Silent Hill: Homecoming

UPDATE 17/05/2016 5pm: James Brady's Silent Hill stage is now available to download. Here's a link.

Think you're a big Silent Hill fan? Well you might be, but chances are you've got nothing on Whitney Chavis, whose Silent Hill collection is so big that it's actually set a Guinness World Record.

A sequel to 2006's Silent Hill movie started shooting in Toronto today, producer Davis Films has announced.

A second Silent Hill movie is officially on the way, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

Screenwriter Roger Avary and producer Samuel Hadida, who worked on the first film, have already signed up for the project.

Movie company Davis Films will start shooting next year, once they've finished Resident Evil 4.

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Roger Avary may return to write the Silent Hill film sequel after all, according to comments made by renowned novelist Bret Easton Ellis.

It's that time again. If the recent F.E.A.R. 2 and Street Fighter IV features did not sate your face-off needs adequately, we're back with the more traditional roundup format, boasting a six-strong set of releases that collectively sum up both the good and the bad of multiformat development as it stands right now. And this month's assortment adds a new meaning to the term 'cross-platform', as we get to see what PS2-era assets look like in a brand new PS3/360 game!

As per the norm, we've worked hard in bringing you the best-possible assets to show you how the games compare on both platforms: that'll be digitally lossless 24-bit full-range RGB grabs freshly and brutally culled from the HDMI ports of our PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 Elite, and accompanying h264-encoded videos from the same sources. You all know the score by now - streaming video actually becomes relevant for the purpose here, by slowing down the video and zooming in on a section of the screen, with one pixel in the excellent Eurogamer video player equating to one pixel on your HDTV.

So, bearing in mind the additional title-specific coverage you've been enjoying of late, there's a somewhat pared-down roster this time, combining some of the most recent 2009 releases with a bunch of high-profile 2008 tail-enders that worked hard in avoiding our radar.

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Konami has konfirmed that the next instalment in the Silent Hill series will be released on 27th February.

Silent Hill Homecoming is already out in the States for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360. It's "fairly decent", according to our review.

Also coming on Feb 27th is Castlevania: Judgement for Wii. It's a fighting game with 3D environments and a spanky online mode. There's more on the gamepage.

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After the enduring majesty of the first three Silent Hill games, it's now more than five years since Konami's survival-horror lynchpin stood shoulder to shoulder with the most vital, relevant brands in gaming. With the slight disappointment of The Room, followed by the curious and controversial decision to farm out the development of the underwhelmingOrigins to UK studio Climax, expectations for Homecoming have been dampened for some time. Again farmed out, this time to the US-based Double Helix, fans were expecting another frustrating compromise. And so it proves.

In almost exactly the same way that Silent Hill Origins dared not stray from the formula, Homecoming is guilty of paying homage to the series to a restrictive degree. And while the game is mostly successful in its attempts to ape the cloying atmosphere and visual grime that made the originals so disgustingly alluring, its obsession with ageing gameplay mechanics and bygone design quirks means that it feels regressive and out of touch. Double Helix has - by its own admission - been tasked with making a solid, faithful continuation, rather than building on what's gone before in any meaningful way, and the familiarity often breeds contempt.

As ever, Homecoming's about a man haunted by his past. In this case it's Alex Shepherd, a 22-year-old returning to Shepherd's Glen after a spell in military hospital. Troubled by dreams of his younger brother Josh, he returns to discover his mother almost catatonic, and the town largely abandoned, save for a few frazzled individuals also on the hunt for loved ones. Typically for a Silent Hill game, the whole place is shrouded in fog, entire streets have been ripped apart by what looks like an earthquake, and crazed, disembodied creatures lurch out of the gloom with a peculiar desire to eat your face.

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Developer Double Helix believes Silent Hill: Homecoming will be "at least as compelling as some of the previous games" in the spooky series, despite being the studio's first attempt at the IP.

Konami has told Eurogamer that Silent Hill: Homecoming has been pushed back to February 2009 in Europe.

Quite gruesome, these things.

Grit news.

Slightly higher-resolution frights.

Welcome back.

Konami has said Silent Hill: Homecoming will be released in Europe this September.

Konami has finally taken the spooky wraps off next-generation chiller Silent Hill V.

Is there a more freaked out series in gaming than Silent Hill? It's the game where you've lost before you've even begun, sending you on mostly hopeless quests to find the muddled truth of your deranged state of mind. Nothing is ever the way it seems, but as confusing as that might be, most of the compulsion to carry on is trying to work out what on earth it all means. With the fourth in the series having already been released in Japan (complete with English language version included as standard), we were in the unusual position of having completed the game before we got to chat with chief designer Masashi Tsuboyama and producer Akira Yamaoka. But given that The Room hasn't been as well received in Europe as the previous three titles in the series, we were curious to get to the bottom of the dramatic change of direction.

The fifth episode of the gruesome Silent Hill series was confirmed today, but is being designed with next generation console hardware in mind.