As spotted on ResetEra (opens in new tab), artist Suehiro Maruo shared an intriguing pair of images on his Instagram account, along with the caption “Afternoon invitations hope you’ll join in.” The image on the left is of a display of some kind with the words “Silent Hills” on it (and the Japanese katakana transliteration for Silent Hills below) and the image on the right is taken outside of the entrance of Konami’s Tokyo headquarters. 

With word of a Silent Hills revival (opens in new tab) circulating, it’s enticing to assume that Maruo is coming on board to lend some of his horror chops to the production (assuming you enjoy his special brand of horror, which involves lots of licking eyeballs). According to the rumors, Sony is helping to mediate a revived relationship between Hideo Kojima and Konami in order to bring Silent Hills back to life, probably as an upcoming PS5 game (opens in new tab).

You aren’t getting horror deja vu – a prominent Japanese illustrator of horror has been attached to a project called Silent Hills before. The first one was Junji Ito, the creator of all kinds of mind-bending horror manga, back when he was meant to be part of a creative triumvirate along with Gullermo del Toro and Hideo Kojima. Sadly, that project fell by the wayside as Kojima split with Konami, and all that publicly remains of it is PT.

It’s sadly worth pointing out that the only official word we’ve heard from Konami about Silent Hills is to shut down the rumors (opens in new tab): “it’s not to say we are completely closing the door on the franchise, just not in the way it is being reported.” At least with the images shared by Maruo, we can feel fairly certain that something is afoot.

Even if the game series’ future is in question, we know at least one more Silent Hill movie is coming (opens in new tab).

The post Silent Hills gets another teaser from a big Japanese horror artist appeared first on Game News.

The cancellation of Silent Hills was just cruel. So much terrifying potential lurked in the single corridor of P.T that a full game might have been too much fear to actually handle. So, in mourning of what could have been, lets take a look back at some, er, magical moments from the Silent Hill series. Nothing from the films obviously. Or Homecoming, because bloody hell, it was plops.

Oh, just a warning, there will be spoilers aplenty.

1. A blind alley – Silent Hill

What better way to celebrate the horror of Silent Hill than by starting from the very beginning. Harry Mason runs through a foggy town, looking for his recalcitrant daughter, only to be led down an alley. Of course, wandering down an alley in a mysterious place with no one around in any horror media is a SPLENDID idea. What follows is a series of very Hitchcock-esque, dutched camera angles, a siren wailing, a descent into pitch black darkness, a lot of rust, blood, hanging corpses and tiny skinless decapitated bear things clawing you to death. Lovely. It made Resident Evil look like Gex, and proved that video game horror could easily be as unsettling as anything seen in films.

2. Your first nurse – Silent Hill

Horror games have become a lot nastier in the 15 years since Silent Hill was released, but as the old saying goes, you never forget your first: and this moment in the original Silent Hill is a keeper as far as nightmarish imagery is concerned. Especially if you were in your formative years when playing it. Poor old nurse Lisa, (who is only ever encountered in Silent Hills Hellworld, which should set alarm bells ringing) begins to realise somethings not quite right, before she starts leaking blood from her eyes and mouth. The truly horrifying thing? Shes still asking Harry for help, but all Harry can do is make a beeline for the door. What a git.

3. The woodland walk – Silent Hill 2

This entry isnt horrifying in the traditional sense, but it shows just how confident Team Silent truly was in the fruit of its doubtless mangled loins. Protagonist James Sunderland starts off towards the titular town, his journey taking him through a wooded area with a long, winding road and it seems to go on forever, with only a quick detour at a cemetery to break up the descent. Nothing happens, but youre constantly expecting it to thanks to unsettling noises and your own febrile imagination. After a good long while, he finally makes it to town. Its an inauspicious start, but it absolutely fills you with dread.

4. Pyramid Head’s silent menace – Silent Hill 2

Pyramid Head is easily Silent Hills most iconic enemy. The best thing about him though? Theres no big entrance, no grand cut scene announcing his arrival. James is frittering about the Woodside Apartments building minding his own business and trying to open doors when suddenly a scream! Oh crumbs. He runs up to where the scream was, only to be confronted by this thing looking at him from beyond a set of bars. Its not moving. Its just silently watching James, while his radio is emitting static like crazy. Of course, its not there again when he looks back. But you know its prowling around. Somewhere.

