Razumen

See, I used the candles to clear the room out (save for two or three hauntings that happened when I didnt have any candles) and she still got in pretty bad condition. With the hitting herself and the "Where mommy? I'm scawed" and whatnot. I'm pretty sure Eileen becomes more 'possesed' if you leave her alone than she does when getting hit by monsters. Of course protecting her is still a good idea, but you should never leave her alone unless you're going back to the apartment and the area where the portal is is free of monsters. Also while the apartment hauntings affect the possible endings, I don't believe they directly affect Eileen. Perhaps, now this might be a long shot, but perhaps because their doors arent chained from the inside? Up untill the point where they themselves get transported to Walters realm they don't think they're in any danger, sure they might notice that something weird is going on with Henry's room, but it's been a know fact for awhile that there's something with that room. and when Walter does transport them there, it's impossible for them to leave then.

Until Silent Hill: The Movie: The Game destroys all hopes of SH every saving any face ever again. Now that's just being stupid...

K, I'll give it a try. But I'm guessing that if I wanted to play it in Japanese with subtitles I'd have to get the game imported and use a modded system right?

So the english version isn't worth playing at all? I picked up Siren at Walmart for $9, so if it isn't I can always return it. No big loss either way.

Yep, I learnt about that awhile ago. Siren is one of the first games I'll be buying whenever I get around to finally buying a PS2. Still waiting to find out if PS3 will be backwards compatible though. frugality+1

Nice, but you should really learn some graphic program skills, if only to CG up your lines a little. Of course you could leave the lines un-CGed and it will still look nice as long as it isn't too messy, but one thing that really needs to go is that crayon coloring. Either leave it B/W, learn some CG skills, or use some other analog method. Ah, and use a better font, Times New Roman is good for some things, but not for comics. Something a little smoother would do. Despite all that, I still look forward to your future works.

Ah, thanks for those details, I was about to order the 'Art of Silent Hill' DVD but now I may wait untill the 'Lost Memories' one becomes available. Nice looking radio, though it's not very SHish looking. I imagine it does more than just recieve radio stations?

I'm going to abstain from the screenies because I'm ordering the DVD myself. Of course I just HAD to lose my credit card so now I have to wait at least a week before I can even order it. Consequently, does anyone here know of any good region free DVD playback programs?

Well I picked up SH4 for the Xbox today, and it seems to me that the controls aren't as bad as I thought they were for either platform, but that they just aren't as sensitive compared to SH2's. Meh.. it's one of the game's lesser, lesser faults. As far as the next game goes, I believe the devs HAVE to try out new ideas for the SH series to remain strong, you can't make great games if you're not really interested in what you're doing - nor can you continue to rely on the same formula and expect it to hold the same appeal. I'm glad higher definition graphics will be the norm for the nextgen systems, my VGA transcoders will finally have something other than 480p.

Well that's very good news indeed, with that much time I have no doubt it will be awesome. One question, I think I saw it mentioned somewhere on this gargantuan thread but is it being developed for next gen consoles or the current crop? True, most of the areas were more bizarre than scary. Whether this was a actual design decision or just the result of not enough effort put into the environments still seems unclear to me. Well one thing I thing would also help is less projectile weapons, guns in their very design have a very impersonal feeling to them - you just point and shoot. You never really need to be up close with them and that decreases the feeling of insecurity. With a melee weapon you have to get close to the monstrocities and by doing so put yourself at more risk. Ok I have to confess I have very little experience with the Silent Hill games in anything higher than the normal skill settings, I did play a bit on Hard in SH2 but to me all it did was give the monsters more health and more frequent attacks. This pretty much ties into making the combat more involved (when you do so feel inclined to fight) but not necessarily making it hard for everyone. Skill levels should remain, so beginners and casual players aren't left out. But the higher levels should be more challenging rather than just harder, with tactics and techniques that you didn't really have to master or even use in the easier levels. I know it's a hard thing to implement correctly, (I myself am putting together a design for a future game which revolves heavily on combatitive gameplay) and it's especially hard for a game like Silent Hill. At least Team Ninja seem to be on the ball on it, insofar as SH4 has the best combat yet IMHO. True, I love the Silent Hill games because they are different, but not just for the sole fact they are different. In other words, I love them because they do different very, very well. I do care about graphics in games, but I don't need them to enjoy a good game. However they are a very important aspect of the SH games, even if the SH games are much deeper than creepy bloody eyecandy. They help to create the suspension of disbelief as well as lure new players into the series temporarily untill they find out that it is so much more than just prettiness (not really a good term for SH games ) Really, I consider smooth gameplay to be much more important than graphics, Since if you can make the player forget about how he has to interact with the game to do stuff, it'll be a lot easier to draw him and, and thus easier to scare. To me it kind of seems to represent the characters inactions against their own problems. Since watching TV is usually a very inactive 'activity' for both the body and mind. in James' case, he only really starts to face his demons after the hotel, where in a sense the TV was a portal for his subconscious to reach his conscious mind. Since I doubt he really taped THAT. Eddie doesn't really resolve his issues, he pretty much just spirals out of control into them. I'm not sure about Angela's case, the TV was at the scene when you protected her from bedman, but from the last you see of her it's quite doubtfull how she is faring with her inner conflict. Perhaps she still had much more to go through before she came to some sort of conclusion.[spoiler END] Wow, those pics really fit, especially the fourth one. Of course they aren't nearly foggy enough. Wonder whether they'll be using real fog machines or somehow do it CGed in. *Edit* Well I just started playing SH4 on a brand new fear, mainly to get a better ending (Last one I got was the worst one ) But one thing's been bugging me, I'm playing the game with a gamepad, but Henry seems to only like walking in 8 directions as if I'm using the keyboard to move. Is this a inherent trait of the PC version or is it common to all the ports? Heh, it's really been bugging me since I got off SH2 and am considering getting the Xbox version. On a similar note, at the beginning when Henry is having nightmares, do you think the man you're looking through the eyes of is Joseph? I think it's pretty obvious since he comments on not having a big TV but a record player, etc.

