As anyone who’s ever glanced at some of the better entries at r/twosentencehorror will tell you, the genre thrives on restrictions. Here's a creepy good 'un: "'Please, God, don't let it look in the closet,’ I silently prayed. 'Please, God, don't let it look in the closet,' it parroted back from the next room." You can't do that with baby shoes, you anonymous hack!
Silent Hill 2 remake’s senior narrative designer Barbara Kciuk reckons this principle extends to much bigger productions. "It is a bit niche, but actually, the interesting part about horror is that it is one of the best ratios when it comes to the cost of production and the earnings," she recently told TheGamer’s Rhiannon Bevan.
]]>No game protagonist is more willing to stick his hand down a toilet than James Sunderland. Why is he doing this? You would have to ask him or the psychiatrist he badly requires. And it's unlikely he'd explain himself. This isn't the type of story in which the protagonist has difficulty accepting the existence of horrors, nor struggles with the surreality of what he needs to do to get through a locked door. In the opening minutes, James finds a well with a glowing red square floating inside, stares into it (it saves your game), then makes a calm remark about the odd sensation he feels, and moves on. The human corpses that pepper the town of Silent Hill are noticeably that of James himself, his head bludgeoned and bloodied beyond recognition but his jacket and boots unmistakable. He makes no remark on this. It's probably nothing.
]]>Silent Hill has a messy, up-is-down relationship with time and history, so let's go about this hands-on with the Silent Hill 2 Remake in a messy, up-is-down way. Developed well over two decades ago, the original Silent Hill 2 is the magnum opus of Polish horror stalwarts Bloober Team. Running on then-innovative "Unreal Engine 5" technology created by Jazz Jackrabbit publishers Epic MegaGames, it's a wonderful abyss of a game that remains perfectly playable today, given a certain amount of tolerance for the quirks of the era.
It begins with your character, James Sunderland, descending from the road towards the eponymous Midwestern nowhere-town. Like many games of the period, Silent Hill 2 uses a third-person, over-the-shoulder manual camera, which allows you to glance fearfully up at the monstrous pine trees that fringe the path - each rising from a bulging tide of fog that menaces with the suggestion of approaching figures. There is moisture everywhere, gushing from drain pipes and dribbling down concrete barriers. As you amble into the murk, deathly chords and groaning, unmechanical motifs reverberate from somewhere deep underground.
]]>The Silent Hill 2 remake's State of Play trailer doesn't give a full and proper representation of the game, Bloober Team's president Piotr Babieno has observed in an apparent swipe at publisher Konami, who Babieno portrays as responsible for the upcoming horror game's marketing. If you missed it, the trailer in question focuses on the "modernised" combat. It shows alleged "everyman" protagonist James Sunderland getting all Gears of Warry with some maggoty marionettes and rancid demon nurses.
]]>Sony have released a new trailer for Konami and Bloober's Silent Hill 2 remake at today's State of Play showcase, showing off a few of the horror reboot's redesigned environments and enemies. They've also surprise-released an all-new free-to-play Silent Hill game, Silent Hill: The Short Message, though it's only available on PS5 for the minute.
]]>Bloober Team have issued a statement about their upcoming Silent Hill 2 remake, clarifying rumours about the project’s release schedule and sales expectations. Last week, Polish site Bankier spoke with Bloober Team’s CEO Pitor Babieno in an interview that was mistranslated and began to circulate online. The mistranslations mentioned the remake was “technically ready” for launch, but Bloober Team have clarified these “statements have been taken out of context, due to inaccurate translations.”
]]>Bloober Team's Silent Hill 2 remake will "stick close to the original" while applying adjustments like an over-the-shoulder camera. In an interview with DreadXP, Anna Jasińska from Bloober Team spoke about their approach to the remake.
]]>As a James who’s always forgetting things, I’m probably the main target audience of the Silent Hill 2 remake – one of yesterday’s many Silent Hill game and film announcements. Nevertheless, I wouldn’t have expected such high demands from its PC system requirements, which have appeared on Steam.
Highlights include the AMD Radeon RX 5700 and Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 – a former flagship! – listed among the minimum specs, alongside a 12GB RAM requirement, and Windows 11 as the recommended OS. Those with a GeForce RTX graphics card could get some performance help, though, as the requirements’ notes say that meeting the recommended spec will allow for 4K resolution “using DLSS or similar technology”. That’s not quite a formal confirmation of Nvidia DLSS support, but strongly indicates it, maybe along with similar upscaling systems like AMD FSR or Intel XeSS.
]]>After years of rumours and leaks, including by Konami themselves earlier today, we finally have official confirmation of future Silent Hill games. The Silent Hill 2 remake from Bloober Team is real! The developers of Observation are making a new Silent Hill game! There's a third new game called Silent Hill f! Step below for the full list of what's kicking off in that foggy town.
]]>We might finally be getting another Silent Hill game after a decade of mostly, well, silence. Konami have announced that a “Silent Hill Transmission” is set for this Wednesday, October 19th at 10pm BST / 2pm PDT. No details have been shared about whether you’ll be able to tune in on YouTube or Twitch for the stream, but Konami shared a link to a page on their site so you should be able to watch it there.
]]>The director of an upcoming movie based on Konami’s survival horror Silent Hill series has seemingly confirmed that more than one new game is being worked on. Christophe Gans, who directed the iffy 2006 adaptation of Silent Hill and is working on a second film, spoke about his involvement with Konami on the series in a French language interview. The interview was picked up by fans on ResetEra, who translated Gans’ comments.
