With a new developer at the helm and new, more powerful consoles to showcase the world(s) of Silent Hill, does Silent Hill: Homecoming bring the series into the next generation? Or is just pure hell?

Loved
Thematically Strong: Silent Hill: Homecoming delivers on a solid, exciting storyline, one peppered with dense themes: child abuse, infanticide, religious fanaticism, mental illness. It's far more straightforward in comparison to other Silent Hill games, ones which often needed the aide of a plot guide to disassemble, but it's administered with finesse. Double Helix supports their storytelling with brilliant symbolism, little of which rarely detours into the obvious.
A Reasonably Good Facsimile Of A Silent Hill Game: If you're desperate for another trip to Silent Hill, Homecoming fits the bill. At times, the game feels like a "greatest hits" compilation, borrowing monster and environmental designs too liberally from previous entries and, unfortunately for this reviewer, the Silent Hill movie. At others, it feels more like a tribute band doing a well-worn cover version of older games, abstracting subtlety and nuance.
Improved Controls: From a mostly better inventory interface to more logical action controls, Homecoming is much easier to get a handle on than its predecessors. That doesn't necessarily mean that hand-to-hand combat is any fun. It's not. It's just better than what Konami Computer Entertainment Tokyo was capable of with the older, more cinematic camera style.
Hell Looks Hellishly Good: The "Descent to Hell" portion of the game looks stunning. If only the camera were pulled back just a few more feet to get a better view...

Hated
Graphical Letdown: While Double Helix nailed portions of Silent Hill's "otherworld," the game is disappointingly inconsistent in its technical execution. Alex Shepherd looks well detailed in comparison to Shepherd's Glen's other inhabitants, with fathers, mothers, sons and daughters all looking, curiously, the same age, more like action figures that human beings. Homecoming also has some of the worst water we've seen this generation. Ugly textures abound.
Odd Bugs and Visual Quirks: Getting stuck on an invisible platform in the first fifteen minutes, forcing a restart of the game, did not leave a good first impression. Fortunately, this was a unique circumstance, but it made moments of geometry clipping and moments of violently spinning camera angles tied to enemy death animations that much more noticeable. Some lip-syncing in the game feels like it was left unfinished.
Annoying Enemies: While the game's combat mechanics are somewhat improved, it doesn't prevent the battles with the blade-limbed Needlers from being any less controller-throwing. A severe lack of supplies, that tends to irritate more than add to the "survival" of the horror, required reverting to an older save to beat one of the tougher bosses.
Obtuse Puzzles: Even for a Silent Hill game, Homecoming's puzzles are simply... puzzling. Too many simply devolved into a frustrating series trial and error attempts.

Silent Hill: Homecoming is a very capable entry, maybe better than cynics were expecting, one that should please most fans of the series and anyone looking for a good scare layered with respectable storytelling. Homecoming fluctuates from moments of brilliance to shades of mediocrity, a bit of a junk food entry that may leave you hungering for something meatier. But less picky players, ones who don't mind the graphical quirks and sameness, will likely not take issue with the final product. There's plenty of frustration to be had and little in the way of traditional "fun," as the game's mechanics are starting to feel in need of a revamp, but Homecoming gets the job done.

Silent Hill: Homecoming, developed by Double Helix and published by Konami was released on Sept. 30 for the Xbox 360, PC and PlayStation 3. Retails for $59.99. Played Xbox 360 version to completion on normal difficulty.

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You’re picking your way through the destitute skeleton of an abandoned building. All around you, decaying, discarded décor reminds you that people lived and worked here once, just as it prompts you to wonder what happened to them. Strange noises and crawling damp seep through the rotted walls.

Your backpack is stuffed with cryptic objects you inexplicably picked up in your exploration – unsettling to look at and obscure in their application, they somehow hold the solutions to the puzzles that impede your progress, if only you can figure them out.

It’s dark, you’ve got a weak flashlight, a short knife, maybe a length of steel pipe you picked up along your way. And you have a sinking feeling that at the end of the next corridor, death is lurking in the shape of a shambling, deformed monster. But you press on through the dispassionate madness, driven by unraveling mysteries and the unresolved ghosts of your own past.

This is survival horror – does it still exist?

