As someone who has played all of them, I can't wait for 5, I just hope the gameplay is better than The Room for PC because that sucked.

I didn't like it The Room too much at first, but after I gave it a chance I really began to enjoy it. The atmosphere was great.

Any excuse to bump this thread up: A night at Silent Hill. (Click)

I'm really looking forward to picking up Origins when it comes out. Although it is supposesd to be on the short side, PSM scored it an 8/10 and said it actually is one of the scariest in the series. You just have to play in a dark room with headphones one.

And why the hell did Gans and Avery drop off the SH2 movie? It was their idea to do it in the first place and Gans was looking forward to it, but that's pretty much over with. I'm still hoping it turns out good.

I played Silent Hill 1 and 2. Didn't beat 1 but I did beat 2. I did play 3 first the first hour but since I didnt have a Strategy Guide I didn't know what to do and haven't picked the series back up since. I still believe that SH when compared to the likes of RE is far more scarier. RE did have its frightening moments but it wasn't a constant dread that you felt when playing SH. An example when be running around in SH and of coarse its foggy out but when the radio got some static and it got louder and louder and when a monster appears, it always freaked me out. And when the time came for when the ordinary world started changing into a complete and utter hell always gave me goosebumps. The music gave it that feel too.

Have you seen the Night at Silent Hill original version Raptor where James' head is moving around in circles? I like that one better because it always cracks me up! lol

Here: A comlete plot guide: SPOILERS DUH

http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/ps2/file/437029/36931

I didn't know about that, is there any word on who's taking over?



Haha, I hadn't until now.

I really wanna pick up Origins too. It comes out just for my birthday (21! The horror!! ), so I guess that would make an awesome present
As for Gans and Avery dropping the SH, as far as I know Gans is making the Onimusha movie.
http://www.aintitcool.com/node/32861

I knew about the Onimusha movie. I'm really looking forward to that, but he stated that after he was far enough along into that movie, he would begin work on SH2. I'd really like to his reasoning behind dropping out of it. I think there is already someone else in place, and Gans said that he made sure it was another French director to assure the "same quality" behind the movie or something. I don't blame him...I can't really think of too many American directors that wouldn't turn this movie into some effects-driven action fest. Not that I don't enjoy those kinds of movies, but that's not what Silent Hill is about. Although I do bet that Sam Raimi could do wonders for this film.

On a side note, I haven't talked to you in forever, jpalz. How've you been?

I didn't know that Gans had dropped it completely. It's too bad, since I liked the first movie alot, flaws and all. Who else might direct it? Mmm... I dunno if Sam Raimi. I love his Evil Dead movies, but I don't think he would make the right approach to Silent Hill.

If we talk about classic directors, I would love to see what John Carpenter would do with it. Or maybe Dario Argento (from Suspiria)



Yeah, we haven't talked in forever! That's because I haven't connected to MSN in forever too. I've been fine, with a lot of tests (yeah yeah, I'm always full of them, I know ), but I've been pretty fine, writing, doing my social works, kicking a** in Guitar Hero (and the real guitar too! ). And what about you?
I'll connect to MSN during the week, so we can catch up with each other, k?

EDIT: Forgot to add: And what about David Lynch or David Cronenberg? Now THAT would be interesting!!

I dunno...Raimi seems to have a good grasp of what's scary and creepy. I think he could pull it off...

All we know right now is that the new director is probably going to be French.



Also, I haven't had MSN in ages..not since I got this computer last year. If I ever get it again, I'll let you know.

dat game wuz skaree!

An amazing series of games. I've played all the SH games released to date (SH1-4, SH: Play Novel and SH: Orphan), except SH: 0rigins. And they're the most frightening and disturbing games I've ever played, especially the first 2 games. The sense of isolation and despair, combined with Akira Yamaokas music and the sound effects, is what makes the games so scary. The movie was somewhat disappointing. Visually it was very close to the games, but the plotline was incoherent an, at times, made little sense. I found the fan-made CGI movie Silent Hill: No Escape to be more satisfying.

