link when its done

ShadowHearth

cherryghost wrote: »

If you want to borrow SH2 I can post it off to you if you want?

thanks for offer man, but my grapes are not big enough at this moment. i barely managed dead space with no brown stains in my undies . plus i wont find time to play it at nights as misses takes telly away from me. i need to sort out my eyefinity setup fast so i would have a spare hdmi port for ps3 in my office!

I'm pretty disappointed by this. Who did the port? I take it wasn't bluepoint? They did an amazing job with MGS, why didn't Konami use them for Silent Hill?

Asmodean

The thing is the game was made to look grainy and grimey. Polishing it up is a major injustice to the overall tone of the game imo.

deathrider

Being overly honest here, I don't get the idea of HD remakes in general. If a game was good at the time, then I'd play it that way. Slapping a nice suit and tie on it makes exactly feck all difference to me. Re-release it as it was, and I'd buy it regardless.

chrislad

deathrider wrote: »

Being overly honest here, I don't get the idea of HD remakes in general. If a game was good at the time, then I'd play it that way. Slapping a nice suit and tie on it makes exactly feck all difference to me. Re-release it as it was, and I'd buy it regardless.

Unfortunately, a lot of the older games don't look nice at all when you make the jump from CRT to a HDTV.

deathrider

chrislad wrote: »

Unfortunately, a lot of the older games don't look nice at all when you make the jump from CRT to a HDTV.

In fairness, I don't play on a HD tv, so I guess it wouldn't effect me, but it I can see why others would want it suped up then.

chrislad

deathrider wrote: »

In fairness, I don't play on a HD tv, so I guess it wouldn't effect me, but it I can see why others would want it suped up then.

It's not even that people want better graphics, the quality of the image just deteriorates quite a bit for the older consoles. A recent example is the Wind Waker on the GameCube. It looks nice but nowhere near as nice as it used to on my older TV.

deathrider

chrislad wrote: »

It's not even that people want better graphics, the quality of the image just deteriorates quite a bit for the older consoles. A recent example is the Wind Waker on the GameCube. It looks nice but nowhere near as nice as it used to on my older TV.

Hmmm, I see. It's still a damn shame when it results in disasters like this.

ShadowHearth

deathrider wrote: »

Being overly honest here, I don't get the idea of HD remakes in general. If a game was good at the time, then I'd play it that way. Slapping a nice suit and tie on it makes exactly feck all difference to me. Re-release it as it was, and I'd buy it regardless.

HD remakes are great, but unfortunately some developers have a different understanding of what HD remake is.

some make a great remakes with updated graphics to give new life to an older game - Witcher 1

some just slap HD sticker and increase resolution to 720p - RE4

some strip of graphics, make it worse looking, cut out content from original - SH collection.

Big Knox

I'm seriously disappointed with this news. I had such high hopes, not even that the games would be an improvement but that at least the basics would be done right and they would be decent ports.

Bought SH1 on PSN and played through it in preparation for this, was so looking forward to it but fcuk Konami for this I won't be buying it and tbh I've now lost all respect for them.

How they can **** all over the masterpiece that is SH2 is beyond me. Anyway rant over!! :mad:

Retr0gamer

Asmodean wrote: »

The thing is the game was made to look grainy and grimey. Polishing it up is a major injustice to the overall tone of the game imo.

True, the game uses a lot of low light level filters that simulate the coloured cones in the eyes switching to the black and white cones in low light levels. It deteriorates the image quality in a very realistic manner.

chrislad wrote: »

It's not even that people want better graphics, the quality of the image just deteriorates quite a bit for the older consoles. A recent example is the Wind Waker on the GameCube. It looks nice but nowhere near as nice as it used to on my older TV.

A big problem is people playing old consoles on HD displays which make the games look awful. They look an awful lot better on a CRT. The colours are better and TV's have scanlines and a natural antialiasing effect so the games look gorgeous on a CRT but really blocky on a HD screen. Recently got a Neo Geo MVS arcade system and it looks absolutely stunning on a CRT but the image quality deteriorates on a HD display.

chrislad

Metacritic is not looking too bad for it at the moment though.

