The Horror Report – This Month in Gaming

August has proved to be quite good to survival horror fans. With new information being leaked on a near-constant basis for games such as Resident Evil and Silent Hill, and even some not-so-streamlined info, it’s no surprise that fans of the genre are biting their nails as to any visuals released. Thankfully, those seem to be in steady supply as well.

Resident Evil 5 & Umbrella Chronicles:

An abundance of scans from the new trailer for Resident Evil 5 released on the Xbox 360 marketplace have been posted at GamerSyde.com, as well as the trailers themselves. (if you haven’t seen them already and don’t have the 360) From some Chinese scanlations of Famitsu magazine the producer of the game, Jun Takeuchi, mentions that “2010 is too late and 2008 is too early.” As far as an actual release date for the game. Does this mean we’ll have to wait until 2009? That would make sense, since there was that large of a gap between Code Veronica and RE4.

Also, the North American website for Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles has been thrown up, and features some closer looks at character designs for the game – particularly Chris Redfield and an Mr.X inspired new look for Wesker.

Silent Hill: Origins, Arcade and 5

A demo has been recently released for the PSP-exclusive Silent Hill: Origins. Based on a review of the demo, we get the following perspective

“The easiest thing to say about it is that it works. It’s not a massive f***ing mess like it could have been. The controls aren’t as clear as they could have been, (i.e. how to fully kill a downed enemy?) and the breaking weapons thing has never been enjoyable in any game ever. Even Dead Rising failed to make breakable weapons a worthwhile addition. It’s irritating.

At the start of the demo you get a little message along the lines of “Silent Hill Origins is a descent into darkness, to get the most out of the game play in the dark and with headphones.” Not having control over darkness, I choose to play with my huge PC-gaming Headphones. It sounds fantastic, typical SH sound design but that was never anything less than amazing to begin with.”

Special thanks to AbsoluteZero for his testimony.

Electronic Gaming Monthly released a multitude of new artwork for Silent Hill 5 in their most recent issue. From what we see, the game has some new enemy designs that seem to be based off of the Silent Hill movie, as well as some familiar faces from other SH games – such as the famed Bobblehead Nurses from the second game. The overall atmosphere seems overly appropriate for the series, and looks like the game itself is headed in the right direction. However, no release date has been determined.

A smaller note, is that video footage for the supposed Silent Hill: The Arcade game has been found on YouTube. However from what can be seen thus far, nothing noteworthy or special has been included in this adaption of the series. In fact, it leaves much to be desired.

Parasite Eve 3

It’s been 7 years since Parasite Eve 2 was released for the original Playstation, and fans of the series have been left in the dark about any potential sequels. However, as revealed at the Square-Enix party this year, a 3rd game for the series has been announced – dubbed “The 3rd Birthday”. Unfortunately, the game has been cursed to be one of the upcoming trend of cellphone-exclusive games, with no US and/or European localization dates in sight as of yet and no story details released. Will the game prove to be a disappointment for those who have waited so long for it’s newest incarnation. Will console versions be released in the near future? Only time will tell.