5. You are the monster – Silent Hill 2

Now comes the horrifying realisation that Silent Hill 2s real monster is you! It was you all along! James, though not evil in the pantomime sense, did a very bad thing, and without giving too much away, that revelation helps unravel certain other elements of the game. This game isnt just abstract for the sake of it: everything has meaning. For example (berets at the ready), the first enemy James encounters is that armless vomiting thing. Its not hard to deal with, and cant really fight back (due to no arms), except to puke things up at you, but given the revelation near the end of the game? Vomiting and sickness? Cant fight back? Sound like someone? Eh, eh?

6. The terrible reflection – Silent Hill 3

Silent Hill 3 is a return to the cult shenanigans of the first game, as opposed to the more conceptual stuff seen in 2. So its a bit more daft, and not really as interesting, but no matter. It still has plenty of nasty tricks up its sleeve. Heather Mason ends up in a room with a large mirror and–this being Silent Hill–things happen. Blood starts pouring out of the sink on the mirror side and spilling out into the real world. Meanwhile, Heathers reflection just sort of stops, and starts looking a bit ill. Its already been established by the way, that Heather has a fear of mirrors, so Silent Hill is probably the most sadistic sentient place in games. Apart from the Mushroom Kingdom.

7. No safe place – Silent Hill 4: The Room

Silent Hill 4: The Room is genuinely probably the scariest of the series, and its all thanks to the hauntings in the titular room. These range from fairly innocuous, like a pair of shoes moving (maybe protagonist Henrys mum moved them because hes a messy swine), to the downright hideous, like a load of screaming faces appearing in the wall. Plus, you lose all important health the closer you get to these hauntings. The Room starts out as some kind of safe haven, but thats gradually turned around the further you get into the game, so no place is safe. Easily the worst one is when staring out the peephole in the door, you see a ghastly bloodied version of yourself staring back. Aaaargh.

8. The horrifying head – Silent Hill 4: The Room

Theres always been a bit of David Lynch to the Silent Hill series, especially when hes at his most discombobulating and terrifying (like Eraserhead or Inland Empire). Everything will seem normal, if a bit strange, and then suddenly theres a deformed woman singing a song inside a radiator. This bit in Silent Hill 4 is reminiscent of that. Henrys minding his own business, wandering around an unassuming hospital in a nightmare hellscape, when he walks into a room featuring the massive head of deuteragonist, Eileen Galvin. Of course, the eyes follow you round the room too, because its Silent Hill, and Silent Hill is bloody horrible. Youd never see that ornament in Bargain Hunt.

9. Raw shocks – Silent Hill: Shattered Memories

Shattered Memories is easily one of the best in the series, and let no plonker tell you otherwise. It takes a completely different approach from the other games, going all in for atmosphere and tension, rather than the grotesque. Anyway, there are no enemies, and the game largely involves Harry Mason wandering around a snowy Silent Hill looking for his daughter (its a reimagining of the first game). Occasionally, though, its iteration of the Hellworld will break through, and youre be forced to run away from Raw Shocks. These bits are exercises in blind panic, as youve no clue where to go, with these things on your tail.

10. Child death – Silent Hill: Downpour

Finally we come to Downpour, which is savagely undervalued too, perhaps because the dreadful Homecoming really hurt the franchise. Anyway, Downpour–in many ways–could be the darkest of the Silent Hill games, dealing with molestation and child murder. In one scene, Murphy Pendleton is forced to watch while the bogeyman picks up a hapless child, slowly and agonisingly snapping the little tykes neck. Considering most games shy away from showing kids getting killed, youre always expecting something to interrupt the process. But no! It goes ahead and does it, and the tot slumps to the ground, neck flopping about. Crikey.

The post The Silent Hill series: 10 shocking moments appeared first on Game News.

For those who are confused over the obvious lack of polish, this is what’s called a “vertical slice” – a short, unfinished demo meant to sell the game a developer is working on to publishers. It’s designed to give potential investors a feel for the finished product, though many models, sound effects, and other finishing touches are placeholders. Still, you can get the basics: spooky, maze-like levels, puzzles, enemies, combat, and the gimmick of time periods bleeding together.

Sadly, the game never progressed beyond this stage. When Konami declined to back the project, Climax dropped the Silent Hill name and tried to sell it as an episodic adventure called Broken Covenant. That too fell through, and what you see above is all that will likely ever come of the team’s work.

Sorry, not a lot of Silent Hill-related stories have had happy endings lately.

Seen something newsworthy? Tell us (opens in new tab)! 

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For every franchise you’re familiar with, the survey asks how interested you’d be in “playing a new launched version” on consoles, PC, and mobile. Metal Gear isn’t included, either, but it’s already getting a new launched version with Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain (opens in new tab) in just a few weeks, so that makes sense.

