The Silent Hill 2 remake is coming out this October (assuming it doesn’t get delayed), which means that Hillposting will be a regular feature of this blog going forward. I’m also working on a book review, I swear.

A few days ago Konami held their second Silent Hill transmission event, something I’ve been anticipating for a while now. We sadly didn’t get any updates at all on Townfall or Silent Hill f, but we did, finally, get to see a big chunk of gameplay for Bloober Team’s Silent Hill 2 remake. If you’ll recall, this is a project I viewed with some trepidation due to Bloober’s proven track record of making absolutely terrible garbage, and the short snippets of footage that have trickled out since have done nothing to change my cautious stance. But I reserved judgement, wanting to get a good look at how the game would play and feel, and now that we have that…

I think it looks great. I think it looks really good.

But before I get into specifics, let me lay out my mindset on remakes in general, and this project in particular.

I’m a big fan of From Software’s Dark Souls/Bloodborne/Sekiro/Elden Ring sort-of-franchise. If you’ve been closely following the Ronan Extended Universe for a while this might surprise you, as I’ve said before that my migraines prevent me from playing games that are too complex and the From ouvre is known for being difficult. The thing is, while it’s true that the games are hard, the moment-to-moment gameplay is actually pretty simple, and combined with the strictly optional storytelling, that makes them surprisingly brain-compatible.

I could have simplified that opening paragraph by simply referring to these games as “soulslikes”, but that wouldn’t be accurate. You see, I’ve never liked any of the games made by other developers that try to use the Dark Souls formula. There’s been a lot of them over the years, and they’re all bad (I don’t count 2D versions like Hollow Knight or Blasphemous). It turns out, making games like this isn’t as easy as it looks.

For a while, I thought Lords Of The Fallen would change that. It did not, and here’s why.

Well, we all knew this was coming. My decision to cover this game will, of course, be controversial to some of my readers, but for reasons I will refuse to elaborate on, anyone criticising me for my media consumption is violating my freedom of speech and also bullying me. I must live my truth.

I scarcely need to name the game in question. After years of rumours and feverish speculation  this game, part of a storied media franchise and a universal keystone of millennial nostalgia everywhere, is finally here. It’s by far the biggest, most highly-anticipated game of February and quite possibly the year.

That’s right: I’m talking about Metroid Prime Remastered on the Nintendo Switch. 

I recently had a sudden urge to play some games about zombies—as you do—so I decided to go back and finish Dying Light, the zombie parkour game that came out in 2015 and got a large amount of free and paid content updates over the next five years. You can now buy all of the significant content (minus cosmetics and overpowered DLC weapons) for cheap, which is a pretty good deal if you want a lot of zombie-killing action.

Silent Hill is back, baby! It’s good again!

Maybe.

I have written before about my obsessive love for the Silent Hill franchise of video games, most notably in a big multi-part series of essays I did years ago on my old blog (look out for those getting ported over here at some point). As such, I have been keenly following the rumours of a series revival that have been swirling around for quite some time. A few days ago Konami finally lifted the lid on that revival, and boy howdy, us Silent Hill fans are going to be feasting in the years ahead.

First, a quick primer for people who have no idea what I’m talking about.

The Silent Hill series launched on the Playstation back in 1998, rose to prominence with a handful of sequels on the Playstation 2, entered a decline period in which the original development team broke up and new games were farmed out to third parties on an apparently semi-random basis with decidedly mixed results, then appeared to die for good when Konami acrimoniously parted ways with Hideo Kojima, who was developing a new entry with Guillermo Del Toro, amidst a major pivot away from video game development.

In the years since, Konami’s pachinko and fitness club enterprises have waned due to factors largely outside their control (primarily changes to Japanese gambling laws and the Covid pandemic), and management shakeups have ousted the anti-games faction and brought in executives who want to re-pivot back to videogames as a core business, with a particular focus on exploiting Konami’s classic IP stable. Silent Hill isn’t quite the top tier of that stable—that would be Metal Gear—but as a franchise not connected to a particular auteur creator who’s unlikely to ever work with them again (reportedly Kojima and Konami have smoothed things over, but Kojima has since launched his own studio and is unlikely to come back), it makes an obvious choice for a big return, especially with high-budget horror getting a huge boost via Capcom’s wildly successful Resident Evil efforts of late.

