Great Memories of Shattered Expectations

GameSpite has an interesting reflection on Silent Hill: Shattered Memories and its role in the survival horror genre. The article is concise and to the point, with some interesting reflections on this title's place in Silent Hill history and the tension that results from its challenges to what has come before.

Having still not yet finished this game myself (shame on me), I do think that it tries to do many interesting things, including trying to create a profitable game on an experimental platform. The HD gaming revolution is its own worst enemy, raising the costs of development sky-high, and this high cost is killing the smaller and more experimental games that were such a large part of the past two generations of console gaming. HD gaming is causing developer flight to the more profitable portable and social platforms available with the iPhone and Facebook, and ultimately limiting what is being published on consoles. Combine the gimmick of motion controls, with a huge install base, and old school non-HD development, the Wii "seems" to be a system ripe for the picking, but this is obviously not the case for a large number of its releases.

Click on over to the article, Shattered Expectations: A Lonelier Silent Hill.

Play for Japan

While many of us in the West go on with our daily routines, people in the world, both here and abroad, face all types of adversity. Japan is still recovering from its disaster earlier this year, and the video game industry has been playing its part in raising funds to help with the recovery. One of these efforts has been Play for Japan, offering unique and one-of-a-kind items for auction to raise money to aid the recovery.

If you're like me (or most folks) you can't afford to buy Suda 51's own beam katana, but what you can do is spare a few bills for good music, especially when 100% of the proceeds go directly to recovery efforts funded by the Japanese Red Cross.

Akira Yamaoka has put together an album known as Play for Japan being sold on iTunes and Amazon. It features music from video game composers across the world, from games as diverse as Super Mario Brothers, Call of Duty, and Prince of Persia. The playlist features incredible tracks from these games, and allows you to participate in the fund raising efforts while receiving a small token in return. Click on over and make a purchase that means something for someone in need.

Silent past

Last week Konami asked fans on their Facebook page if they would be interested in exploring the history of Silent Hill through games. It's certainly an interesting proposition, and not without merit, as the comic has been exploring the early history of our favorite town for a while now.

Every Silent Hill game has gone to great lengths to grow the history of Toluca Lake and its residents, but IDW's recent comic, Silent Hill: Past Life has been garnering more than the usual amount of attention with it's own tale of the past.

With Konami showing us it won't hide from experimenting with the series, I think we can be hopeful that interesting things might pop up in the future.

Come in and have a drink

Stumbled across a great post at Retronaut that screamed a little bit of Silent Hill to me. Retronaut found this wonderful post on Cool Stuff in Paris that featured several photos of le Café de L'Enfer, The Cafe from Hell. Apparently very little information still exists on this place, and only black and white photos, leaving one to wonder what kind of garish and crazy colors this place was actually painted in. Click on over for more pics (including an interior photo from National Geographic), along with a picture of its neighboring cafe Le Ciel (Heaven).

Everyone loves the music

You can't have this.

 Gotta love the Twitters. @SilentHillWorld brings us a link to a post from MMOMFG on the music of Silent Hill, Beyond the MIDI: Silent Hill series.

The post calls out the quality inherent in Yamaoka's work on the series, and also notes the upcoming changes in Downpour with the debut of Daniel Licht's work on the series. Its worth a look, so click on over.

Destructoid and the emasculation of Harry Mason

Wow those Destructoid folks posts some interesting things when they go beyond the usual gaming news practice of regurgitating press releases (like so many other site do). Digging around Destructoid the other day I found another in-depth article on Silent Hill, focused on Harry and the role of men in the Silent Hill games.

This specific essay addresses the recent Wii game that so many gamers seemed to either miss, dismiss, or just not play. I have it near the top of my "to play" pile once I decide I am sick of multiplayer Call of Duty.

Looking back in The Room

With E3 2011 coming any day now, there has been a lot of news about the future of Silent Hill on the interwebs:

• Silent Hill: Downpour to be released late Winter
• Silent Hill: Book of Memories announced for the NGP/PSVita/PSP2/whatever
• Silent Hill 2 and Silent Hill 3 get HD remakes

However, I find Destructoid's retrospective on Silent Hill 4: The Room to be the most interesting thing I have come across in several days. Destructoid does a nice job of sharing the background of this Survival Horror game that got shoe-horned into the Silent Hill universe by a (likely well meaning, but misguided) Konami Executive. Read on.