The Origins
Though it’s widely held that 1992 PC title Alone in the Dark laid the groundwork for the way video games treat horror, it was the original Resident Evil that cemented the formula on consoles in particular. The saga of Raccoon City began in 1996, when an entire generation of gamers became invested in the adventures of the Redfield siblings, the sordid Umbrella Corporation, and the S.T.A.R.S special forces. Hallmarked by the moan of soulless zombies, mysterious puzzles in an abandoned mansion, and occasional leap-out-of-your-goddamn-skin moments, it wasn’t the kind of thing you’d want to play late at night by yourself.

The original Silent Hill arrived in 1999. Like Resident Evil, it sent the player wandering through eerily deserted locales dismantling black-blooded flesh sacks, but Silent Hill’s hallmark was true psychological horror – the eponymous town cloaked in white fog, through increasingly detailed iterations of the series, became a fairly clear allusion to the protagonist’s personal Hell, and players could draw metaphors through each phase of the game to the often sordid history of the game’s characters.

Resident Evil, Silent Hill and the Fatal Frame series, which takes a particularly Japanese cultural approach to the survival horror formula, could perhaps be called the “triple crown” of survival horror in video games, and along with Clock Tower, Haunting Ground and Siren, each of which put a distinctive spin on the core genre, set in stone the way we chase fear on a video game console.

Don’t Fight, Just Run!
Titles like these all have distinct differences, of course, but they all tend to have a few traits in common. First, they largely de-prioritize combat mechanics, favoring challenging the player through elements like on-location puzzles, mazelike game areas, using the environment itself against enemies, and even fleeing and hiding instead of direct combat. The Fatal Frame series eschews actual hand-to-hand fighting, characterized by its use of a camera to banish the game’s ghosts; Haunting Ground avoids the issue entirely, creating effective, vaguely perverted fear by casting the player as an exposed, vulnerable girl who must hide while training her dog to defend herself.
Though the inability to directly confront monsters in an effective way ended up enhancing the fear factor for these games, it wasn’t likely an entirely deliberate design decision – technology in the nineties didn’t allow for multiple kinds of mechanics in one game the way we see today. Back then, a game couldn’t easily have an enormous, interactive environment, an inventory-dependent puzzle system, and really good third-person character behavior and still have a sophisticated combat engine on top of it.

In other words, the only games we had in which the fighting worked well were games in which fighting was the main event. But Silent Hill became a critical and commercial success in spite of decidedly unwieldy combat mechanics – fans didn’t play it for the creature-bashing, they played it for the creep factor, perhaps demonstrating to the industry that games didn’t need combat to be great, and paving the way for other clever, primarily psychological action titles.
Among its peers, though, Resident Evil was arguably the most successful in terms of combat mechanics, at least in contrast to Silent Hill. Though it wouldn’t have held up when compared to, say, Western first-person shooters or action titles as far as how fluidly the player could become a killing machine, it was always largely competent, and the arsenal of available weapons increased with each successive installment of the storied series.

If fighting mechanics remain the weak spot in survival horror, it makes sense that developers would want to evolve them, and again, it makes sense that Resident Evil’d be the one to perfect its combat controls as the years went on. The widely-acclaimed Resident Evil 4 has been called one of the best all-around games of all time, hailed in large part for its good looks and brilliant controls. The action comes fast and messy, and it’s outright joyful to play as agile, powerful Leon bringing the wet, snap-popping hurt to a legion of eerily lifelike viral Ganados.
And by all early accounts, Resident Evil 5 will just refine that formula even more. Through all of its pre-release critical checkpoints RE5 has excelled. It looks awesome. It hasn’t messed much with RE4’s practically perfect controls. It brings the zombie-bashing into a new (if somewhat controversial) arena. It adds partner AI!
Wait, partner AI? Whatever happened to alone in the dark?

You Call This Survival Horror?
When you watch Chris Redfield (who over the years has apparently been lifting a lot of weights) charge through an open village with the camera over his brawny shoulder, toting heavy arms with his tough-sexy partner Sheva by his side, it ought to make you thrill with anticipation for what could be the next great action game.
But it also ought to make you wonder – is this really survival horror?
Electronic Arts’ upcoming space splatterhouse Dead Space says it’s “survival horror” too. Now, it looks like a good game, to be sure, and it also looks like it’ll be quite scary. But with a focus on real-time, non-stop action (literally – you can’t use a pause menu) and design that producer Chuck Beaver says is inspired by Half-Life 2, it has few touchstones to survival horror as we know it. “Person all alone in creepy area surrounded by swarms of bad guys” does not a survival horror game make – that’s just a basic tenet in nearly all video games. By that definition, hell, even Super Mario Bros. is survival horror.

