Riddle me this, riddle me that. Who’s afraid of the big bad … crap, I don’t know a synonym for “video game” that rhymes with “that.” Oh well. Thankfully, this column is about horror and entertainment, not poetry and rhymes – although that opening line was indeed frightfully bad.

As those of you who read my blog may already know, I really liked the new “Silent Hill: Shattered Memories” for Wii. Unsurprisingly, Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw over at Zero Punctuation didn’t. Now, I realize that hopeless cynicism is more or less Yahtzee’s trademark, much like critical review is a staple of Roger Ebert’s writing. Just as video game journalists in the industry have argued Ebert’s “video games can never be art” statement I can, and will, argue against the invincible Yahtzee.

As the infamous Brit said in his video review, “The horror of a formless, unknowable evil is diminished when you attach a human face to it.” Now even though he’s specifically referring to the cult sub/main/hidden/whatever-plot in the “Silent Hill” franchise – so it’s possible he’s just complaining about the humans not being scary – it’s pretty difficult to misconstrue his intentions later on, toward the end of the review.

Essentially, Yahtzee is saying that for something to be horrifying, it needs to be visceral, grotesque, impossible or that it needs to get your adrenaline surging from the gooey fear center of your brain. He laments, as others have, the “Nightmare” sections of the game, calling out their predictability. Since you know there aren’t any monsters in the non-Nightmare portions of the game, you could walk through with a relatively safe and secure feeling snuzzled warmly against your heart.

Could, mind you.

People railing against “Shattered Memories” have the wrong idea of what horror is, I think. They want the game to put them into a fear-induced haze, ears prickling at every creak and groan. “Satisfy me!” they scream, like a desperate, hormone-drunk teen on prom night – OK, so my metaphors aren’t as vivid or clever as Yahtzee’s, bite me. Just because “Shattered Memories” isn’t a pus-filled gore-fest with cockroach men scrambling from underneath vans, it’s deemed not scary enough? I call shenanigans. You need to be willing to let yourself be horrified while playing a horror game.

Horror is murder. Horror is abuse. Horror is rape. These aren’t things that are going to make you run and duck under your covers for immediate shelter, but that’s because that’s not what horror does. What Yahtzee and others seem to want is terror.

As author Devendra Varma wrote in his book “The Gothic Flame,” “The difference between Terror and Horror is the difference between awful apprehension and sickening realization: between the smell of death and stumbling against a corpse.”

In “Shattered Memories,” we can apply the same logic. The “awful apprehension” is the fear of being pursued, present in the Nightmare stages of the game. The “sickening realization” is when you allow yourself to reflect on what at first seem to be cosmetic changes of characters.

It’s not just that Officer Cybil is wearing a cleavage-baring, skin-tight uniform as opposed to a conservative jacket, it’s that you, through your decisions, indicated a predisposition towards sexual objectification – something no one should be proud of – which is what gives that character her new appearance.

Sure it’s not sickening realization on the level of the second “Silent Hill’s” twist regarding James and his wife, but when you finally see the dynamic between characters in “Shattered Memories”, you’ll appreciate this new title all the more for its subtlety. Or at least, I did. “Shattered Memories” places responsibility into the player’s hands, making you this world’s caretaker. If someone is a drunk, if they’re violent, if their life is constructed around shallow vanity, it’s because you allowed them to be that way. That burden should crush you. That emotional baggage should haunt you.

That’s horror, exactly as it should be.