[Video Game] What Have They Done to Silent Hill? :(

I guess you could call this a preview thread of sorts, but it isn't a positive one.

Konami gave an official name and release date for Silent Hill 5 yesterday:
http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3167493

Here are some recent screens for the game:

Spoiler

For some reason, the game seemed to look better in earlier screens (doesn't help that the somehow made the main character look horrible in the recent build):


And even stranger, it still doesn't look better than Silent Hill 3:



I'm not sure I really like some of the gameplay changes, but I guess they aren't deviating too much from the usual SH stuff. Perhaps I'm being too hard on the game. The plot could still be really interesting and worthy of being associated with the previous SH games. Nevertheless, these updates don't really give me much reason to be optimistic for the game.

BTW, if you didn't know, this Silent Hill is being developed by a US developer (The Collective) since western devs are supposed to be great with next-gen graphics and all that good stuff. I have no idea what happened to Team Silent at Konami...hopefully they're working on the real SH5 or something.

 

I don't really mind them copying the gameplay of RE4 too much. I just wished they didn't try to copy the graphics of RE4 as well.


Of course, I'll admit that I picked out some of the worst screens for the game and it does look a little better in the videos. Still, there's really no excuse for this IMO.

 

See, that's the weird thing. The early builds looked better than this. I don't think it was just bullshots or anything like that either since they had gameplay videos. I was OK with the graphics then since I figured they had another ~12 months or so to improve the visuals. I didn't think they would go backwards.

I just hope screens like this won't look better than the game in another 6 months:

 

That's true. I was hoping SH5 would be the game that showed what a next-gen horror game could be like, but if that doesn't happen, some other game(s) could take its place. Maybe even the next Team Silent game...if they're even working on another game...or are even still a team.

The Siren remake for the PS3 sort of shows what I expected from a next-gen horror game. It was even made by former members of the SH team and it has siren noises...so maybe I'll just think of it as SH5.
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I just wish I hadn't already checked out the story for Siren. I didn't think a remake of the original was all that likely.

 

I think they will put up a demo for Siren later in the week if you want to give it a try. I think it might be only be on the Japan store though.

I canceled my GS subscription earlier this year, but that was partly due to the backlack from "Gerstmanngate." I think I tried one of these services once, but I think all the Preview threads and the lurking I do at NeoGAF already made it somewhat redundant. Plus, I'm not sure GameSpot would have told me that Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne was having a reprint.

 

I thought I was just picking bad screens from Gamesradar, but I think these new screens from IGN just prove that it is hard to find a good screen:

Spoiler

Again, just for reference, SH3:

Spoiler