So whatever happened to our imperfect, psychologically damaged heroes, our creepy little doll rooms, our feeble switchblades, our crawling dread? And why have they been replaced by gun-toting professionals and space marine types – as if gaming needed any more space marines?

How We Lost Our Way
Part of the answer lies in the fact that the video game industry has become big business in a way that perhaps it hadn’t yet approached in the early and mid-‘90s. These days, whenever you’d like to know why too many games just “follow the leader” instead of innovating, whenever you’d like to know why your favorite kooky series got canned – and, in this case, when we’d like to know why a beloved niche went mainstream, there’s a simple, two-word answer that means a lot to game company investors but very little to us: Risk management.

Games with big budgets need to make a lot of money; that’s not greed, that’s fiscal responsibility. So when planning a project slate, publishers look around and see that the big sellers are Gears of War and Halo — they look at the high performance of RE4 and consider the heavy weapon apocalypse to be the direction that consumers want to go. And to some extent, it is – these titles are shining examples of excellent game design. But faced with these prevailing trends, most publishers will feel the need to see highly detailed gunplay and cover mechanics implemented into the games they greenlight, believing it’s a recipe for success – even for games that have historically thrived on other strengths.

The other reason is somewhat more complex. Those beloved survival horror franchises came into prominence at a time when Japanese design and aesthetic sensibilities largely dominated the console market. The very titles that have helped shift Western development to the forefront – the aforementioned Gears, Halo and Half-Life among a good many others – have also brought Western cultural values about action, fear and horror to the fore, where previously the Japanese approach defined the genre.

East Versus West
Resident Evil is said to be born from a Japanese horror movie, “Sweet Home” (which was actually based on an NES game of the same name). Although “Sweet Home” itself took its inspiration in turn from several Western movies, it nonetheless carries with it the strong hallmark of the way Japanese culture treats horror – and that distinctly Japanese fear factor is what made Konami’s Silent Hill, Tecmo’s Fatal Frame, and Sony Japan’s Siren what they are.

The West and the East have distinctly different approaches to creating fear in entertainment media, uniquely rooted in their respective cultural histories. Though it’s doubtless had numerous influences from Western films and games – we mentioned Alone in the Dark, for example – the Japanese aesthetic for survival horror video games relies heavily on ghosts, ritual, and the unseen. This results in a fear environment that is primarily psychological, contrasted with a Western approach that is more visceral and action-oriented. Think American slasher fics versus Japanese haunting films for a basic example.

So as Western game design shifts to become the dominant paradigm, it makes sense that action and gore has begun to supersede psychological dread as the primary catalyst in what we call survival horror. Resident Evil creator Capcom is, of course, a Japanese company, but Capcom in particular has been tenaciously successful in learning to balance the needs and interests of a Western audience with a Japanese one, arguably even targeting Western consumers primarily over Japanese audiences with its major releases in recent years.

Going Back To Our Roots
But longtime survival horror fans recognize that there’s a distinct loss happening for the genre as the complexities of Japanese fear aesthetics begin to take a back seat. While Resident Evil’s shift to a more Western-style action series has been a more gradual, comprehensible transition, by contrast the Silent Hill series has remained largely unadulterated. That’s why news that California-based Double Helix would be developing the fifth Silent Hill game, Silent Hill: Homecoming, raised alarm for many series stalwarts, who worried that American developers might not be able to retain the distinctly Japanese spirit of the series.

