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• 10 Years Ago This Week: Silent Hill

  Silent Hill (released February 24th, 1999) did not mark a pivotal moment in the original Playstation’s lifecycle. Technologically speaking, Silent Hill was a solid effort, but nothing unusual for the time. Foregoing the pre-rendered backgrounds that were horror games’ stock-in-trade, Silent Hill’s full-3D environments weren’t as pristinely rendered as Konami’s own, year-old Metal Gear Solid. The CGI cutscenes, another requisite of the era, were competent but by no means up to the Squaresoft gold standard. Its control was wonky, its camera unwieldy, and the voice-acting was stiff even for a Playstation game. Of course, none of that matters. Silent Hill was a pivotal moment in game’s maturation as an affecting, expressive medium. Forget technology; its technical failings made it a stronger work. Forget genre; Silent Hill is not survival horror. It’s just horror. Read More... Posted Feb 23 2009, 07:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, capcom, metal gear solid, silent hill, konami, sony, rule of rose, Playstation, tecmo, fatal frame, team silent, silent hill 2, sunsoft, 10 years ago, akira yamioka, shuji ishikawa, punchline, david lynch, jacob’s ladder, Adrian lyne, siren, clock tower

• Yahtzee's Homecoming

  I love the Silent Hill series, but I've never really been able to play any of the games; the music, characters, mythology, and storylines are all fantastic, but the actual playing process scares the crap out of me. Well, maybe "scare" isn't the right word. My last attempt to work through a Silent Hill game happened in 2002, when I tried as hard as I could to overcome my wimpyness--only to find Silent Hill 2's unique atmosphere of loneliness and dread leaving me feeling physically ill and mentally dirty.  But my near-nervous breakdown is a credit to how effective Silent Hill 2 is; and this title's spectacular atmosphere is also one of the reasons why SH2 is a favorite of gaming curmudgeon Yahtzee (of Zero Punctuation fame). But since development house Team Silent has been disbanded (or since they broke up, it's never really been clear), the future of the Silent Hill series has been hijacked, first for the PSP's Silent Hill: Origins, and now with the new PS3 release, Silent Hill: Homecoming. While the latest Silent Hill doesn't have the hubris to slap a "5" onto the title, the aforementioned Yahtzee finds quite a few problems with Homecoming's lack of authenticity: Will there ever be another Silent Hill game as good as the second one? It seems unlikely, but I'd certainly be happy if it happened. Of course, I'd be appreciating it from afar. Read More... Posted Oct 23 2008, 09:30 PM by Bob Mackey with | with 4 comment(s) Filed under: silent hill, silent hill homecoming, konami, silent hill origins, bob mackey, team silent, silent hill 2