I've always liked the idea of Silent Hill more than the games themselves. Most of the games aren't very good, and if they were by themselves and not part of the idea of the place I probably wouldn't care about them. I don't care about demonic cults or coal fires or having a baby god, and stuff like that. All of the games have elements of that in it, I think (i haven't played them all), apart from 2 and the remake of the first one, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories. Those are my two favourite ones. I definitely like 2 more than SM, but both of them have problems. The whole series is a big mess, and isn't really about what I think it should be about, which is what 2 was about.
I'm talking about the idea that the town is a place where the state of someone's head can affect the form of the place, and that the whole thing is set up to be a kind of trial ground for people who need to work through problems or are lost and things like that. A place where people who need to give themselves a shake end up somehow. The literal explanation of the whole thing isn't imporant - it kills the whole fun for me to try and explain it, which is why I don't like the cult stuff - it's all about being a really flexible vehicle to explore a whole lot of different kinds of ideas. 2 is obviously the one which does this the most. It's all about [spoiler[James' ][/spoiler[James'] and all that stuff. Most of the elements of the game are designed to help give some complexity and background to that story, although I don't think really quite as much as people pretend they are. It was a good start, though. The problem with Silent Hill is that they never built on that, as far as I know. They didn't try, because the following games were just about daft crap with alot less thought put into why the things were happening. I played three and I was put off by all the WHOAH LOOK HOW FREAKY IT IS - A BIG WORM! A BUNNY MAN! It did LOOK pretty cool when the town went wild in that one, they took the idea further along, but that was just looks.
I won't go on for too long just now, so, anyway, they are making a new Silent Hill. It's made by western developers again, Vatra Games, who apparently are based in the Czech Republic. I don't think they have done a Silent Hill game before. Akira Yamokka is not doing the music this time, which is too bad because I like his ambient/lofi style stuff, and they are getting in Rolf Kent to do the music, who I know from doing the Dexter soundtrack which is the best part of that shitty show. So the music could be pretty good. From the trailer, though, the game doesn't look very interesting. The characters seem barely distinguishable from the ones I've seen in the previous games, and they weren't very interesting then, either. The prisoner idea seems like it could be okay, like it seems at least on theme, but it's a bit obvious and will probably not be handled well.
Here's that E3 trailer of the one they're making:
The music in the trailer is alright. I can hear Dexter in it. It all looks a bit traditionally spooky, and someone should have just said 'Nah' when the idea of putting a spooky little girl in the game was floated. The transition into the scary world at the end was also really horrible. I never really liked that idea. I'll play it.