But perhaps a collaboration between Japanese IP and modern, Western design talent is a key way forward for survival horror. While the Japanese fear aesthetics I’ve lauded here have resulted in games that take a subtler, more thought-provoking approach to the genre, they can also feel a little surreal and disjointed. The strength of Silent Hill 2 was the fact that its gameplay and environmental elements subtly pointed the way to some dreadful truths about “hero” James Sunderland’s sundered mind and deeds — but aside from its problematic combat, its weakness was that it sprawled thematically, leaving many loose ends, unanswered questions, unclear conclusions and unrelated elements.
Japanese horror idealizes the unanswered questions; Western horror wants clearer explanations for motivations, behavior and symbols. Perhaps the Silent Hill series might have attained still more widespread appeal if it had, to be blunt, made just a little more sense – and if the combat design had been just a little bit better, while still stopping short of becoming a pure-action title where the player felt powerful.

But what if collaborations such as the one between Double Helix and Konami can bring us the best of both worlds?

There’s Hope!
Such partnerships can merge the established conventions forged around popular franchises originating in the East with the forward-thinking, proven Western recipes for strong design that current trends seem to favor, thus helping historically niche franchises find broader global success – which could mean that survival horror as we once knew it might see a renaissance.

Silent Hill: Homecoming will be seen as the test of this merger between two worlds. And while I’ll leave the reviewing here to my Kotaku colleagues, I’ve spent hours upon hours over the last few days playing it for my Variety Magazine review, and I’ll just say that in my opinion, it passes the test with flying colors. Yes, Silent Hill fans, you will be happy.

Here’s hoping it forges the start of a return to familiar form for survival horror — real survival horror.
If you’re interested in reading more on this subject, I recommend the following links:
Chris’ Guide To Japanese Horror: Chris maintains an extensive database on the survival horror game genre and has done a great deal of writing and research on it, and in this article he gives a succinct explanation of some key hallmarks of Japanese horror, how it differs from Western horror and how it has influenced entertainment.

History of Resident Evil: Writers Justin Speer and Cliff O’Neill go in-depth on the genesis and evolution of Capcom’s baby.
Sweet Home at Wikipedia: Wikipedia article on the Sweet Home game and film with relevant links.

Leigh Alexander is news director for Gamasutra, freelances and reviews often for a variety of outlets including Variety and Paste, and maintains her gaming blog, Sexy Videogameland. Her monthly column at Kotaku deals with cultural issues surrounding games and gamers. She can be reached at leighalexander1 AT gmail DOT com.

Tale of Tales has an interesting little interview up with Takayoshi Sato, who was responsible for the art and CGI direction of Silent Hill and Silent Hill 2; after relocating to the US, Sato did art for some big titles, then made the switch to 'serious games.' On making the switch, he has this to say:

I feel that games are being standardized into only a few formats lately: FPS, RTS, MMO, 3rd Person Action and Sports. There’s a tendency to create the same games over and over with only a visual upgrade. And the only thing artists are supposed to do is “be professional” and gift wrap the same game elements with a pretty new skin.

Then I encountered serious games. Despite of the downsides -small budgets, clients to satisfy, etc- serious games allow us to convey social messages, for instance. There hasn’t been an opportunity for deep story telling yet. But even making a game about behavior changes in the context of social problems, seems a little more creative than just making more and more weapon concepts. I find it hard to like games that only provide a “kill kill kill” experience. Since serious games are in their infancy, I thought it might be a great place to seek future possibilities. I hope that very interesting things will happen down the road.

It's brief, but has some good thoughts on art in games and where Sato's headed next. On the serious games front, he sounds like a man after Ian Bogost et al's hearts.

Interview with Takayoshi Sato [Tale of Tales via GameSetWatch]

Silent Hill's identity is that Japanese teams create the kind of horror that takes place in the U.S. I'm not saying this in a negative way, but Japanese people creating a story taking place in the U.S. was part of Silent Hill's identity. This time we worked with a Western development team, with Japanese members also involved, so it's not just Western developers making this by themselves. We are involved, too. So it's different from the past iterations of Silent Hill, but I think it is something new and very interesting.

Yamaoka goes on to say that half the Japanese team members are really into David Lynch (pictured) movies like The Elephant Man. The other half are into other movies, it seems. Good for them.

Yamaoka Interview [Gamasutra] [Pic]

Hit the link for the rest of Gluhov's stuff, including something that may or may not be an S&M depiction of Resident Evil's Nemesis.

Михаил Глухов [Free.Lance, thanks Sergey!]

Thanks for the heads up, Robert.

