Silent Hill Origins Comments by Kristan Reed

Whats with the resident evilesque mutant ?

I was thinking that, poor form.

Why every handheld version is supposed to be named 'origins' or 'tactics' or such?

"Why every handheld version is supposed to be named 'origins' or 'tactics' or such?"

Cos they think handheld formats are somehow lesser kids stuff, they want to save the "real" games for the home consoles. I think they're being daft, but there you go.

Or else they've just renamed a port of some Japanese game never seen in the West which has nothing to do with the franchise, and they bolt the extra name on the end to explain why it looks and plays totally differently.

YES, Silent Hill for PSP, PSP's gonna rule, cant wait to play this game in the dark with my headphones on.

I love Silent Hill games.

silent hill is all about adventure and atmosphere. this action direction they've gone in with recent entries is raping the series

Silent Hill 4 had several strong redeeming qualities, but ultimately was a turn in a direction I didn't like for the Silent Hill series. Seems like Origins continues down that road. Hopefully SH5 will be more of a free-roaming-city-spanning, linear-but-not-set-in-stone, finish-it-in-8-hours-but-play-it-through-5-times-to-see-ever
y-ending, monsters-there-to-keep-you-moving-not-to-keep-you-from-movin
g kind of game. That is, more like numero uno. :)

Oh dear! :-(

Sorry but I've only played the original SH and SH4.

And SH4 was SH4t.

This does look ok from the videos I've seen, the screenshots doesn't do it any justice.
A remake of the original for the DS would have been alot better.

if you liked SH smelly, you should really play 3 - just to get the second half of the story. 2 was good, but subtracted from the others. 4 was pap. I was so disappointed with 4.

and this. Hmm.. it doesn't look hopeful.

FUGLY!

Silent Hill is dead.

Ok,that first screenshot with that creature really does look wrong.I personally hate silent hill.After those screenshots,i cnt imaginewhat everyone else must be thinkin,even fans!!And whats with the ''why does it fog on me'' joke.Lame....

that creature looks appauling. Silent hill is well known for the amount of thought that goes into the creature designs but that is generic as hell.

Also the Resident evil 4 rip off is utterly shameless

Have to say, the environments do look very empty.

And I absolutely agree with all comments about the switch from puzzle to action orientated gameplay.

I wonder if at some point, the main character will hop on an ATV :-)

Nothing wrong with ripping off the RE4 control scheme to an extent, it's a very nice way of allowing you to get around and aim using just one stick. However what is up with that monster? It looks like it belongs in Cold Fear or Random Zombie Shooter 2. Not a Silent Hill game.

The first thing that struck me about the visuals (not that its a deal breaker if the gameplay is good) is that everything looks quite clean and sharp.

The SH games have always used that grainy filter that makes everything look just that little bit muddy and sort of... odd. That really adds I think to the whole "things are 'wrong' here, you aren't in control" aspect of the game that makes it so damn scary.

A minor point, but thats never been a good enough reason for me to keep my big gob shut :)

Konami are being incredibly stupid. They are alienating all SH fans and handing one of their biggest Japanese IP's to an American developer. I think they looked the sucess of Resident Evil 4 and thought thats the direction survival horror games should evolve. If that is so they are incredibly wrong. Resident Evil has always leaned more towards action and shock horror. Whereas Silent Hill has concentrated on Psychological horror and Survival and frightening players with things they can't see etc. If they keep on trying to copy Resident Evil, they will lose the big niche they gained in the survival horror market and someone else will take that place.

Silent Hill 5 better be good and a return to the direction SH3 took...or even I'll lose faith in the franchise and look else where...even though I've been a huge fan of the series since it began >_

Games that rely on atmosphere shouldn't be on handhelds. :\

Silent Hill 5 better be good and a return to the direction SH3 took...

While I liked that game a lot, actually I thought it was way too "on rails", restricted. Not free-roaming-ish like SH was (and to a lesser extent, SH2...I guess it's been going downhill in that aspect throughout the series).

"silent hill is all about adventure and atmosphere. this action direction they've gone in with recent entries is raping the series"

Sounds like what happened to Tomb Raider.

Obviously you and IGN saw different versions of the game then..

"August 23, 2006 - Konami today revealed a playable version of its upcoming PSP horror, Silent Hill Origins, which marked the first time the title was available for firsthand impressions since debuting at E3. The game looked absolutely dazzling too, wowing us with a visual presentation that most PS2 software still hasn't achieved. In fact, Silent Hill Origins' graphical detail is so well-crafted that even the most subtle things -- things you'll probably never even see through the darkness -- have been rendered in some fashion or another (down to the individual cracks in the walls) and the signature Silent Hill fog looks appropriately ominous and realistic.

Played from the RE4 perspective and heavier on action compared to previous iterations, Origins is still a Silent Hill game in every sense of the word. That means that yes, the storyline still takes center stage and figuring out how to get the hell out of Dodge without losing your soul is still the primary goal. In the build we demoed, however, it was the town itself that Konami wanted to focus on. A good 30% of the environments here have been recreated from the original's PlayStation One days and the artists have done a good job of making it feel both familiar and new at the same time."

it was foggy and abandoned in the beginning? what kind of origins are we talking about?

I heard that the reason why PSP games have "Origins" or Tactics" tacked on to the original game title originates with a request from Sony themselves as opposed to the actual publisher.

@Mr_Brown

"I think they looked the sucess of Resident Evil 4 and thought thats the direction survival horror games should evolve. If that is so they are incredibly wrong."

Umm, but they have a pretty good record of making those calls thugh don't they. With the SH series but also as a develop in general. This is Konami we are talking about. A proper company, with market research and everything.

So it might be a little naive to say they are being "incredibly stupid" of the back of a couple of screen shots and some bizarre phobia of a US dev working on a Japanese game.

I can assure you we saw the exact same version of the game as everyone else. It was on public display.

@Kangarootoo

Well, their market research didn't help Silent Hill 4 much did it? Or did you miss that game? As for the SH origins, well, I have seen the trailer and the screens and though I'm going to give it the benefit of the doubt, from what I saw I didn't like it. It looked like it was trying to copy Resi 4 and bared only a vague resemblence of SH games previously.

As for a bizzare phobia or US devs (or UK devs) well not really. How can giving a big franchise to another Dev be good for the game. Specially when talking about Horror looking at how different Western horror is to Eastern horror...not a smart move in my eyes but hey what do I know I'm only a fan :)

Not sure where you got your info from Krudster, but it's being made at Climax LA.

http://www.climaxgroup.com/

I think it looks good. The shitty monster hopefully isn't indicative of the rest of the game design, but if it's using the Resi 4 control scheme, it should be a blast.

Action centred gameplay may work best for a handheld version of the game, but I pray that Silent Hill 5 is more like the first 3. Don't fix what ain't broke.