Judge Dredd + Zombies = sign me up

Judge Dredd? Zombies? Not a lot more needs to be said here. iPhone games make it feel like the old PS2 days, when development costs were cheaper anything was possible (yeah, I linked there).

The Wasted Land

Chaosium and Red Wasp are teaming up to give us a turn-based strategy RPG in which you battle Cthulhu's cult in the midst of World War I. Coming to iPhones and mobile devices (and other platforms in the future), Call of Cthulhu The Wasted Land has you leading a band of investigators in battle against Cthulhu and his minions across Europe's battle fields. Click through to read more.

Way old school Pokémon

Certainly not Silent Hill related, but mind warping nonetheless. Nintendo and the Japanese arm of The Pokémon Company have been dropping hints for a couple of weeks about an upcoming announcement in Japan. Everyone was expecting something like a Pokémon Grey game (Black + White = Grey), or another rogue-like Pokémon Mystery Dungeon game. What they got instead was something I don't think anyone could have predicted: Pokémon X Nobunaga's Ambition.

Combing Tecmo Koei's old school (circa 1983) turn based strategy series Nobunaga's Ambition with Pokémon, the new game is set to release on the DS likely sometime in 2012. Click over for more images and a movie showing gameplay.

Zombie ceramics

Super Punch always finds the best stuff, like the ceramic sculptures of Jessica Harrison. Jessica creates some incredible art by taking existing works and twisting them in her own special way. Check out the Super Punch post for a few links to her work, or kick straight on over to her own site for a deeper dive.

Silent Hill Revelations choose The Order this time

You likely already read this somewhere else, but just in case you haven't

http://www.relyonhorror.com/latest-news/silent-hill-revelation-to-have-the-order-as-the-antagonists/

The start of The Last of Us

This looks so good you could almost call it "this year's Dead Island trailer," but its from Naughty Dog, so expectations should be even higher. Take a little I Am Legend and mix with 28 Days Later, and Naughty Dog's classic narrative gameplay, and it looks like we'll get a wild ride.  Click over to Giant Bomb for the trailer, or Naughty Dog's Website for the whole kahuna.

Telling time

Destructoid brings another blast from the past with a look back to the SNES version of Clock Tower. Some of you may remember this series from the PS1 and PS2, but did you know it started on the SNES? Destructoid does.

Want to play the SNES ROM in English? Well someone has you covered on that too.

A real thing

According to Topless Robot, this is a real thing you can buy. Should go great with your Zombie Preparedness Guide.

Recently spotted in stores

WTF?

Home is where the pixel is

Joystiq has a great write up on another pixelated indie nightmare reminiscent of Silent Hill, titled Home. It looks a lot like an old Lucas Arts adventure game, complete with a missing wife and a flashlight. The creator Benjamin Rivers is no stranger to indie games, and this new one looks like it will be worth your time, especially if you are a Silent Hill fan. Click over to read more.

Pick you own path through Silent Hill

The Escapist has a little Halloween treat for us, a pick your own path hypertext adventure in Silent Hill. Happy Halloween!

They Live at Halloween

Great find from Sucker Punch: They Live costumes.

The garden path less traveled

One of the many things about Silent Hill that fascinates me to no end, is how the games use history as a tool to weave their stories together. The past deeds of the game's characters, the past that is represented by the history of the town--these things bring a more complete sense of place and horror to the player, as the town slowly reveals itself to the player.

History as a recurring theme in the game, is something which we can relate to in real life as well. And, every time a player stumbles across the history of real life horror, we have those "Silent Hill in the real world moments."

Neatorama brought us a recent link to the always fascinating Atlas Obscura, website, with a link to an article on some of the amazing gardens that can be found in the real world, including the Alnwick Poison Garden, which features plants that can kill you. That such gardens were actually more common, and were destinations to visit, I find endlessly fascinating. They reflect man's struggle with how he faces his own mortality in a world that is not necessarily interested in keeping him alive. Click on over for photos of amazing gardens around the world, and to read about the history of death by vegetation.

