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[Ghosts Of Gaming Past] A Review Of ‘Silent Hill: Origins’

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Welcome to Ghosts of Gaming Past — here we’ll be reviewing older horror games, classics and non-classics we missed when they were originally released. Have a game you’d like reviewed? Send us an email.

Written by Ryan Peters, @Thrashmarshall

Creating decent scares in a video game is a difficult thing to do. With literally hundreds of titles out there all trying to raise a few screams from players, developers must push the limits of the technology available to them, as well as their own creativity.

So when Konami released Silent Hill: Origins, developed by Climax Studios back in 2006 for Sony’s struggling PlayStation Portable (PSP), series fans and gamers in general expected little in the way of shocks and the psychological horror that made Silent Hill famous. No one expects to be terrified when gaming for ten minutes on a bus after all. Despite its pint sized delivery however Silent Hill: Origins is a solid little romp that in a lot of ways is the closest thing to a ‘traditional’ Silent Hill outside of the first three games.

Silent Hill: Origins acts as a prequel to the 1999 original, putting players in the shoes of trucker Travis Grady as he attempts to track down a young girl he saves from a burning house close to the titular town. What begins as a simple trip to the hospital soon turns into a fight for survival against the many horrors that lurk in the lakeside resort .In fine Silent Hill tradition Travis will have to explore abandoned buildings and nightmarish worlds, battling monsters and solving puzzles in order to reveal the mystery of the town and find the charred child.

As a prequel the set up for the games story ties in well with the rest of the series, the burned girl and mysterious cult made famous in the earlier games are present and accounted for in Origins and it delivers a decent amount of back story during its eight hour tale. Of course it wouldn’t be a Silent Hill game without a lead character with a troubled past and Climax Studios did their best to deliver that in Travis, while they aren’t entirely successful he’s well written enough to at least keep most player interested as the story unfolds.

The reveal of Travis’ back-story isn’t going to blow any minds like those of James Sunderland or Henry Townshend but its decent enough to at least make the conclusion of Origins satisfying.

While the story in Silent Hill: Origins is solid stuff, actually playing the game is an inconsistent experience plagued by bad design choices and the limitations of the hardware it’s on. While the PSP has proven to me a great system for action games like the excellent Metal Gear Solid: Peacewalker, Climax seemed to have difficulty getting to grips with the pocket sized platform.

The most obvious problem Origins has are its controls, the limitation of only having one analogue stick on the PSP isn’t as much as a problem as you might expect in a game that mainly uses fixed camera angles , however the whole game feels slightly lumbering and unresponsive particularly during combat. Menu navigation, general exploration and even moving the map around all feel a few seconds too slow and are made worse by the games poor loading times.

By sticking to the traditional control and feel of a Silent Hill game Climax may have pleased a lot of hard core Silent Hill fans hoping for a game similar to those made famous by Team Silent. Unfortunately packing all that into the PSP control scheme has just created an experience that sometimes looks like previous Silent Hill games, but never quite feels like one.

The game looks good for the most part, especially when played in a dark room somewhere with a good pair of headphones on. In that kind of environment it’s easy to forget your playing a portable game at all. With that said the dank corridors and blood splattered rooms of Silent Hill don’t lend themselves well to being played during the day and particularly on the move as they just become impossible to navigate properly.

It may be on a portable system but Silent Hill: Origins is a game that needs to be sat down and enjoyed at a slow pace, not played in bursts to kill a few minutes. This would be pretty hard to do anyway as save points are just as far apart as in the console titles and there isn’t any kind of auto save system to help players wanting to visits the hellish town for a few minutes at a time.

One other criticism that can be made of Origins’ visuals is that the environments aren’t really that interesting. Players revisit a number of famous Silent Hill areas from the previous games, in fact the hospital is identical in some areas to that of the PlayStation original, and it’ obvious Climax has done this to please series’ fans. The problem is that there aren’t enough fresh environments to make Silent Hill feel like an interesting or even scary place to explore, instead the whole thing feels like a greatest hits more than an actual game in its own right.

The item system in Origins is also a problem, instead of the familiar arsenal of pipes and wooden planks Travis uses an assortment of furniture to take out the hell beasts of Silent Hill. What this means is that players are forced to hunt around for one time use items such as TV’s and large glass jars to assault creatures with. It’s a functional system for sure however when your character is lugging a bunch of massive furnishings around in his inventory it makes the experience more of a silly one than anything that’s going to scare.

The other presentation elements in Silent Hill: Origins are pretty great as well, with series maestro Akira Yamaoka handling the audio and score for the game. The famous cacophony of industrial grates and screams can be heard throughout Origins and the moody guitar driven music creates a fantastic atmosphere, albeit through a decent pair of headphones.

The PSP’s speakers make a valiant effort however this is a game that needs a bit more than what the plucky portable can muster in the sound department, particularly when Silent Hill is a series that uses sound to create scares better than any other game around.

Those monsters aren’t much to write home about however, the busty nurses make an appearance in the game along with other favourites like the demonic dogs but the PSP just doesn’t have the horsepower to make these enemies look all that great. Origins does feature a number of cool boss designs as well as a particularly great brute called the Butcher, unfortunately actually taking him on is a clumsy and boring affair.

