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You could argue that putting the player in control loses a little of the old terror of suddenly finding yourself in Silent Hill’s version of hell – and you wouldn’t be wrong – but it allows for a few ingenious puzzles and a little less backtracking in complex areas like the Sanatorium. Origins cunningly makes the netherworld a sort of dark reflection, and allows you to travel between the two sides to use new pathways or open new doorways just by touching any nearby mirror. Most importantly, Origins has preserved the series’ defining characteristic: its splitting of Silent Hill into a warped, fog-bound normal world and a rusty, industrial-looking netherworld, both peopled by hideous apparitions, both linked by common pathways and architecture, but differing in small ways you can exploit throughout the game. If Silent Hill is all about lurking fear and creeping dread, then Origins is a Silent Hill game through and through. Meanwhile, the constant drip-feed of information through reports, notes and odd, childish drawings is more unnerving than all of the shock scares and crimson gore in Clive Barker’s Jericho.
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The music, by series stalwart Akira Yamaoka, is packed with foreboding ambient tracks that escalate suddenly into peaks of churning menace, and is arguably the most unsettling thing about the whole game. The headphones are particularly important, because it’s the audio – the crackle of the ‘monster alert’ radio, the hiss or grunt of something moving close by but just out of sight – that makes the game so damn scary. New locations like the Cedar Grove Sanatorium, the Butcher’s Shop and the Artaud Theatre fit in perfectly with the seedy Silent Hill ambiance, and the storyline develops with that mix of strange mystery and psychological turmoil that is the hallmark of the series.Ītmospherically it’s horribly effective, particularly if, as the game suggests, you play it with your headphones on and the lights turned down. Silent Hill is always an interior journey for its lead as well, and this one takes Travis back into the unexplored dark regions of his own past. If you know Silent Hill 1 to 3, then you’ll find Origins brings the series full-circle and carefully pulls a few loose ends together. Those of us who loved the second will be thrilled to see an antagonist so reminiscent of the series’ most terrifying monster, Pyramid Head, and moments that mirror key portions of Silent Hill 2. Those of us who played the first game can reacquaint ourselves with scary Dahlia Gillespie, her creepy daughter, Alessa, and unhinged nurse, Lisa, not to mention such locations as the good old Alchemilla Hospital. This time our hero is burly trucker Travis Grady, and his journey through Silent Hill takes him through events connected to the first game – making Origins a sort of prequel – with twists that seem to parallel the second. More impressively, Climax has also captured the right tone. The environments have just about the right level of clutter and mess, and apart from the slightly boxy-looking character models, Climax has the Silent Hill 2/3 look nailed.
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Origins also manages the gritty film overlay that has been a signature of the series since Silent Hill 2, and even enhances it with a range of cool film-jumping and scratch effects. Lighting is minimal and expertly used, and the glare of your character’s torchlight is handled brilliantly. Gaming’s most mysterious town remains wreathed in an almost tangible gloom and swathed in thick layers of floating fog. Visually, Origins sits as close to what we saw in Silent Hill 2 and 3 as you could reasonably expect on the PSP. So the good news is that UK developer Climax’s take on the world of Silent Hill stays very true to Team Silent’s existing work.
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That goes double when the series’ ‘feel’ is so important.
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After all, PSP reworkings of existing franchises haven’t always met the highest quality standards, and there’s always a huge risk in handing a Japanese property over to a Western developer. So the news that the first proper entry in ages, Silent Hill: Origins, was to come from a new developer and on a handheld format must have been met with an agonizing mix of hope and misery. Meanwhile a brand that – for a while – sat at the pinnacle of the Survival Horror genre has seen itself overtaken by a revitalised Resident Evil, the increasingly potent Project Zero series and even Sony’s under-rated (if overcomplicated) Forbidden Siren duo. The last game in the series, Silent Hill 4: The Room was clearly a separate game hastily integrated into the Silent Hill mythos.
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Barring last year’s Christophe Gans movie adaptation, fans of the Silent Hill series haven’t had much to celebrate in the four years since Silent Hill 3.