Agent Cooper is not happy

Recently spotted this wonderful GIF at Sutured Infection. NOTE: Sutured Infection often features graphic, medical images, and is not for the faint of heart.

Abuse

If there was ever a game that should not fade into obscurity, Abuse is it. Fortunately for us, Sam Hocevar has got our backs.

This little game made by Crack dot Com was published by EA, Bungie, and Red Hat. How about that for credentials? A darling of the young Linux community when it debuted, Abuse captured the imagination of everyone who saw it--a fast, 2D sidescrolling shooter, with you as a Predator fighting Aliens. Not licensed Predators and Aliens, but who needs a license when your game looks and plays this good?

The objective of the game is to run around the map and shoot anything that moves, and there are plenty of things moving. At one time this game even featured multiplayer.

Abuse's source code was released years ago, and various people and projects have tried to keep it alive since then. I haven't been successful trying to play it since Apple OS 8 when I bought my copy from Bungie. Now, Abuse has been ported to the iPhone and to the Wii, my preferred platform for retro console emulation. Regardless of which platform you play it on check it out.

It happened on the way to Thor's hammer

Not Silent Hill related, but still incredibly cool. See what Agent Coulson was up (video taken down for copyright reasons) Buy the DVD to watch what Agent Coulson was up to on the drive to see what that "meteorite" was about. Thanks to Fanboy.com for posting this bit of awesomeness.

Lone Survivor

Wow. Just wow. Jasper Byrne loves Silent Hill and it shows. Game Set Watch remind us of his passion by bringing us new details on his upcoming game Lone Survivor. Jasper is working hard to finish this game as his entry for the 14th annual Independent Games Festival in March 2012. Both the game and the festival deserve your attention.

First the game. Lone Survivor is a retro inspired Survival Horror game set in a devastated near future after civilization has collapsed. As the protagonist, you will need to survive encounters with monsters, rotting food, other humans, and drugs of various kinds. It looks all kinds of incredible.

Now, lets talk about the Independent Games Festival. If you don't pay attention to the IGF, you should. Past winners include Minecraft, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Limbo, Machinarium, World of Goo, Braid, Alien Hominid, the list goes on (and it will melt you brain with its pixelated goodness). Pay attention to the IGF every March. Its where the future comes from.

The Brain Bats of Venus

In the world of vintage horror comics, you just can't beat Basil Wolverton, and The Brain Bats of Venus is one of his best.

Monsterpiece Theatre

I stumbled across the Twin Beaks episode of Monsterpiece Theater the other day. Its brilliant.

The Cat Lady cometh

This one is creepy. Under development for a year or so, The Cat Lady will be bring horror to the PC. Featuring a cut-paper puppet animation style, and some truly disturbing visuals, this adventure horror game deserves to be on your radar. Check out the trailer that Rely on Horror posted recently for a taste of this game.

Deadly Premonition returns?

Looks like we might be seeing more Deadly Premonition in the future. If you haven't spent any time with this gem, I hear its pretty special. I confess I'm not up on the HD gaming scene, not that I don't have opinions about it, but damn do I want to play this one. Anything reminiscient of Twin Peaks is a win for me, and I still love awkward controlling, PS2 gen, survival horror more than anything (except for a good FPS).

In an interview with GameCentral at metro.co.uk, the game's creator, SWERY 65, says he has plans to both re-release the original game in a Special Edition, as well as wanting to put together sequels and prequels. Maybe this time around SCEA will consider a US release for this quirky title. Click over to read the original interview with SWERY 65.

The voices are back

The always reliable Rely on Horror has reported that Guy Cihi, along with the rest of the original voice cast of Silent Hill 2 have come to a settlement for licensing their voices for future use. This ends a long running near-feud with Guy and Konami over the use of his voice for James Sunderland.

Initial fan response to the new voice work was a little cold at this years Gamescon 2011, so this is viewed by many as a good thing. I think it is more fascinating to watch how Konami continues to recognize the importance of audio work, especially voice work in its games, and is making effort to preserve the original work of its artists. I hope the new actors who intended to replace the old ones get a decent kill-fee for their work.