The Final Word: Silent Hill: Origins is a tough game to recommend. I personally really enjoyed my time with the game and think it deserves its place in the Silent Hill series. It’s is however a slow and not particularly fun game to play that feels at times more like fan service than an attempt to do anything interesting with the series. Silent Hill: Origins hasn’t stood the test of time and should be approached now more as a curio than anything else. If your desperate to travel to Silent Hill again then you can do worse than Origins, just don’t expect it to feel the same as when you’ve visited before.

Silent Hill: Origins is available on the PlayStation 2 and PSP (reviewed).

Gamer, writer, terrible dancer, longtime toast enthusiast. Legend has it Adam was born with a controller in one hand and the Kraken's left eye in the other. Legends are often wrong.

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Spring 2024 Horror Preview: 12 Horror Movies You Don’t Want to Miss

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Abigail trailer
Pictured: 'Abigail'

We are now one full month into Spring 2024, which kicked off on Tuesday, March 19 and comes to an end with the start of Summer on Thursday, June 20. This year’s summer movie season has a whole bunch of exciting horror highlights, including A Quiet Place: Day One, MaXXXine, and Alien: Romulus, but let’s hold that particular thought until June rolls around.

We’re here today to talk about Spring 2024 and the many horrors we still have left before the weather gets warmer and we find ourselves in the heat of one hell of a spooky summer.

Here are 12 horror movies you don’t want to miss in Spring 2024!


Sting trailer movie spider creature feature

STING – April 12

Two words: SPIDER HORROR. Writer/Director Kiah Roache-Turner (Wyrmwood) hopes to induce eight-legged terror with his brand new horror movie Sting, only in theaters April 12.

Of particular note, Sting features practical spider effects from 5-time Academy Award Winner Weta Workshop, with the spider in this one inspired by H.R. Giger’s Xenomorph!

In Sting, “One cold, stormy night in New York City, a mysterious object falls from the sky and smashes through the window of a rundown apartment building. It is an egg, and from this egg emerges a strange little spider. The creature is discovered by Charlotte, a rebellious 12-year-old girl obsessed with comic books. Keeping it as a secret pet, she names it Sting.

“But as Charlotte’s fascination with Sting increases, so does its size. Growing at a monstrous rate, Sting’s appetite for blood becomes insatiable.”


Spring 2024 horror blackout

BLACKOUT – APRIL 12

Indie darling Larry Fessenden is back with new horror movie Blackout this Spring, Fessenden’s third movie – following Habit and Depraved – to put his own spin on classic monsters.

While Habit was centered on vampires and Depraved was a fresh take on Frankenstein’s Monster, Larry Fessenden’s Blackout is the filmmaker’s contribution to werewolf cinema.

The film follows Charley, an artist whose drinking binges blur with his sneaking suspicion that he might be a werewolf. He distances himself from those he loves and sinks deeper into solitude, his flashes of memory of his nighttime grisly acts manifested through his artwork.


Arcadian images Nicolas cage

ARCADIAN – APRIL 12

If Nicolas Cage is covered in blood, you better believe we’re going to be watching. Cage gets his own A Quiet Place with Arcadian, a new creature feature coming to theaters April 12.

In Arcadian, which also comes to Shudder later this year, “After a catastrophic event depopulates the world, a father (Nicolas Cage) and his two sons must survive their dystopian environment while being threatened by mysterious creatures that emerge at night.”

Jaeden Martell (IT 2017) also stars in the post apocalyptic monster movie.


Abigail Overlook Film Festival 2024 - gory horror Abigail set visit

ABIGAIL – APRIL 19

If you’re bummed about Melissa Barrera being fired from the Scream franchise, you’ll definitely want to get out to your local theater this month to support Abigail, the new VAMPIRE BALLERINA horror movie from Scream and Scream VI directors Radio Silence.

Barrera stars alongside fellow horror favorite Kathryn Newton (Freaky) in Abigail, which is actually the latest horror movie in Universal’s relaunched Universal Monsters Universe.

In the film, “After a group of would-be criminals kidnap the 12-year-old ballerina daughter of a powerful underworld figure, all they have to do to collect a $50 million ransom is watch the girl overnight. In an isolated mansion, the captors start to dwindle, one by one, and they discover, to their mounting horror, that they’re locked inside with no normal little girl.”


Late Night with the Devil trailer

LATE NIGHT WITH THE DEVIL – APRIL 19

One of the most talked about horror movies of Spring 2024 has been the Halloween 1977-set Late Night With the Devil, which has been playing in theaters since its premiere on March 22.

Late Night with the Devil will begin streaming at home on April 19, 2024, less than one month after arriving in theaters. Shudder will be the exclusive streaming home of the movie.

David Dastmalchian (Dune, The Suicide Squad) stars as the host of a late-night talk show that descends into a nightmare in Late Night with the Devil, set on Halloween 1977.

In the found footage-style film that captures a period aesthetic, “A live television broadcast in 1977 goes horribly wrong, unleashing evil into the nation’s living rooms.”


