P.T. - Playable Trailer

Some of you may have seen a little bit about a game called P.T. that was made available on the PNS yesterday.  It was announced at Gamescom and curious gamers set off to DL the free game.  Well, as it turns out, it was not a game but a "Playable Trailer", or as I like to call it "Perpetual Torment".  I was sucked in to the hype and decided to give it a go and I'd like to talk about my experience.

First off it's a cool concept.  I like the idea of playing a trailer for a game.  I hope more people take this approach in the future.

Secondly, as you might have seen on the news sites, it turns out this is a sneaky reveal for a new Silent Hill!!!  SWEET!!! and it's being produced by Hideo Kojima and Guillermo del Toro!! 

Overall this is awesome on the surface but there is a catch...

The game itself.  Once again on the surface there is nothing wrong here.  It looks good.  It's creepy, kind of scary at times and interesting... at first.  However, this wears off after a while.  The demo has you walk through this hallway of a house.  Most of the doors are locked off and you can't really do anything.  Mostly you walk.  Creepy noises, doors shutting, creepy news broadcast, great atmosphere, good sound design.  As you reach the end of the second hallway there is a door you can walk through.  Doing so loops you back to the first door you walk through to start this journey.  The rest of the game is just a series of walking through the same hall over, and over, and over, and over, and over again.  Little things change from time to time and you interact with the environment by zooming in on objects.  Look at the right things and your next loop will be slightly different.

The problem is that there is very little context to go on.  For a while I just wondered around loop after loop trying to figure out what to do.  At one point I had to find little pieces of a torn picture on the wall.  I didn't even know what was going on and these pieces are little and hard to find.  Once I actually figured out what I was finding, it took forever to find all of them.  Once I did, more looping.  Different lighting, different noises and different "puzzles" if you can call them that but more looping!

I spent about 2 hours (or maybe more cause I had gone insane by that time) freakin\' around in this personal hell of mine and never figured out how to finish it.  Never seeing the end and never seeing the big reveal that this was Silent Hill.  I had no idea what it was or what was going on.  Don't know who made it or why I was tortured for hours.

Later on the news sites it was all revealed.  New Silent Hill!, Hiedo Kojima, Guillermo... etc!  "at the end of the demo the screen fades and you see the Silent Hill logo..."  That's great and all but I promise you, none of these journalist played through it.  They must have been given the short video version cause playing this game is a terrible experience and almost impossible to complete.  Some people seem to have done it but I never could make it.  My progress is saved so I can go back and try again but I'm not sure I will.  This experience was so bad that I think I am NOT going to buy the game because of it.  It's not that I think the game will be anything like this but I'm just pissed.

In closing - Great concept, poor execution IMO.  I had fun for about 30min to an hour and then was trapped in hell for the duration.  Due to the nature of the puzzles I never got to see the end and never even knew what this was supposed to be.

so wouldn't that just be a demo? or am I missing the difference between a demo and a playable trailer.

I think the main difference here is that what you play, while related to the game, is not an actual section of the game.  Probably the same game engine and all that so you get a feel for the game but not an actual playable section of the game.

That sounds like my experience with most silent hill games.  I don't need glowing arrows, but a little hint on which way I should run through the fog would be nice.  Funny writeup dude - enjoyed it.

You forgot the part when you finally see the character you play as and it is Norman reddus.

Evol Recovery wrote:You forgot the part when you finally see the character you play as and it is Norman reddus.

But I didn't see him!!!        Never made it to the reveal.  But you are right, the star from Walking Dead is the lead in the upcoming Silent Hill.

Did you play it too?  What was your experience?  If not, I defy you to finish it without looking online for tips/walkthrough.

I love silent hill and knowing Kojima this is not what we should expect. I turned it off really quickly. I don't like my head being fucked with that hard lol. When I turned the corner and that man was standing there and the lights flicked off I said nope.

Well, I sat down last night and gave it another shot.  Kenny and I walked through it again from the beginning.  Despite my best efforts, I couldn't beat it on my own and had to result to looking on the internet for the solution to the final puzzle.  Well, actually I had it beat at one point but screwed it up without knowing.  Still, I did finish it, watched the cool cut scene and then deleted it from my HDD.  Whole thing was streamed and took about 2 hours to complete.  Now perhaps I can start to heal.