So we knew for a while that Silent Hill was coming back. We just didn’t know how much it was coming back. It turns out the answer to that question is: all the way. It’s coming back all the way.
Specifically, during their “transmission” video Konami announced five major Silent Hill projects, consisting of three video games, a movie and one…thing (I’ll get into that more later). In order of announcement, here’s what we have to look forward to in 2023 and beyond.

With rumours and leaks about the fourth Bioshock game swirling, I was going to repost the long Bioshock ramble I wrote for my old blog back in 2015. Then I read through it and realized that I both don’t agree with some of it anymore (especially on the heels of a recent replay of Bioshock Infinite) and have more to say than I originally put down.

So here’s a remastered, expanded and partially re-written review of all three Bioshock games.

Remember Bioshock? It’s back, in blog form.

(Full spoilers ahead)

After I played the demos, I was left wondering what direction Resident Evil Village (aka Resident Evil 8 or RE8) would take the series in: a revival of Resident Evil 4’s frenetic “action survival”? A continuation of Resident Evil 7’s horror emphasis? A retread of the over the top Hollywood nonsense that got the franchise into trouble with Resident Evil 5 and 6? Or something entirely new?

As it turns out, the answer is: “Yes.” RE8 isn’t so much the next Resident Evil as it is all of Resident Evil, past, present, and future, offered up in a selection box of bite-size chunks that taste great separately but don’t always sit well together.

Note: I’m going dark for the entire month of May while I undergo some fairly heavy treatment for my migraines. Blogging will resume some time in June.

This is going to need a bit of explanation for my non-gamer readers.

In 2017 Resident Evil VII: Biohazard (which I’m going to refer to from this point on as simply Resident Evil 7 or RE7) came out and restored the venerable Resident Evil franchise to something approaching its former glory. Having established the modern survival horror genre back on the Playstation 1 and then reaching a second apotheosis with the “action survival” reinvention of Resident Evil 4, the series started to go downhill with Resident Evil 5, which took things even further in the action direction; while a fun romp, especially in co-op, it pretty much completely abandoned all pretense of horror. Then the series went totally off the rails with Resident Evil 6, a ridiculous Micheal Bay-esque spectacle that’s more or less universally reviled. Throw in a glut of spin-offs that received mixed-to-negative reception, and you’ve got a franchise in trouble.

Capcom needed to do something drastic to right the ship, and that something was RE7, a return to the series’ horror roots that was critically acclaimed in general and won over most of the hardcore fans after some initial skepticism. It also, helpfully, sold like gangbusters. Resident Evil is back, baby! It’s good again!

I am primarily a fan of Resident Evil 7, not of the franchise as a whole. I played RE3, 4 and 5 when they came out, as well as some of the beloved Gamecube remake of the first game, and while I liked them well enough, I never got infected with the Resident Evil virus the way a lot of people did. Silent Hill was always my horror gaming jam.

Until RE7. I absolutely love RE7. I think it’s the best horror game of the modern era. That’s why I’ve been a bit nervous about the upcoming sequel.

At some point I’ll have to do a blog about my love of Subnautica, an underwater exploration/survival/crafting/base building game. I think it’s one of my favourite games of all time, and I’ve been eagerly waiting for developers to look at its popularity (not to mention financial success) and start copying it. There are many craft-and-survive games out there, but most take place in randomly-generated environments that can’t match Subnautica’s meticulously hand-crafted alien ocean.

This is all a preamble to explain both why I was really looking forward to Breathedge--described by many as “Subnautica in space”--and why I ended up dropping the game in disappointment very quickly.

There are many ways one could describe Days Gone, the open world survival game from developer Bend that came out for the PS4 last year. “The video game equivalent of a Nickelback song” would be one way. “The direct to DVD knock off of The Last Of Us” would be another. Both of these are completely accurate, but I prefer to compare the game not to music or other video games, but to food. Days Gone is a big cake that looks delicious on the outside, but is severely underbaked on the inside. With each bite the problem becomes more and more apparent, until eventually you take another look at that fabulously-decorated exterior and see the dead cockroach that you somehow failed to notice at first glance.