I absolutely adore horror games. Silent Hill is still one of the finest gaming experiences you can find. It seems that the Google Games Chat panelists agree with the sentiment. They even filmed an entire episode around horror games and the scary pitfalls of Halloween.
During the show, the panelists show off Dark Legends, a vampire MMO that runs on mobile devices and in the Chrome browser. There’s some talk about how games are becoming more accessible across mobile and Web browsers. As browser development continues, we can expect more technically impressive games in browsers.
In the rest of the 48 minute video, the panelists talk about the the proliferation of zombie games and the technical details behind zombie game design. As a whole, it’s another interesting discussion that aspiring game developers will want to check out.
To say I’m a huge Silent Hill fan would be an understatement. What Konami has done to the franchise since Silent Hill 3 has been absolutely awful with the only shining beacon of hope coming in the form of Shattered Memories. Part of my disappointment can be attributed to how lackluster the first Silent Hill film was. In a game that’s already set up to be a fantastic film, Hollywood just didn’t get it right.
Despite all my complaints, the first film did pretty well for itself. That’s why the studio opted to make a sequel called Silent Hill: Revelation. All we knew beforehand was that it was going to follow the plot of Silent Hill 3 and be more faithful to the source material. With the first trailer hitting the Web today, how faithful to the source material are they?
From what the trailer imparts on us, it seems that all they got right was Heather Mason and the town being named Silent Hill. It seems that the director and screenplay writer still can’t get it through their heads that Pyramid Head does not belong anywhere except Silent Hill 2. They also seem to have paired Heather up with some random guy from her high school. It all just seems like the same cliche horror experience from the first film without any of the positive elements from the games.
Of course, this is all coming from a hardcore Silent Hill fan who’s been let down too many times in the past few years. Check out the trailer for yourself. You may be far more agreeable towards it:
In its defense, it looks like a decent horror film. It just seems to miss the point entirely once again. Silent Hill isn’t about the cult, scary monsters or the story of Alessa Gillepsie. The town has always been the antagonist, but they always have to put that role onto Pyramid Head.
As a lesson to Hollywood and to give some hope to my fellow Silent Hill fans, check out this fan made trailer for a Silent Hill 3 movie. It’s way better than what Hollywood could ever cook up:
What started with Joystiq pointing out a release date discrepancy has ballooned into a full-scale game delay for ‘Silent Hill: Book of Memories’. The game was set to be released for Sony’s Playstation Vita today, but the release date on both Gamefly and Amazon changed to May 31. Odd, since, as IGN points out videogames don’t get released on Saturdays. IGN was able to subsequently able to confirm with the publisher, Konami, that the title has been delayed and that they “should have a confirmed ship date soon.”
Meanwhile, the classic ‘Silent Hill’ is still set for release as a free “PS One Classic” for Playstation Plus members on April 3. So perhaps we can all revisit that first terrifying journey to get ready for the new horror-show. Or, perhaps ‘Book of Memories’ might not even be worth a release, as commenters on the Joystiq site seem to think:
