Perhaps the biggest "problem" with Deadly Silence is that it's just not scary anymore. The genre has picked up and since introduced far greater frights than what the original offered (Silent Hill and Fatal Frame, take a bow), and downsizing the original Resident Evil to a handheld experience takes away a lot of the fear. It was mostly, after all, the atmosphere and mystery that made up for the slightly broken gameplay, and all these years later the question must be asked, "Who is going to want to play this again?" Besides those who've never tried this game before, probably not too many people. Though an impressive port, it's a port of a game that's been ported (and even remade on GameCube) time and time again. The Rebirth mode alone is not enough to warrant recommending this to Resident Evil veterans, although the multiplayer modes make it an easier sell (provided you have enough friends with their own copy). Even then, despite the wealth of characters you can unlock for that mode, you never actually see any of the people you're playing with onscreen (other players are represented by colored stars). From a purely technological standpoint, Deadly Silence is a mostly excellent game, but one that is -- in terms of fixing what was wrong with the original -- only partially successful. If you're a black-and-blue Resident Evil veteran who's been down this path before, there's not a ton here worth replaying. But if you've only hopped on as of the last couple episodes and want to see what all the fuss was about nearly a decade ago, then by all means jump right in.
