Konami has not had the best luck with the PS Vita. From having to cut Metal Gear Solid: Peacewalker in the Metal Gear Solid HD Collection on Vita, to the critically panned Silent Hill: Book of Memories, their releases have fought an uphill battle on a still fairly niche platform.
Their resolve to try and make a success on the platform is definitely made clear though by their recent announcement to port Silent Hill: Origins and Silent Hill: Shattered Memories to the PS Vita. Depending on what you enjoy in Silent Hill, each entry has something to offer; both titles are proven mobile games on the PSP.
Origins offers up what many found a rather unnecessary story, but a fairly interesting gameplay twist on interactions with the Other World realm in Silent Hill and some new combat options.
Origins is also the far more traditional option for Silent Hill fans, maintaining most of the series usual elements as best it could despite being designed for a handheld to begin with. The game was ported to the Playstation 2, although little was changed content-wise due to Origins being built heavily to emulate the play style of the first two Silent Hill games, so it’s likely it, at most, will have a graphical update and some minor touch control inputs.
Shattered Memories, however, is a full re-imagining of the original Silent Hill, not as a survival horror game, but as a psychological thriller like Amnesia: The Dark Descent. While the game was built for the Wii (and most reviews strongly praise the Wii version as the best), it was successfully ported to PS2 and PSP.
The removal of combat was a point of contention for fans, but the story was highly praised for its multiple paths, interesting form of player choices impacting the narrative, and use of a side story set in therapy sessions to get inside the player’s head and change the game to better scare the player. We’ll likely see PS2 controls combined with the Wii’s graphics, in addition to touch screen implementation possibly for the in-game phone used for puzzles and detecting monsters.
Both titles will be available on European PSN for £7.99/€9.95 at an unannounced time. No word on North America or Japan prices or release dates was given in the press release.