New International Track & Field [Konami]

Given that the Silent Hill spin-off, which seems to share more with Silent Hill: The Arcade than anything else in the series, doesn't attempt to use a cell phone keypad for control gives it a much lower chance of sucking. Say, 98%. Not bad for a cell phone game!

Silent Hill: The Escape [Game Watch]

A blocky 3D paper fun model tribute to the foggy fog game, the second one, the one with the pillow.

I love this model (especially the flashlight light on the floor...genius touch) and will be putting it together for my desk, but if Tubbypaws would create a little blocky Pyramid Head add-on (sold separately), this would be about the greatest papercraft ever made.

Silent Hill papercraft [Tubbypaws]

Sure, the Onimusha series is no stranger to throwing in an out of place European or two, rather unexpectedly, but this just smacks of icky casting to up the white people quotient. Here's a snippet.

When Britta, the daughter of a Dutch merchant, is abducted on board a ship by seemingly invincible warriors, her tutor and confidant Jacob pursues her captors, vowing to rescue her at all costs. Meanwhile, the beautiful Princess Yuki is also kidnapped, this time by ninjas that reveal themselves, incredibly, to be part spider. In search of Yuki, Samanosuke joins forces with Jacob to vanquish their common foe.

I can only assume that the listing of Samanosuke and Yuki's existence in the plot line as secondary is indicative of the importance of their roles in the story. Since Gans churned out such a sloppy Silent Hill adaptation, I don't really have much in the way of faith for Onimusha. That's probably a good thing, since my attachment to Onimusha isn't nearly as strong as Silent Hill. More details on the film's outline are at Coming Soon.

The Story for Christophe Gans' Onimusha [Coming Soon]

I'm doing an adaptation of the game Return to Castle Wolfenstein. I just love the World War II guys-on-a-mission movies; to me, 'Castle Wolfenstein' is all of that, plus monsters and horror and all that craziness jammed together. It's my dream film.

[via PSP Fanboy]

The story set up that no one cares about is that our male lead Eric has been having nightmares about a girl falling off of a steam boat, drowning in the rivers of Silent Hill. He wakes up in the hotel that's made a number of appearances in the series, only to be thoroughly confused by the newly creeping fog. Some of his shitty friends gone missing and the only way to remedy the situation is to shoot stuff. The obligatory little girl who looks just like some dead kid is also present, constantly running away from our heroes.

The shooting? Top notch. Pull the trigger and things die. Headshots make for a satisfying "POOM!" sound and cause things to fall down faster.

The voice acting, though. Oh God. It's thirty shades of awful. Lines like "Ew. It's smells moldy!" followed by "Better than the smell of blood!" will either leave you in stitches or slightly pissy. Every single interaction and line of dialog is just abysmal, almost impossible to have been read worse.

One more negative is the transporting of the console games' worst elements—constant door handle checking. You're presented with the option of going left, right or straight now and then, something that will inevitably lead to a key finding detour when some random door won't open. Not fun, since the game moves at a sluggish pace.

Despite the negatives, Silent Hill: The Arcade is a great light gun shooter. Many of the areas are lifted from various games, including Brookhaven Hospital and the Silent Hill Mall, so you'll feel right at home. You'll face mid-level bosses and end-of-level bosses that don't really put up a fight, and the game isn't much of a challenge, so if you get your hands on it, you'll most likely get your money's worth.

It's not much to look at, nor does it do anything outstanding in terms of bringing real scares to the genre, but it's fun. The game has been out for some time now, but playing it in an Akihabara arcade this week was my first experience. If you have an arcade that may carry the game, keep your eyes peeled. It's worth the trip (if just for all the cheesy dialog).

I mean, what's not to love? It's a WWII "guys on a mission" movie, which means you're going to be blowing shit up, storming bunkers, busting dams, derailing trains, and killing Nazi's. I love WWII films, but with Wolfenstein we get the creature effects as well, and the guys at id Software have already done all the heavy lifting for me in that department. They went to the imagination well and pulled up buckets of craziness — and as you know, I respond to crazy.

Thanks Thor!

I'm not gonna do Silent Hill 2. If Christophe's not gonna do it, I'm not...

First of all, he [Kojima] is an auteur. From the very start, he has a large ego, which is a necessary thing in order to drive a large number of people to follow a project. You've gotta have a big ego and be sure you're right about everything.

