Recent reviews by catlover

Cry of Fear is what Silent Hill 2 looked like in its beta. Plenty of the game’s ideas are ripped directly from Silent Hill 2: the boat section, the protagonist killing someone important to them, the protagonist experiencing psychosis, the monsters being metaphors, the Flyglare—a monster type in Cry of Fear—being literal copies of the final boss in Silent Hill 2, the beginning sequence where the player navigates an empty town—much like Silent Hill—is used to build suspense, multiple endings dependent on your choices, and too much else to list.

Outside of the narrative being a mere regurgitation of the one from Silent Hill 2, except with a different setting, set of characters, and worse writing, the gameplay is original only when compared to Silent Hill. It plays more like a Resident Evil game, with its focus on guns and monsters, than the psychological horror they derived from Silent Hill. Poorly placed saves and monsters can make the game tedious and predictable; an enemy with a screamer from the late 2000s–early 2010s YouTube era is at every corner, which gets cheesy and old fast. Not to mention, the game is started with a screamer. Though the gameplay can be bad, generally it may be slightly better on its own compared to Silent Hill 2’s, but in the context of a psychological horror game, not so much.

The writing, when its importance is needed in integral moments, fails to convey anything meaningful and comes off as amateur, reading like a high-school student’s diary writings that attempt to be emotionally “profound.” Not to say the writing is all bad, but some moments are too awkward without much to make up for it.

The game, suffering from overbearing influences, does feature some genuinely good and tense moments, like the college section, discovering Kirkville, the moment Simon—the main character—discovers the shotgun, and both the good and bad endings’ gameplay. If you’ve never played any of Silent Hill, this is good.

TL;DR: Cry of Fear is far too derivative of Silent Hill 2 but shines in sparse moments of writing, atmosphere, and witty section design.