Even if you’re not particularly invested in a new Bishi Bashi or Mystical Ninja game, you can still say what you really want from Konami in the survey’s final question: “In your own words, please let us know which KONAMI games you would like to see again and with what kind of game play elements.”

By no means are you under any obligation to say “Silent Hills: A Hideo Kojima Game, and other Hideo Kojima Games by Hideo Kojima.” There’s almost no chance of it happening after Kojima and Konami’s apparent breakup (opens in new tab)… but there’s no point trying to erase your feelings (opens in new tab).

Seen something newsworthy? Tell us!

The post Want Silent Hills: A Hideo Kojima Game? Heres a chance to tell Konami. appeared first on Game News.

It’s a fully paid-up bit of horror-game imagery. Zero doubt about that. But does it make Gears of War a horror game? No more than coating a horse with whipped cream turns it into a sundae. From that point on, Gears of War is a big, meaty shooter, and no mistake. Neither the grotesque nature of the Locust nor the odd dalliance with slower-paced jump-scares, Wretches and old, abandoned houses (stock horror environment #2) alters that fact by one iota.

But why isn’t Gears of War a horror game? It gives us bleak environments, thick with a sense of perpetual mourning. It gives us hideous, tough, and highly dangerous monsters to fight off. It delivers gore with the giddy aplomb of a newly graduated fireman on his first day of hose-duty. It wraps all of this in a weighty, all-pervading sense of oppression. All of these things are core tenets of horror gaming. They’re certainly elements which define many easily-recognisable entries in the canon. Resident Evil 4. Dead Space. This month’s The Evil Within (opens in new tab).

So what’s the difference? Why do we say that Gears of War is a shooter, and that the others are horror games? You could argue that the largely one-note ferocity of Gears’ cover-based gameplay removes the fear factor sufficiently to earn the action-label most resoundingly. And you’d have a fairly decent point. Pretty cut-and-dried, right? Well no, I don’t think it is.

You see as a long-time horror aficionado in all media, I don’t find that a convincing argument at all. Because, after decades of immersion in horror, games, and horror-games, I think there’s something else at play, blurring the lines as fast as anyone can define them. Something endemic to horror gaming that, much like great Cthulhu, has been around so long, picking maliciously at the seams of the world, that we’ve long since stopped noticing its presence. Simply, it’s hard to define the boundaries of the horror game because very few video games have ever really delivered horror true experiences. We’ve pretended otherwise for a very long time, but really that’s the ugly truth.

Most horror games, even the really good ones, are games first and foremost, horror second. Strip away the aesthetic, and mechanically they’re just games. Some are actiony, some are stealthy, many dwell somewhere in between, but in truth they’re mostly just stock game mechanics painted with a gory or supernatural surface gloss. And real horror just isn’t like that. A good horror novel isn’t a spy story where all the enemy agents just happen to be zombies. A good horror film isn’t a generic Michael Bay movie, only set at night and full of vampires. Blade is a great, supernaturally-themed, gory action movie, but a great horror film? No.

In real horror–and this statement might sound trite upon first scan, but stick with me–the horror is the focus. In fact more than that, it’s the be-all and end-all. It’s not a tonal or aesthetic garnish for something else. It is the core of the whole experience. It’s the conduit through which all of the statements, thoughts and musings in the author’s mind are filtered in order to–as is the case with all good genre fiction–extrapolate ideas and experiences, and through their amplification, truly explore them.

And all good horror is about something. John Carpenter’s Halloween is concerned with the progressive, hypocritical isolation of suburbia in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. Aliens is about Vietnam. Don’t Look Now is about the fatalistic nature of obsession and mourning. H.P. Lovecraft’s work, which beautifully straddles the line between art and pulp, is dripping with existential terror at arrogant mankind’s tiny pinhole view of reality. Same goes for the work of classic English novelist M.R. James.

But the point is that whatever subject matter or ideology is being filtered through it, the horror is the core. It’s the engine that makes the whole affair work. It’s what wraps up and forms every part of the work. But horror games don’t usually do that. They usually just stick some scary atmospherics next to a stealth, survival or action game, and leave it at that. They’re almost always primarily concerned with servicing their gameplay mechanics, with horror coming a distant second, if at all. The last time a big, mainstream release did the real horror thing was probably during the heyday of Silent Hill.

Although seen at the time as a rival to Resident Evil, in truth Silent Hill couldn’t have been further from its gore-munching genre-buddy. Furthering my points above, while both games are ostensibly third-person survival-horror games with deliberately awkward combat, squiffy, disorienting camera angles, and an emphasis on escape and evasion, it’s not their gameplay mechanics that ultimately matter, but their tones and the narrative content.