Finished Silent Hill Origins today... I won't ruin anything for anybody, but I'm glad it didn't change the original story too much and just "explained" some things just a little... the story wasn't great but it wasn't awful either.

I forgot it was out already. I won't be getting it any time soon, though. There are a lot more games coming out that I want far more than this, and I don't even have money for those. Eventually, though...I do really want to play it.

I've been blessed with a good paying job at my college and full tuition to boot, so I've stocked up on games to do me until the next millenium.

So far I've bought:

Bioshock (360), The Orange Box (360), Guitar Hero III (360), Halo 3 (360), Call of Duty 4 (360), Super Mario Galaxy (Wii), Resident Evil Umbrella Chronicles (Wii), Zack and Wiki (Wii), Metroid Prime 3 (Wii), Assassin's Creed (360), Kane and Lynch (360), Dementium: The Ward (DS), Brain Age 2 (DS), Silent Hill Origins (PSP), and preordered Mass Effect (360). I will never beat these games but hey, more to add to the Room of Doom.

My job pays nothing, yet I still go out and buy games. I've recently been trading in games to get new ones. I traded in Jericho and a bunch of PS2 games I never play for Timeshift. Today, I traded in Halo 3, Dead Rising, and Perfect Dark Zero in for Solider of Fortune: Payback. I now have nothing left I actually want to get rid of anymore. I still want Kane and Lynch, Blacksite, F.E.A.R. Files, Silent Hill Origins, Assassin's Creed, and Mass Effect (which I WILL be getting next week). This is besides the fact that I still want a PS3 for R&C, Uncharted, Haze, and next year's Killzone 2. This holiday season for games seriously just is NOT fair to people who can't afford to dish out $120 or more a week for games.

Not sure if many people are still reading this forum but there is some new information on Silent Hill V (five). Go to : http://silenthillorigins.com/ for the page... if that doesn't lead you there directly, just click on the Silent Hill V link on the page.

There is a nice video of gameplay footage on the page. The game seems to be pretty far along with some decent graphics and good environments. There are some things that I do and don't like, and I'll address these things below, so if you want to be fully surprised when you watch the video, just read after you have watched it.

I like the way the town looks in the opening of the short demo. You can see a great deal of detail in the lightpoles, in the trees, the sky, the mountains in the background. The house looks amazingly good and creepy, something that I have missed seeing since the first two Silent Hill games. I wish, however, that more fog would be used. You can simply see too far ahead for the town not to be Silent Hill. This may be corrected as the production comes along, as the developers might want to create the town without any fog and add it later, but as of right now, although it looks very good, it doesn't look like Silent Hill without the fog.

I don't like the checkpoint system at all. The one thing about Resident Evil, Silent Hill, and most every other survival horror game is the fact that you must keep playing to find that faithful typewritter or notepad or red box. It always added another level of horror when you have been playing the game for a hour or more, and solved a few puzzles, collected some hidden items and weapons, got past some powerful enemies with minimal ammunition used, and now I am almost dead with no heath and I can't find the save point. When you are in this situation, you don't want to search uncharted rooms, or press on to the boss fight. With checkpoints, there is usually no searching but pressing ahead, and they are usually frequent, like before and after a boss fight, or directly after solving a puzzle or a difficult task. Hopefully, they will make the checkpoint system suitable for a survival horror genre, or remove it all-together.

The camera I almost like and almost don't. It seems that you can't bring the camera to the side or in front of your character, but only from the back--turning the camera moves your character it seems. I always enjoyed the bizarre camera angles that Silent Hill delivered on occassion (the alley from the original Silent Hill is remarkable) no matter how it affected my controls--it always made it scarrier to me. I would be the first to admit that the controls in Silent Hill and most survival horror games need work, and if the only way to fix that problem is to fix the camera along with the controls, so be it, but I think that there may be another way. I liked the camera when it was used for games like Max Payne, but I still miss the Silent Horror angles that made the game popular.