Yow my brain, can't believe I read this whole freaking thread, for the love of Heather someone give me a advil! Yes this post is probably going to be quite long, but if you don't read it I'll be sending PH after you. Just kidding! But not really... I've played Silent Hills 2,3 and 4 and so far I think SH2 so far is my favorite as far as the story goes. 4 had a pretty good plot going but it wasn't as involving since the story merely affects Henry instead of revolving around him. As for the control scheme, I was surprised to hear people complain about the 2D one used in SH4, I mean I've been using it in SH2, 3 AND 4 and find that one to be by far the easiest one to use. Is there really no SH game with both schemes selectable? Every one I've played so far has had both) The only time I've seen those tank controls work is in RE4 and that's ONLY because your view is fixed over your shoulder. I'm also pretty sure you can set up to play with the tank controls in SH4, but I have it uninstalled at the moment so I'm not so sure. That said I think my favorite game so far for scare value is SH3. SH4 had some pretty good scares, but I really think they should have left the flashlight in and made the areas darker. It also would have been cool if they it so that you had a faulty flashlight which would flicker, fade and sometimes even go out for short periods of time. The radio I didn't miss so much in SH4, the ambiance and music more than made up for it's absence. It would have been nice if there was a scene in a relatively peacefull area with a radio or other something similar that would start getting wonkier and freakier untill the shiat hits the fan, where shiat is whatever freaky thing you can think of. As far as the monsters go, I think they were trying to go in the right direction by making them harder to fight, and for some to run from (the buzzers and dogs) but aside from the twins none other really stand out as far as freakiness goes. The victims however were quite a good implementation, theres just something about a monster that you can't kill, can go through walls to follow you and hurts you just by being there. The ability to dodge seemed pretty pointless and hard to use, especially when you could just charge up your favorite melee weapon and become an invincible wrecking ball. Some might say that SH is really about the combat, and while this is to a certain extent true, I really think the flight or fight is a big part of the series. Unfortunately this is often negated by having combat that is tedious and or super easy. I think they really should focus more on melee combat and keep ranged weapons scarce. Fighting with these monsters should be faster, more involving (kicking, dodging, blocking) but also more deadly so that you're actually scared for your characters life when you're around them. With a lot of the monsters in silent hill it's hard to really see them as dangerous, and while creepiness goes quite a way, they need to follow up on that creepiness by being life threating monsters of fear. I liked how they were trying to play on being trapped, lonely and afraid, and SPOILER]how you one place of sanctuary ends up being invaded slowly halfway through. Not to mention the fact that you find out it's smack dab in the alternate reality and probably was ever since he became trapped in it.[END SPOILER] I think the realtime weapon switching was a very good thing, but then they had to mess it up by adding loads of weapons that would break, making ammo take up multiple slots, adding quite a few really useless weapons (Really, would anyone here use a frigging PAPER-cutter on a silent hill monster? You'd be hacking and slicing for hours. Better to just jab it into whatever resembles a face and run away!) Also puzzle items should have been given their own space and used like previous SH games. This is pretty much what they did for RE4 and it works. Of course I think the main reason SH4 hasn't lived up to it's full potential is the fact they had to make it in a measly 12 months. Anyone trying to make a game like Silent Hill, with production values like the previous ones, with that restriction is either going to have to cut a lot of stuff, or just end up with a game that tries everywhere, but fails at everything. I think they should have had at least two years to develop the game, any less is just crazy and sounds a lot like money hungry execs just wanting more money. Too bad it didn't end up like RE4, which really gave a breath of life to the RE series and is by far IMHO the best RE game yet. Too bad Mikami is leaving Capcom (Though I don't blame him). Mikimi not only managed to totally change the direction of the game but somehow polished everything to a fine sheen as well. OK, I think thats it for now. now to find SH1, the PC version is probably my best bet so far.