Also on hand will be Koji Igarashi to present Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles on the PSP, and Silent Hill: Origins lead William Oertel will be there to "unveil the future of the series". Spooky.

Sounds like Konami is gearing up for a really big show. We'll let you know how that turns out when Kotaku visits Germany later next month. For now, the press release calls to you.

Games Convention 2007: First details about Konami's product line-up in Leipzig

The football game for a new generation: Konami Digital Entertainment GmbH invites visitors to play PES 2008 for the first time

9:00am on August 23rd will mark a historic date for football fans and games players across Europe, as Konami uses the Games Convention in Leipzig to show the PLAYSTATION®3 version of PES 2008 for the first time.

Visitors to the Konami stand (Hall 4, Booth B11) will be the first people to get a hands-on play of the eagerly-awaited next generation football title, which is just one of dozens of big new titles from the publisher. With more details to follow, Konami has whet appetites with the announcement that key members of its development teams will be on hand to present new titles, including Koji 'IGA' Igarashi who will be showing Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles for PSP® (PlayStation®Portable). Similarly, William Oertel, who is overseeing Silent Hill Origins for PSP® will unveil the future of the series.

PES 2008 will be released in Autumn and introduces 'Teamvision', a unique system of artificial intelligence that adapts according to an individual's style of play to create the balanced and strategic play of a high stakes match. Player detail and animation have also been taken to incredible details thanks to the high-definition power afforded by the Next Gen hardware, and visitors to Games Convention 2007 will also be invited to play the game on PC, Xbox 360 and more.

"We will witness one of the most exciting system changes ever at this year's Games Convention," commented Martin Schneider, Sales and Marketing Director Germany for Konami Digital Entertainment GmbH. "We can promise visitors and gamers in Leipzig that Konami will play a major role in this year´s gaming year - delivering new games and additions to popular franchises, while producing exciting games for new systems and established formats."

Sure, Silent Hill: Origins is coming to the PSP. Producer William Oertel says his team is working hard to "set the bar" for PSP survival horror games. But, what about the DS? Is it possible to make a Silent Hill DS title? Oertel says:

I don't think anything is impossible.

Oertel Interview [Kikizo]

There's no in-between. Gaming press events can either be really exciting or really boring. From chocolate covered bugs to Nazi brothels, game site Games Radar takes a look at seven of the wildest press events in recent memory. Take the above event: a latex wearing woman dressed as character Anesthesia squirts vodka into the mouth of an attendee at Konami's Rumble Roses London event. From Miss Spencer's classroom to Dixie Clemets mechanical bull, each character had her own private area. Konami also rolled out women in short nurse skirts with bandages at a Tokyo Silent Hill event. Trying to keep costs down, PR put out an ad for amateur cosplayers that offered bloodstained Silent Hill nurse outfits as payment. You stay classy, Konami! Brian Ashcraft

Crazy Events [Games Radar]

This is one of those casting "no-brainers." Kaneshiro not only performed the voiceovers for Samanosuke in the original Onimusha: Warlords and Onimusha 3: Demon Siege, Capcom designed the in-game model to look like the Taiwanese-Japanese actor. Outside of Onimusha games, Kaneshiro is probably most famous for his portrayal of Jin in the movie House of Flying Daggers.

Something about this sounds too right. When's some clueless executive going to come around and fuck this thing up the right way? Michael McWhertor

ONIMUSHA fans prepare to be happy... [Ain't It Cool]

In a recent interview with Japanese magazine Dengeki Playstation chief Silent Hill designer Masashi Tsuboyama recently talkedSilent Hill 5 — Namely platforms. In an age when all but first party games are going multi-platform, what does that mean for SH 5? Tsuboyama explains:

...We only have ideas but we have been assessing next-generation consoles such as Sony's Playstation 3... We have not decided the console yet... Silent Hill 1 to 3 have all been multi platform appearing on either Playstation 3, Xbox or PC. This was when we were working at DVD level with no HD needed. Mutli-Platform will be discussed but nothing is certain yet... The Xbox 360 is definatly a candidate. However the sales are Japan are unimpressive. It does have a large installed based in the West though which will be looked at... This by no means says we will not consider the idea [putting it on the Wii] but the general opinion is that Wii is for family games, and I'm sure the fans don't play Silent Hill with their grandma! ...Nintendo Wii would be easier to make for but the control scheme would be hard to implement in a Silent Hill game.