Jumping through the window makes me wonder what other things you may be able to do with the environment. Although climbing through windows is small, as it has been done millions of times before in many other games, it makes me dream of much more that should be done to evolve the survival horror experience, more specifically the Silent Hill experience, in the next generation of video games. I would love to see you be able to move or use furniture and other items in your defense. Picking up a chair and throwing it at an enemy always seemed like a more natural response (for Heather at least) than using a switch blade at a towering, brutal monster. Also, I would love to see you be able to move or destroy furniture that's blocking doorways or escape roots, or smash windows to get into a room. With an axe, you may be able to destroy a wooden door in which the lock "seems to be broken." Boards blocking a doorway in the middle of the video make me feel more confident that this may be possible, although it could be that these are the only boards you can destroy. Imagine finding a door that is blocked by several boxes and/or chairs, and the curiosity of a powerful weapon or much needed health causes you to spend the time moving the objects to get into the room. After all the work, you learn that the room is mostly empty except for a few useless handgun bullets, or was blocked to keep a strong beast from being unleashed, or maybe the door is locked and you can't get in even after all that work. Smashing apart a wooden door to get in may give you access to a strong weapon or to a storageroom of supplies, but leaves you exposed to the monsters in the hall. Silent Hill has always felt more open ended than most other games in the genre, and even if it is somewhat straightforward, I think that is what will make the game into the next gen. The town's size leads to endless possibilies.

Most of the rest of the video I like: the monsters and environments feel very Silent Hill-ish. As much as I love the nurses, I would like to see some more original enemies that we haven't seen before. I loved associating the creatures with the characters, as they were like their inner demons haunting them and chasing them and I don't want to see that lost. Also, the game looks more of an action game to me than past Silent Hill games. Although we haven't seen any fighting yet, or at least I haven't, the camera, checkpoint system, and someway narrow streets in the middle of the video and few doors in the building shown makes me fear that this is going to be a much more straightforward game. Nonetheless, I am excited to play it when it comes out.

Don't worry, as long as the internet exists we'll all still be here.

It's getting pretty late right now, but I'll get back to your post tomorrow.

Creepy.

Guess he won't be back for a sequel.

I suck with my japanese so is there a place i can get the Play Novel in english???

A couple of new videos of SH5 (now called Homecoming) have been released, just about to check them out for myself now: Click.

Yeah once i got back to civilization i checked out the latest.
I'm pretty happy with how it looks so far, wish it was being made by Team Silent though. Story sounds meh, enemies look pretty good, interactivity seems to be amazing.

Good to see you around, are you back for good now or what?

Yeah I'm pretty pleased with how it's looking so far, it could've been a disaster but they're handling it nicely by the looks of things. Which reminds me, I need to see if I can get hold of the Origins port...

I'm back, for now. I have my plans and agendas, issues and paranoias, so i got what i needed from my trip and, well, that's that. Now we play the waiting game..

Anyway, when is the PS2 Origins Port supposed to be out?

It's already out man, at least in North America. A local store has it tagged for release over here on the 16th May but I'm not sure if that's definite or not.

Noooo kidding. Off to EB I go!

I can't wait to play Homecoming. Supposedly the team making the game liked SH2 and 1 the most, so they are taking heavy inspiration from those. I bet we can expect something far superior than SH3 or 4.

The PS2 port of Origins is out here. I haven't gotten it yet, but I definately will, since I never got around to getting it for PSP. It's only $30, which isn't too bad.

Yeah that's what I expected.
Can't say i'm overly hyped to play it. Not compared to Homecoming anyway. Although i disaprove of the name, what i know of the story.. the rest seems pretty banging. I like that you can chuck enemies out of windows and things haha. And that bumping into objects actually knocks them over or makes noise..

Plus have you seen the shifting? it's EXACTLY like the movie, awesome!

I haven't actually watched any of the gameplay videos yet. I'll get around to it eventually.