Click on over for more details, and to view a photo of the signing that "used to be" on Facebook (I'm sure there is a whole story to that too).

8 bit Twin Peaks

No, it's not the latest Deadly Premonition game. Rather, Black Lodge 2600 is an 8 bit style Twin Peaks homebrew game put together by artist and musician Jak Locke. For both PC and Mac (thank you!). Black Lodge 2600 is reminiscent of the Atari/Intellivision era of games, complete with a faux Atari manual and label. The only thing missing is an Atari compatible ROM that I can drop into my Atari emulator of choice--but who can blame him, as programming in batari Basic is not for the feint of heart.
You can read more at WelcomeToTwinPeaks.com, or just click on over to download and play the game yourself.

Vampires, Zombies, and Plague, Oh my!

Image credited to Chris Read and shamelessly swiped from Discovery.com

By now this story has circulated the internet pretty widely--if you haven't read it, some ancient gravesites in Ireland have received some attention because some of the corpses were buried with large rocks forcibly inserted into their mouths. The ritual was likely related to the fear of Revenants, vampires, and the plague.

Its worth your time to click over and read the article and ponder the fear of death, and how man has tried to make sense of the world around him for these past few centuries.

Happy Wax Monster Candy

photo by earthboundtimelord

This photo makes my ridiculously happy. As an October baby growing up in the mid-70s, Halloween was always a huge deal for me. It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown was way cooler than Santa Claus is Comin' to Town (who didn't have a crush on Miss Jessica), especially if it aired on my birthday.

Having kids allows you to rediscover what makes holidays like Halloween fun--but, trying to explain things like cheap plastic Halloween masks and candy that just doesn't exist anymore can make you feel old. One thing I have had trouble digging up information about was Monster Wax Bottle Candy. Made just like Nik-L-Nips, these monster shaped bottles contained a sweet syrup that you could suck out of them, and then you could chew the wax like gum. I never chewed the wax myself as I liked the monsters way too much. I have looked all over the internet for any info I could find on these over the years, and the most I could find were a couple of forum postings, but no details, until I stumbled across these pictures. Aren't they beautiful?

Thing That Drifted Ashore

 

Junji Ito always brings the scares to manga. His work is consistently unsettling. Fortunately for us, one of my favorite blogs, Monster Brains, brought us one of his creepy stand-alone stories, Thing That Drifted Ashore. Prepare to be unsettled.

Racket horror

I love Racket Boy. There, I said it. If you don't know what I am talking about, click over to RacketBoy.com for one of the best sites on classic gaming.

You won't find ROMs. You won't find emulators. What you will find are piles and piles of articles on classic gaming, classic consoles, and some incredible podcasts. What brought me to Racket a couple of years back was my search for games on platforms that I never owned, but adopted later in life: specifically Gamecube and GBA games. Racket Boy's guides to gaming on the cheap, and hidden gems really helped me find the Nintendo games that I never played but should have.

Today, Racket Boy posted an excellent article on The Playstation 2 Survival Horror Library, and what an article it is. They dug through everything, absolutely everything, to remind us how much there actually is to play on the PS2. Over 70 games make the list, including PAL and Japanese games that never made it to those of us in the US of A. I don't want to claim this is the most comprehensive retrospective of Survival Horror on the PS2 ever, but I can't imagine that they missed much.

Dino bites

Funny how this generation of downloadable games can bring attention to some of the forgotten gems of the past. Capcom's Dino Crisis was a venture into survival horror beyond their usual zombie fare, and an experiment for Capcom using 3D rendered environments as opposed to the pre-rendered visuals of the Resident Evil series. Debuting 12 years ago, Dino Crisis was revived this Spring as a downloadable title on PSN, giving us a chance to relive some of the scares this game has to offer. GGSGamer.com gave a nice overview of the title in its original incarnation in January, complete with PS1 era graphics which received a sight update for their most recent release.