Sounds we're looking at a PS3 version with an Xbox 360 port. Brian Ashcraft

SH 5 Interview [Silenthill5.net Thanks, Maynard!]

Yikes! Slipped under our radar, but someone named Vanessa created this Pyramid Head My Little Pony. The Silent Hill monster is best known for his distinctive headgear, while My Little Pony is best known for... Being pure saccharine. Why did Vanessa create this? To give you nightmares, that's why. Brian Ashcraft

My Little Pyramid Head [Game Drop via Gay Gamer]

Don Carmody, the man that brought us Rabid and Porky's (not to mention A Christmas Story and Weekend at Bernie's), has his hands busy with two video game adaptations: Silent Hill 2 and Clock Tower. Carmody, who won an Oscar for Chicago, produced the Silent Hill prequel as well, but has revealed that director Christophe Gans won't return to helm SH 2 as he's "involved pretty heavily in another project right now." What about Clock Tower? How's that coming along?

It's a tricky one to get. I became involved in the project about a year ago and I just felt they were going the wrong way. So I added my two-cents and they're trying to put it in. We'll see what happens there. Hopefully it'll develop out, not every iron you stick in the fire gets used.

Yah, but with Hollywood game adaptations, it's usually the sucky irons that get used. *sigh* Brian Ashcraft

Producer Talks Horror Game Movies [Gay Gamer]

The original, while not a hit with critics, did excellent business, grossing some $97 million worldwide, according to IMDB. Michael McWhertor

Quint on the set of THE MIST: Day 1!!! [AICN via 1UP]

Yup, the first pic of The Silent Hill arcade shooter officially blows chunks. Besides not being able to see any gameplay, the pic's blurry. And WHAT IS UP WITH THAT CURTAIN?! Gross.

Though, Konami's Otomedius looks pretty much like we thought: Moe meets Gradius. Good one, Konami! Also, there's Square Enix's sword handled Dragon Quest Monster Battle Road. Some game called Network Battle Quiz Answer x Answer as well. We'll be posting more images from the arcade gaming AOU2007 Amusement Expo as they surface. Stay tuned. Brian Ashcraft

AOU2007 [Watch Impress]

However, resident Japanese newshound "duckroll" way over at NeoGAF says this Silent Hill Arcade is a "new Gun Shooting game from Konami." With just a few hours to go before the show opens, news is sure to creep out soon. We'll keep you updated.

UPDATE: It's official as the logo for the game has appeared on the official Konami AOU 2007 page. Michael McWhertor

In a recent interview with French site dvdrama, director Christophe Gans stated that Silent Hill 2 will be penned by Roger Avary and fantasy author Neil Gaiman.

Not so says Gaiman. On his personal site, he blogs:

I'm afraid that I don't think I am — I mean, it's the first thing I've ever heard of it, and I'm sure that if they make a sequel Roger would want to write it himself. I am writing Black Hole with Roger (we're one draft in right now), and we already wrote next year's Beowulf. If I get home to find an invitation to write Silent Hill 2 with Roger is waiting for me I'll let you all know, but for right now I think it's a discredited internet rumour.

Discredited internet rumors that apparently start with movie directors or just miscommunication clusterfuck? Love it! Brian Ashcraft

Not Me, Dude [Neil Gaiman, Thanks Dean!]

Christopher Gans, French director of Brotherhood of the Wolf and the first Silent Hill film, has been quoted as saying that that writer Roger Avary (Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction) and fantasy author Neil Gaiman (Mirror Mask, Sandman) will be getting together to work on the script for a sequel to this summer's Silent Hill movie. No details on the story as of yet and it is unclear whether Gans will direct the sequel as he is currently working on a movie adaptation of Japanese demon killing game, Onimusha.