Dude, world shifting for the win.
Looks like the town is much more explorable too. Like, there's footage of the dude climbing down some of the giant crack gashes in the town, checking out a house, etc. The nurses are also exactly like the movie, and they react the same way too, walk the same way, respond to light, what have you.

I'm just dissapointed that there won't be any fixed camera angles in this one. The classic angles of the old games were a huge part of the series. I guessed fixed angles are kind of an out-dated thing now, unfortunately.

My favourite camera, and I don't know why, was right at the beginning of SH1. When Harry is walking down through the alley, JUST past the area where you see that exploded from the inside Dog, there's a part where the alleyturns to the left, and the Camera is fixed almost like on a pipe in the corner of the alley, but it follows Harry around the corner doing a sort of curve thing. The movie was also soldon my by keeping and recreating this camera exactly, awesomely.

Yeah, they seem to be an outdated thing. I haven't seen a fixed camera since.. well Manhunt 2 made decent use of them..

That's my favorite camera angle, as well.
Did Origin use them? I'm not really sure.
I know ObsCure Aftermath uses them, but then again, that's pretty much just like an old-school survival horror anyway.
All of the big survival horror titles don't seem to be using them. SH5, RE5, Alone in the Dark, and Dead Space all use 3rd person perspectives. Although it was pretty easy to tell that RE5 would be doing it.

Not like there were any still frames in RE4.

So I watched all the gameplay vids last night. They are definately awesome. The game seems to have a very old-school SH feel. Even some old sound effects made it into this one. This one could possibly be the best in the series, although 1 still remains my favorite to this day. So many great memories playing it with my bro when it was first released.

Had a bit of a gamebinge last night and was wondering, In SH2 when you fight the twin Pyramid Heads, what is the best way to take em out?

I think the easiest way was to just run to a corner, blast them with the shotgun until they began getting close, and then run over to another corner and repeat the process.

The time tested method. you don't damage them seperately, so it doesn't matter which one you hit, they always die together. Run to a corner, turn, whip out the rifle, blast off three shots, run to the next corner and repeat.




So I picked up Origins, PS2 version.
It's.. okay?

I'll pick up that one as soon as it's released over here in Euroland (May 16th if I'm not mistaken). I've played all the other SH games (even Play Novel and the SH: Orphan game for cell phones), so I'll need to pick up this one too. How are the graphics of SH: Origins compared to SH3 and 4?

People were saying that it's actually better on the PSP. I don't see how, though.

No, i do see how. The controls are sluggish, perhaps due to the port. It's difficult, because everything happens a few seconds after I push the damned buttons, like running, fighting etc.

The graphics are okay. Better than SH1.. maybe on par with 2, def worse than 3.
Story is awful so far. It's completely ruining the story set by Silent Hill 1. Completely.
Attacking IS fun. You can hand to hand, or use almost anything. TV's, scalpels, poles, planks, raidos, i even found a toaster oven and bashed a nurses head in with it.
Soundtrack is top notch excellent, as expected. Akira does it again.

Thanks for the help! Rapped it again... The PSP version is better than the port, becausee (burnside is right) you hit a button and about 5 seconds later it finally works...

Epic win. The fact that you can beat up nurses with TVs, radios and toasters is alone a good enough reason for me to pick up SH: Origins

Well I'm probably going to get it for PSP then, especially since I can find it cheaper than the PS2 port.
I've actually heard a lot of good things about the story though...how does it ruin SH1's story?

It just goes back and changes important details.
Originally, Dahlia locked Alessa in the room of the house and set the house on fire to try and awaken Samael inside her somehow, right? The town was completely normal then, this happened SEVEN years before the events of Silent Hill 1, when Harry was vacationing in Silent Hill and found Alessas untarinshed soul in the form of baby Cheryl. The town was normal until the events of Silent Hill 1, when Harry brings the soul back to Alessa. Alessa was taken to a hospital after the fire, and kept in the basement for seven years, being treated by Lisa. Alessa created the Other world for her benefit to hide her full self away from Dahlia, a world of nightmares Dahlia created. The monsters attacking Harry were not ment to harm him, they were just manifestations of Alessas deepest fears. Adults, children, nurses, dogs etc.
Alessa uses the image of Cheryl in Silent Hill to guide Harry to helping her, appearing to him herself only once or twice truly. Her true image is that of how she would look if she had never been burned, still wearing her school uniform.