]]>Images that allegedly show a Silent Hill 2 remake have been doing the rounds online over the weekend, featuring creepy nurses and the very shadowy back of protagonist James Sunderland’s head. They’re appropriately blurry, considering the series' penchant for mistiness, but still recognisably Silent Hill. Once again, it’s claimed that the game is being developed by Layers Of Fear studio Bloober Team.
]]>Silent Hill 2 fans have been slowly working away at an Enhanced Edition PC mod for years now, and its latest update introduces some substantial new features. Those additions include an installer and launcher which make it easier to get started, better AI-upscaled full-motion videos, and a fix for a crash and stutter bug that has plagued the horror classic since it first released on PC in 2001.
]]>Rumours re-emerged last week that Bloober Team, makers of Layers Of Fear, were working on a remake of Silent Hill 2. Now IGN have asked Bloober's CEO, who wouldn't comment but said that its unannounced project would "still be a Bloober Team title" even if made in partnership with another company.
]]>Images of what appear to be a new entry in Konami’s psychological horror series Silent Hill were posted briefly online over the weekend, before they were struck down by a copyright claim a few hours later. AestheticGamer, née Dusk Golem, posted the images to Twitter, claiming they were a "Silent Hill leak", and that they'd received "more than enough proof to believe" their source wasn't telling porkies.
]]>While Silent Hill 2 is the best Silent Hill game, its PC release is far from the best version. Thankfully modders are fixing a lot of its issues with Silent Hill 2: Enhanced Edition, which fixes old issues while adding modern polish too. Splendid. Now if Konami could start actually selling Silent Hill 2 for PC again, that would be just grand.
]]>Despite all the notE3 showcases and announcements this week, Konami have not announced a new Silent Hill. Not even hinted at one. Despite the rumours that they might have two coming. Ah well. However, two notable things have happened in the field of quiet mounds:
1) Dead By Daylight launched Silent Hill DLC, adding Cheryl Mason and Pyramid Head. 2) Konami put seven Silent Hill soundtracks back up on Spotify, including the best one.
That'll have to do for now.
]]>While the Silent Hill series still seems basically dead, and maybe that's for the best, parts will return in Dead By Daylight. The 1v4 multiplayer horrorshow's next DLC pack will introduce Silent Hill, with Cheryl Mason as a playable survivor, Pyramid Head as a killer, and the school as a new map. DBD has long had guest characters out horror films, from Halloween to Scream, so this is fairly natural. Hell, it's better than Konami tend to treat Silent Hill.
]]>I wracked my brain over the past few weeks, trying to think of games I played in 2018. This seems to happen every year around GOTY time — much like when someone asks you what your favourite movie is, and you forget whether you’ve actually ever seen a movie. Did… Did I play any video games? Did any games even come out? Surely there must have been at least one.
In the precious little free time I scraped together during term (like coins from sofa cushions to get a snack from the office vending machine), I managed to discover (or re-discover) a handful of games this year. They’re a bit covered in lint, but I promise they’re still good.
]]>The Silent Hill HD remake for consoles is one of the most famous muck-ups in gaming history. Konami rushed the project out the door, despite not telling consumers that they'd outsourced the up-rez'ing and -- most upsetting of all -- worked from incomplete files. Somehow, Konami misplaced the finished code for the original games, so it was left up to an understaffed team to replace art assets for two of the most beloved survival horror titles of all time; with a fandom that really, really notices when things aren't done right. Mistakes like... forgetting to include fog in Silent Hill 2.
Our friends over at Rely on Horror have an interview they published today with an anonymous source about what went wrong in the HD remake. We also have some links to resources for HDifying the PC versions, if you want to do Silent Hill right.
]]>Toilets. Great, aren't they?
]]>Something I can't do – have never been able to do – in terms of what I do for a living is enjoy horror games.
That's why I've decided to talk the matter over with Adam, one of the RPS resident horror fans and the chap whose own most recent supporter post dealt with Five Nights At Freddy's; a nasty, brutish horror game but one not without merit or skill.
]]>Every Sunday, we reach deep into Rock, Paper, Shotgun's 141-year history to pull out one of the best moments from the archive. This week, Adam's celebration of videogame cartography, from cloth maps to digital records of procedural worlds. This article was first published in 2011.
Some of my earliest memories of gaming are not of the games themselves but of the things that came bundled in the box with them. Whether it was a hefty manual, full of lore and encyclopaedic listings, or a little extra something. My games don't even come in boxes anymore. Recently, I've been thinking about the shelves in the house where I grew up, full of big cardboard slabs with none of this DVD case finery. I've been remembering the excitement of opening the box on the bus, surreptitiously because my parents always thought I'd lose the manual or disks before we reached home. And I've been thinking about what else I sometimes found inside.
]]>Dear RPS,
There's a place that I sometimes go to but I rarely talk about it. I can't find the words. Maybe the only way to tell you is to go back there and to write everything down in a letter. So here I am. The first time I came to this place, this special place, I didn't have the courage to remain there alone...
]]>Some of my earliest memories of gaming are not of the games themselves but of the things that came bundled in the box with them. Whether it was a hefty manual, full of lore and encyclopaedic listings, or a little extra something. Most of my games don't even come in boxes anymore, although sites such as Steam Covers can help to keep the physical alive. Recently, I've been thinking about the shelves in the house where I grew up, full of big cardboard slabs with none of this DVD case finery. I've been remembering the excitement of opening the box on the bus, surreptitiously because my parents always thought I'd lose the manual or disks before we reached home. And I've been thinking about what else I sometimes found inside.
]]>
.png?width=1200&height=630&fit=crop&enable=upscale&auto=webp "שחרורו של Assassin's Creed Shadows נדחה למרץ כאשר מועצת המנהלים של Ubisoft שוקל מכירת חברה")