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.