Anyway.. along comes Origins. Origins now claims that a trucker was passing by and Alessa appeared to him on the road. The trucker followed the apparition of Alessa to the burning house, went in and found Alessa lying in a ritualistic circle, burned. He takes her out, collapses, and wakes up right in the center of Silent Hills industrial district, by the Hospital. The town is deserted, there are massive cracks all through the roads, it's misty and snowing, etc. He goes into the Hospital, still no one around. The world changes to nightmare world, all the nurses are there already, and even though Alessa hasn't even met Lisa by this point, she's there too.
Also Alex can shift in and out of the Otherworld HIMSELF, using mirrors to change the world between misty and other. Is this all going on inside his head? How could it be otherwise, since there is no mention all throughout Silent Hill of these events occuring when Alessa was taken to the Hospital, you know? It just doesn't fit.

We KNOW what happened, throwing a prologue game in there to confuse all the information is a silly idea.

How does freely shifting to the alternate world affect the gameplay, besides the obvious? Does being one world allow you to travel to other parts that you otherwise wouldn't be able to go to? Are there puzzles involved in it?

Actually it is pretty neat. Like for the first area, you can't go any further into the building, it's all blocked off by construction and renovations. But you can go into the bathroom, change into the Otherworld, then you can progress, and try and find another mirror later to get back into the light world. So far it seems there are only enemies in the Otherworld, although they're everywhere on the streets themselves.

(Oh that's another thing that bothered me. The enemies are all SH2ish, and don't seem to have a connection to Alessa herself. Shouldn't the monsters be just like those from SH1? *shrugs* They're tough gits though. I've been killed a few times even at the beginning of the game, but this is due to repitition in fighting and sluggish controls)

Anyway, so yes shifting allows you to progress further, basically. There are puzzles in both worlds and often they're connected, like finding a passnumber for a box in the Otherworld, the password is split into three places across the light world, or items you need to find might be in a room in the Otherworld, but not in the lightworld, where you actually need the item, so you have to figure some way of getting into that room in the Other, then coming back to that room later in the light after you have the item, etc.

Ugh. Don't ever try and fight more than one monster at once, it'll get you killed, PERIOD.
The only way to kill the monsters is to stamp them. This is done by pushing X next to the body, but the game gets picky about where you stand. When there's two or three monsters attacking you from all sides, and you finally through sluggish movements get one down, it's impossible to stamp it, and it gets right back up again to continue pummeling you. You don't get much health, or weapons, and all the weapons you get break after one or one and a half monster encounters. Then the problem comes that the AI is actually good. Those damned things follow you, once they see you. They follow you, PERIOD. So you're running from two bloody monsters, running into more, picking up a huge posy of monsters on your tail. And they don't tire, you do, quickly.
The only way to get through the streets is to go really slowly, search everywhere very closely since items are barely visible, and take monsters on one v one. All of them.
Oh, guess what? Ran into Pyramid Head. wtf is he doing here, now!? He's not wearing his helmet, more something like a half covering round metal helmet, but it's clearly him.


All this being said, i'm still enjoying the game. It's kinda just wandering and going to the only places you can go, and a pretty large challenge so far, with some good high tension freaky parts in there. And just being back in Silent Hill again, back in my favourite little misty town, is wonderful. Feels like homecoming.

Did anyone see 'The Mist'?
Holy Silent Hill batman. Even down to the air raid sirens moments before the Mist covered the town! And not all of them, but some of the monsters, like the flying Pteradactyls and the giant bugs, good times.