Chairman Meow

chrislad wrote: »

Metacritic is not looking too bad for it at the moment though.

That proves **** all tho when the majority of people playing it are saying its a disgrace. IGN gave it a 9.0 for ****s sake, thats ridiculous. The originals may be worth that, but a rushed, botched, glitchy, feature stripped version of the originals isnt.

Anyway, got the tutorial done for running 2 & 3 on win 7/vista/multicore cpu's if anyone wants help

http://printscreenpictures.wordpress.com/2012/03/27/silent-hill-12-how-to-guide/

richymcdermott

well this collection news hurt me inside , makes me catious what zone of the enders turns out like

can only find silent hill 3 to be cheap as nuts but silent hill 2 is really expensive online ;(

hopefully summer time the prices drop

Big Knox

Chairman Meow wrote: »

IGN gave it a 9.0 for ****s sake, thats ridiculous.

They gave it a 9 and one of their quotes was "and the new voice recordings sound far more human than the laughable original acting." :rolleyes:

It's quite clearly very broken, even all the user reviews on metacritic are hilarious. They are all 0's or 10's with the 0's being people who have played it listing crazy bugs and problems saying how it is such a disappointment and the 10's are from butt hurt fan boys who clearly haven't played it and just go on about how good the silent hill games are.

Retr0gamer

Remember, IGN is full of morons.

Big Knox

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Remember, IGN is full of morons.

To be fair their reviews have improved dramatically over the past few months in terms of content and writing but the way they operate is still very questionable.

faceman

Very disappointing, SH2 remains one of my favourite games. Wont be picking up the HD so.

Retr0gamer

Big Knox wrote: »

To be fair their reviews have improved dramatically over the past few months in terms of content and writing but the way they operate is still very questionable.

They merged with 1up so there's some cross over there but there's still the old staff left that are useless especially compared to the 1up guys. I'll just say I can't wait for the Eurogamer review and tech analysis, Richard Leadbetter will tear it to shreds.

ShadowHearth

Chairman Meow wrote: »

That proves **** all tho when the majority of people playing it are saying its a disgrace. IGN gave it a 9.0 for ****s sake, thats ridiculous. The originals may be worth that, but a rushed, botched, glitchy, feature stripped version of the originals isnt.

Anyway, got the tutorial done for running 2 & 3 on win 7/vista/multicore cpu's if anyone wants help

http://printscreenpictures.wordpress.com/2012/03/27/silent-hill-12-how-to-guide/

I newer knew we had silent hill games on pc!!! Are they hard to get by these days?

Andy!!

Chairman Meow wrote: »

Yep, its by all accounts an absolute hatchet job by some no talent hacks.
So what i did instead was get SH 2 & 3 on PC and after some tinkering, they look great, work with a 360 Pad, and are as the developers intended.

I put up a few shots of them in action on the blog, rather than stretch your pages with them, but it looks fantastic on PC for a game 10 years old:

http://printscreenpictures.wordpress.com/2012/03/23/silent-hill-hd/

(seriously this forum needs spoiler boxes that hide pictures or auto resizing a la any other modern forum software!!)

Could you elaborate on the tinkering? Did you get to 1080p? Any mods? Where can I buy 2 online? Wish it was on steam.

EDIT:Argh never mind saw you wrote a guide, cheers. But where do I buy it online?

Retr0gamer

I've heard now that the CGI scenes aren't re-rendered just upscaled and stretched to widescreen.

Andy!!

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

You'd think if they were being lazy, they could just take the originals and transfer them verbatim to PS3. Idiots.

Yeah cause THAT'S how it works :rolleyes:

Retro how you know so much about SH2s development, like the low light levels etc? Are there articles around?

Chairman Meow

Andy!! wrote: »

EDIT:Argh never mind saw you wrote a guide, cheers. But where do I buy it online?

I newer knew we had silent hill games on pc!!! Are they hard to get by these days?

Unfortunately the only place youll get them legitimately is ebay, otherwise its pirating them as your only option im afraid.