[kuro_neko]

Its definitely in the spirit of the series but it shakes things up so much that its hard to say what other people will feel. it takes the spirit and transfuses into a completely different build. the helpless and desolate feeling is still strong, but the lack of constant danger is replaced by relative comfort of exploring the silent hill world (which is still intensely creepy) and then the intensely scary Nightmare segments which you are forced to do nothing but flee for your life. rather than have an even sense of danger throughout it polarizes the danger, so that is different. the game also plays linear in a similar way as 3 and 4 did. You can run around the town to your heart's desire as in 1 and 2, but it manages to guide you down a linear path, interspersed with the Nightmare sequences. I can't even BEAT the first one, if that gives you an indication of how much of learning curve the game has in some senses. Also, did you play Origins? SH:SM was developed by the same team which created Origins, which was generally liked. Homecoming was considered a huge misstep for the series, and it was developed by a different US time (The Collective). Its not similar to Origins in gameplay or design, but I think in feel it plays similarly, you can tell it was the same team.

if your going to get this game definitely get the Wii build, I heard the PS2 version is a port from the PSP build (to minimize cost and time, supposedly the pushed back release dates were because the ports were taking too much work, while the Wii version has been done for a while), and then the Wii flashlight and controls are clearly the way the game was designed and not some gimmick.