Avary and Gaiman sound like an ideal team to work on a Silent Hill script. Gaiman excels in the extraordinary and bizarre, while Avary has a penchant for the bloody and violent, both of which are the main ingredients of the Silent Hill franchise. If Gans ends up signing on to direct, this could be one of those rare instances where the sequel outshines the original. Flynn De Marco

Gans Talks "Silent Hill" Sequel Plans [Dark Horizons]
[via: Blue's News]

Our first hint about the content and style of the game is this:

I cannot say much about the development of the game but i can say we are working on a new unique idea of fear in daylight and the game will play like Silent Hill 2's psychological roots.

And what console or consoles will the game appear? Akira dodges the question:

We cannot say yet but we are hoping to carry on the plans of the earlier silent hill platforms.

Well, that sounds like it will hit the PlayStation 3, but who knows? Only Konami. Yamaoka also speaks briefly about the music and his involvement in the PSP prequel, also named Silent Hill Origins. Michael McWhertor

Japanese Magazine Famitsu interview Akira Yamaoka on Silent Hill 5 [Silent Hill Origins]

This October, I hope I will spend the vast majority of my days sitting in a rapidly expanding pool of hysterically evacuated urine. And I need your help to do it.

Let's face it: despite the fact that almost every game has monsters in it, there aren't many truly scary games. Games that have scared me, off the top of my head, include Silent Hill, System Shock 2 and, ironically, quite a few adventure games, like Gabriel Knight and I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream. Most of these games are frightening not because of monsters or mere spooky moments, but because there's something deeply unsettling philosophically behind them.

I want to spell all of October playing some truly scary games. The thing is, I don't really know of many that don't merely fall into the FPS with monsters mold. I'm looking for games with less monsters jumping out of closets to blaze down with a shotgun than I am looking for games that disturb on a deeper level. For example, I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream is terrifying because of the reality-shifting cruelty of an insane, malicious god willing to torture for infinity. System Shock 2 is unsettling because of the horrors of losing your humanity in infinite space, all alone. Silent Hill's dreamlike psychological symbolism touches something raw.

So help me, guys. Help me find some good horror games, fitting the above criteria. Any suggestions you have, no matter how old, would be welcome. Remember anyone can comment now: just enter your comment, a username and a password and you're on your way to becoming a Kotakuite! Florian Eckhardt

Okay, Pyramidhead loses a bit of something in Lego form. The rank, fetid flesh, clammy with the condensation of a thousand hellish boilers. His penchant for making sweet, rapey love to tormented women with their flesh sewn inside out.

What raises his plastic homunculus to excellence is the blurry, saturated Silent Hill quality of the photo. Or maybe it's less art than cheapness and incompetence. Whatever. Florian Eckhardt

Pyramid Head in Legos [Gay Gamer]

When I showed this to a horror aficionado friend of mine, he was incensed. To him, these hallowed halls of gore are untouchable, verboten, and not to be mocked! "Pyramid Head should not dance!" he screamed, clawing at me.

Here and now, recovering quietly and having a nice lie-down, I can only thank whatever dark gods prevented me from showing him this clip, which surely would have driven him mad with grief. Thanks for the link, Tara. Eliza Gauger

In addition, they've also translated the other Silent Hill character and history resources "The Crimson Tome" and "The Sullivan Victims" from Konami's Silent Hill 4 official site, again only previously available in Japanese. While "Lost Memories" focuses on the entire series of psychological horror games, these two resources are simply backstory for the fourth game.

Every Silent Hill fan needs to bookmark this site immediately—and possibly print out a copy of the translated book for safekeeping. Michael McWhertor

Translated Memories Site

Special features for the DVD disc include a six-part production diary, focusing on:

• Silent Hill origins
• Casting Silent Hill
• Building Silent Hill
• Stars and stunts
• Constructing the creepy creatures from the film
• Creature choreography

If I did actually pick this up, it would only be to fast-forward to the mangled busty nurse bits. Anyone out there seriously considering adding this to their library? Michael McWhertor

Silent Hill Release Details

Even though it could be argued that maid cafe customers are more frightening than Silent Hill itself, Akihabara's cleverly named Maid In Japan is trying to scare up interest in the film. Silent Hill posters cover the walls, while nurse zombies in super short skirts serve red pyramid curry and tomato juice. Oddly, there seems to be a big push to get otaku interested in this film—an audience that should be a given. This special movie promotion lasts until July 9th. Nightmarish gallery after the jump. Brian Ashcraft

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