Infested Shudder

INFESTED – APRIL 26

Spring 2024 is all about SPIDERS – sorry, arachnophobes! – with the previously mentioned Sting being followed by the French creature feature Infested (Vermines) later this month.

What’s particularly exciting about Infested is that its director, Sébastien Vaniček, has been hired to direct the next installment in the Evil Dead film franchise, so this will be our first taste of what Vaniček is capable of within the genre. And the buzz for this one is strong.

In his review out of Fantastic Fest last year, for starters, Bloody Disgusting’s own critic Trace Thurman raved that Infested is “one of the best spider attack movies in years.”

In the upcoming horror film, “Fascinated by exotic animals, Kaleb finds a venomous spider in a shop and brings it back to his apartment. It only takes a moment for the spider to escape and reproduce, turning the whole building into a dreadful web trap.”


Spring 2024 horror cronenberg

HUMANE – APRIL 26

The daughter of horror master David Cronenberg, Caitlin Cronenberg is making her own mark in the genre filmmaking space with IFC Films’ Humane, coming to theaters this month.

The film is described as “a dystopian satire taking place over a single day, months after a global ecological collapse has forced world leaders to reduce the earth’s population.”

The wild premise? 20% of the world’s population must VOLUNTEER TO DIE!

“In a wealthy enclave, a recently retired newsman has invited his grown children to dinner to announce his intentions to enlist in the nation’s new euthanasia program. But when the father’s plan goes horribly awry, tensions flare and chaos erupts among his children.”


I Saw the TV Glow trailer

I SAW THE TV GLOW – MAY 3

Fresh off the haunting and singularly creepy indie We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, Jane Schoenbrun is back with A24‘s I Saw the TV Glow, releasing only in theaters this May.

Meagan Navarro wrote in her Sundance review for BD, “I Saw the TV Glow offers a layered and authentic portrait of identity, wrapped in ’90s nostalgia and surreal imagery that embeds itself deep into your psyche.” Meagan continues, “Schoenbrun delivers a singular vision of arthouse horror that entrances for its fevered dream style and insanely cool imagery.”

In A24’s latest, “Owen is just trying to make it through life in the suburbs when his classmate introduces him to a mysterious TV show — a vision of a supernatural world beneath their own. In the pale glow of the television, Owen’s view of reality begins to crack.”


Tarot horror movie

TAROT – MAY 3

Originally titled Horrorscope, a much better title if you’re asking me, Screen Gems returns to the big screen with studio horror movie Tarot this Spring, a Tarot-card themed spookshow.

When a group of friends recklessly violates the sacred rule of Tarot readings – never use someone else’s deck – they unknowingly unleash an unspeakable evil trapped within the cursed cards in the upcoming Screen Gems horror movie Tarot. One by one, they come face to face with fate and end up in a race against death to escape the future foretold in their readings.

The hook for this one? Artist Trevor Henderson designed the film’s eight monsters!


The Strangers Chapter 2

THE STRANGERS: CHAPTER 1 – MAY 17

Bryan Bertino’s 2008 home invasion classic The Strangers spawns a brand new reboot trilogy this year, with first film The Strangers: Chapter 1 kicking things off in theaters on May 17.

The Strangers: Chapter 2 is expected to follow in Fall 2024.

Madelaine Petsch is the lead of the new reboot trilogy, playing a character who drives cross-country with her longtime boyfriend to begin a new life in the Pacific Northwest.

When their car breaks down in Venus, Oregon, they’re forced to spend the night in a secluded Airbnb, where they are terrorized from dusk till dawn by three masked strangers.


In A Violent Nature Review

IN A VIOLENT NATURE – MAY 31

Slasher fans who have been hungry for a new Friday the 13th movie won’t want to miss In a Violent Nature, which plays out like a Friday movie… entirely from Jason’s perspective!

IFC Films will release In a Violent Nature exclusively in theaters on May 31.

In the film, “When a locket is removed from a collapsed fire tower in the woods that entombs the rotting corpse of Johnny, a vengeful spirit spurred on by a horrific 60-year old crime, his body is resurrected and becomes hellbent on retrieving it. The undead golem hones in on the group of vacationing teens responsible for the theft and proceeds to methodically slaughter them one by one in his mission to get it back – along with anyone in his way.”

Meagan Navarro wrote in her Sundance review for Bloody Disgusting, “In a Violent Nature may offer slasher thrills and a delightfully gory rampage across the wilderness, but the approach captures the carnage through ambient realism. It results in a fascinating arthouse horror experiment that plays more like a minimalist slice-of-life feature with a grim twist.”


Spring 2024 horror watchers

THE WATCHERS – JUNE 14

M. Night Shyamalan returns with the new thriller Trap this coming August, but the road to that film’s release will be paved by the feature debut of his daughter, Ishana Night Shyamalan.

Ishana Night directed The Watchers, in theaters from WB/New Line on June 14.

The film follows Mina, a 28-year-old artist, who gets stranded in an expansive, untouched forest in western Ireland. When Mina finds shelter, she unknowingly becomes trapped alongside three strangers who are watched and stalked by mysterious creatures each night.


Which Spring 2024 horror movies are YOU most looking forward to?

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