Resident Evil, even in its earlier, less action-driven entries, was a surface-level horror rollercoaster, trading on the vital thrill of jump-scares, gore, and b-movie monsters. It was, as is often the case, more focused on gameplay systems and aesthetic than deeper, true horror. Silent Hill though, at its best, has always operated in the inverse, using its gameplay to service a greater aim. The series’ high points have always been about atmosphere, emotion, psychology, and the use of horror’s nightmarish, surreal excesses to explore deeper, more powerful concepts and notions. Its monsters are no mere bitey cannon fodder. Each is designed to evoke and reflect an element of the lead character’s trauma and internal struggle. Its twisting, reality-bending journeys are crafted to disturb in specific ways that also resonate with the above.

It’s no coincidence that the series’ weaker, later entries are the ones that, with lesser or no involvement from early series Producer Akira Yamaoka, lost track of that. Neither is it any coincidence that Yamaoka’s dual role as designer and composer was instrumental in creating a coherent, cohesive, authored, ‘total horror’ production. Silent Hill is a game, but it’s one that has more in common with the legitimate conceits of literary horror than those of its corpse-grinding stablemates.

So are we now screwed for real video game horror? Are we bereft of hope and scrabbling in the dark, with Resi literally sticking to its guns, and Yamaoka seguing toward film, now working with Italian horror master Dario Argento (opens in new tab)? Well no, we’re not. Just as I was starting to give up, and ready to resign my gaming horror activities to the mental folder labelled ‘Fun diversions, but eh’–alongside Fast and Furious films and yo-yoing–a new wave of the real stuff has started to seep insidiously through the cracks in the floorboards.

P.T., with no hyperbole, is the absolute antithesis of game-horror’s failings (opens in new tab), intelligently recognising the detrimental effect of oft-applauded player agency on the power of horrific confrontations. That it also tightly winds its horror around a carefully crafted frame of psychology and significance makes it one of the finest and most insightfully directed interactive horror experiences in years.

Alien: Isolation (opens in new tab), despite being a more player-driven, stealth-horror experience, truly understands the impact and nature of its source material’s make-up. With that at its core, it fearlessly eschews all of gaming’s empowering, protagonist-courting safety nets and ‘necessary’ softened corners to create a savage, uncompromising simulation, made of primal terror and the unpredictability of real survival.

Perhaps ironically, given the arguments I’ve sketched out above, this resurgence is partly down to improved technology. Alien: Isolation just wouldn’t have been possible without the advanced, living, breathing artificial intelligence Creative Assembly created for the titular beast. P.T.’s atmospheric, claustrophobic, pure-horror focus is arguably amplified–and perhaps designed to show off–the near photorealism of Kojima Productions’ new Fox Engine.

But beyond technology, the human, creative factor remains all important. That mention of the studio behind Metal Gear resonates beyond the power of its shiny new toys. Horror like P.T. (and the in-production Silent Hills) requires the kind of deeper-thinking, more experimental auteurship that someone like Hideo Kojima–alongside collaborator Guillerno Del Toro–brings to a project. In fact his spiralling, fourth-wall-breaking, creative playground approach to direction will probably be far more at home on Yamaoka’s turf than it even was in MGS. Besides, a series as unique and artistic as Silent Hill needs a director with that sort of unchallengeable clout. Someone with vision and power, who can stand up for his ideas in the same way Yamaoka once did.

Similarly, if Isolation hadn’t been made by a team as dedicated to Alien detail as Creative Assembly–not just in terms of aesthetic, but also the tone, mood, and subtextual fears fundamental to Alien’s world and its violence–then it would merely be a beautiful sci-fi stealth game with a very dangerous monster.

So I suppose we come full circle. The future of video game horror simply cannot be about surface gloss, and gore, and overcoming the monstrous hordes. However much incoming visual fidelity affords us the ability to create more realistic dismemberment, and great numbers of the undead, we cannot allow horror to remain so external, a thing to be overcome with gameplay, weapons and agency.

To both the player and the creator, video game horror must, as it does in all other media, excel by becoming an internal experience, authored with thought, intent and craft, and experienced with personal resonance and uncomfortable meaning. I don’t want to jinx it. I don’t want to speak too soon. But it seems like technology, ambition, and (very probably) the more open creative climate brought about by the newfound prominence of indie gaming, might just be about to combine to create a bold new era. Horror fans, cross everything you have.

The post Why most scary games fail as real horror, and why they always have appeared first on Game News.