If you never played the game, click on over to read what GGSGamer has to say about it. I was always  fond of Dino Crisis, but I never finished it, abandoning it in frustration with its typical Capcom-obtuse-inventory-management-system.

Women play too

 

The always inquisitive Destuctoid published a piece on Harry and the burden of men in Silent Hill a couple of months back, and now Rely on Horror asks us to look forward to the women in town. The author, CJ Melendez, contemplates our lack of playing in female shoes beyond Silent Hill 3. Its a short, but interesting read, so click on over.

I believe the original three Silent Hill games strongly reflected the psyche of the male dominated Team Silent, with the natural conclusion to the tale being the introduction of Heather as a protagonist, especially after exploring Silent Hill through the eyes of Maria in Born from a Wish, and the gameplay opportunities it presented with a woman caught up in the horror. One can only imagine the discussions that happened within Team Silent between the men and women who created these games as the direction beyond Silent Hill 2 was charted.

I love an abandoned amusment park

Retronaut, the keeper of all things cool gives us a great photo essay of an abandoned amusement park in New Orleans. And this one comes complete with creepy clowns. What more does anyone need?

Too much Space

As a Silent Hill player, you spend a lot of time wandering around abandoned buildings and neighborhoods. There are plenty of abandoned places in the real world as well, and many of these are documented on the internet.

My new favorite blog of abandoned places is not about real places at all, but rather fictional spaces. And, these fictional spaces are not even here on Earth. Space Trek documents the empty spaces in classic episodes of Star Trek. The hypercolored minimalism of a future inspired by sleek Mid-Century modern design aesthetics looks very lonely on a spaceship populate by over 400 people. No wonder Captain Kirk seems so desperate to connect with every hot alien woman who wanders by. Kirk must fill the empty void of loneliness in his heart that is a reflection of the vast emptiness of space. Poor lonely spaceman.

Empty spaces in Silent Hill: Downpour

GGSGamer.com has brought together a great gallery of recent screenshots of the new places we'll be exploring in Silent Hill: Downpour. There is lots to dig through, so click on over to view the nice high-res shots on offer, and spend some time on the site.

For those who don't know, GGSGamer is run by the same folks who run the legendary Silent Hill Heaven forums, where you will find lots of discussion on our favorite vacation destination.

Book of Memories early build video

Happy Cthuloid Birthday H.P.L!

Image shamelessly swiped from Toren M. Atkinson via The Lovecraftsman.

Happy birthday Howard. Thank you for all you have done for all of us over the years.

A boy and his Pyramid Head

Photo shamelessly swiped from Joystiq

Joystiq saw something cool at Gamescom, and it has something to do with Silent Hill. Its known that WayForward, who brought us the wonderful A Boy and His Blob on the Wii, is bringing us Silent Hill: Book of Memories. And rumors have been swirling for several months about Konami thinking about how to expand Silent Hill into the multiplayer arena.

Well, the time for rumors is over. WayForward is bringing us multiplayer Silent Hill on the Playstation Vita. I don't think this is a cause for worry though--just examine some of WayForward's history of  games (partial list courtesy if Wikipedia):

• Shantae (2002, Game Boy Color)
• Godzilla: Domination (2002, Game Boy Advance)
• Looney Tunes: Duck Amuck (2007, Nintendo DS)
• Contra 4 (2007, Nintendo DS)
• LIT (2008, WiiWare)
• A Boy and His Blob (2009, Wii)
• Batman: The Brave and the Bold – The Videogame (2010, Wii, Nintendo DS)
• Thor: God of Thunder (2011, Nintendo DS)
• BloodRayne: Betrayal (2011, Xbox Live Arcade/PlayStation Network)
• Aliens Infestation (2011, Nintendo DS)

There are a lot of licensed movie tie-ins in there, along with some kid games. But tie-ins like the DS version of Thor are the ones that got good reviews. Did you see LIT in there? I did, and that game has Silent Hill written all over it. The list also includes the next Aliens game, and the 2D BloodRayne game that threatens to be great according to those who have seen it at E3.

WayForward can make good (competent), even great games, and they already have a strong working relationship with Konami. Hopefully I'm sure we'll see something great on the Vita for Silent Hill fans.

The Silence is a delicious lie

The Alice Cooper Freakshow auditions in Hyde Park, London had a scary yet delicious addition to the fun: a Silent Hill themed cake. six layers of chocolate cake covered in white chocolate and Rice Krispie Treats. Sounds great to me!

Behind the Pyramid

Photographed by ~EvidencE~

Thanks to a tweet from @SilentHillWorld we can get a peek into some of the special effects done for Silent Hill 2: Revelation 3D, specifically a video about a particular, creepy costume that was posted by Bloody-Disgusting.com. Click on over for more, and be sure to check out the movie's Facebook page for more images.

Heads will roll

A German Ad Agency does a nifty little viral ad campaign with custom painted bowling balls promoting a horror cable channel. Click through to read more. Great idea, creative execution, but the video they made to promote it only gets a "C"  from me--it was probably hard to get some good intense reactions from people, but they did their best. Still its a lot of fun to watch. Click on through for the details.

Island of Lost Souls

The classic, 1933 Universal Monsters film, Island of Lost Souls, has been languishing, out of print for the past several years. While a restored VHS was issued by Universal to accompany its Monsters line of films, this film never made the jump to DVD, and has only been available as a hard-to-find bootleg for the past few years. Well this year, Criterion is going to give it the deluxe treatment and I could not be more excited.

At 70 minutes run time, this vintage horror film is a tightly choreographed treat. The monsters look more like beasts and less like men in monster suits. The lushness of the jungle setting with its remote location has been copied by movies for decades, and should be familiar to any fan of Jonny Quest. But where this film really shines is in its implied horror, what is not seen by the viewer, and here is where it clearly differentiates itself as being head-and-shoulders above all of the remakes and retellings of this classic H. G. Wells story.

Be sure to buy it/view it/Netflix it, when it comes out this October. It is a film not to be missed.

Minecraft, Minecraft, Minecraft.

Yes, this image is intentionally dark. That makes it scarier.

Its all my 10 year old talks about these days. Its funny, because some of the horror elements in it scare the crap out of him.

Well, a coming upgrade is going to ratchet up the fright even further by introducing the Endermen. These 3 meter tall creatures only come out at night, and generally won't bother you, unless you look directly at them--then things get worrisome. Click through for more detail on these initially unassuming creatures.

THE HORRORS OF IT ALL: Vampire's Daughter! / The Impatient Ghost!

I can't resist these wonderful vintage comic book blogs. The Horrors Of It All is one of the first I stumbled across a couple of years back. They post frequently, so there is always a lot to see. Click through and enjoy!

THE HORRORS OF IT ALL: Vampire's Daughter! / The Impatient Ghost!: "THOIA friend Robert Susor recently reminded me that there is still one story left for me to post called 'The Impatient Ghost' by Dan Lopr..."

Zombies + Sim City = Epic Win

 

JayIsGames.com has a great review/article on a Flash browser game named Rebuild. Take one part Zombie apocalypse and one part Sim City to get pure awesomeness. There is a lot to it (its rather deep), so make sure you set aside some time to try it out.

Akira talks

 

Akira Yamaoka talks about his time at Konami and his present/future at Grasshopper in this podcast from the game localization company 8-4. Enjoy!

Vintage Silent Hill updated for the 21st Century

RelyOnHorror.com (always on the ball) brings us a mix of the old and new from ComicCon this week. While everyone else is showing us all the great Downpour screens, Rely on Horror brings us a couple of more that confirm James still looks like James in Silent Hill 2 HD. This is relevant, because James will no longer "sound" like James in the Silent Hill HD Collection because of a legal dispute with voice actor Guy Cihi.

I'm looking forward to the inevitable fan dissection of the differences between the original games and their HD remakes.

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).