Admittedly, I’m a bit of a Silent Hill fanatic. I live for its twisted world of macabre creatures and bizarre plots. I currently own all the Silent Hill games despite its recent shortcomings in the recent installments in the series. Each time I pick up a Silent Hill game, I’m always striving to find that same dread I got when I wandered the streets of snowy-foggy Silent Hill and heard the radio spring to life with white noise for the first time. When I played Silent Hill 1-3, I was so freaked out by the imagery, I developed complicated system of turning the lights on and off when I made a mad dash for the safety of my bed and blankets. But, after Silent Hill 3, I haven’t quite found the Silent Hill that has the same terrorizing effect on me. Sadly, even Silent Hill: Shattered Memories has not recaptured the horror I desperately want back in the series.


Silent Hill: Shattered Memories is a retelling of the original Silent Hill plot as first seen on the Playstation. Harry Mason stars in Shattered Memories, awaking from a car accident to find his young daughter, Cheryl, missing from the wreck. Harry begins his search for her in the strange town of Silent Hill. In Shattered Memories, the basic plot structure of the original Silent Hill is still there. The town itself, however, does not hold the same amount of occult horror as it did in the first game. Silent Hill is much like a modern mid-western town during a large snowfall. Everything is caked in snow and the streets are full of vacant cars and void of people. However, during his trek in the snow, Harry is sucked into a nightmarish winter hell where strange creatures relentlessly pursue him. Throughout his exploration of Silent Hill and search of Cheryl, Harry is plagued by doubt and confusions about his life and his daughter.


The game is split up into three parts: Silent Hill, Frozen Nightmare World, and The Worst Psychologist Ever. In Silent Hill, Harry travels through a snowy town interacting with residents and solving puzzles that ultimately brings him closer to Cheryl. The areas have a soft quietness to them, which is both calming and strangely creepy because the locations have a strikingly real quality to them. These qualities are what make the town of Silent Hill such an interesting place to explore.


The Nightmare Mode throws Harry into a frozen landscape filled with humanoid monsters that he cannot kill and all he can do is run in terror. In this world, everything is encased in ice except Harry and his enemies. While the areas are visually chilling, it’s incredibly hard to take in when all Harry can do is flee and hide from enemies. So, the effect is completely lost in the frantic blur of the chase. During these chases, Harry must complete inane tasks in order to move forward. Harry does have the option to hide in certain areas (much like Haunting Ground and Clock Tower), but this option is so ineffective that it feels pointless to ever do it. In this mode, players can look forward to getting lost and dying frequently if they tend to have a bad sense of direction or memory (Yo).


Lastly, we have Dr. Kaufman’s office where he asks the player a number of psychological questions. This is part of the game where it “starts to play you”. By answering these questions and completing tests with the doctor, it changes the world of Silent Hill to build situations based on what the player answered. However, Dr. Kaufman is terrible psychologist. He talks at length about your faults, criticizes everything about your character, and during my playthrough focused WAY too much on sexuality. I understand the concept of putting sex in a game to be edgy or taboo, but after about the fifteenth time talking about the character’s sexuality it becomes mundane and ridiculous.


Where I was excited to see this world of Silent Hill re-visioned, it is loaded with disappointment. Shattered Memories doesn’t hold the chilling fear that the other Silent Hill’s have some grasp on. The monsters are uninspired geometrically shaped meat-puppets that shriek and blindly chase Harry. The Nightmare Mode does offer some interesting effects with the ice, but with the monsters always snapping at Harry’s heels, it’s impossible to take it in unsettling nature of the surroundings (like a car being suspended in a huge block of ice).


Despite the game lacking the certain Silent Hill scary bite, it does bring interesting characters, game mechanics, and plot. Digging into Harry’s past and discovering his true identity is a compelling point to trudge through the tedious Nightmare Mode. Fans may be happy to see some familiar names and faces pop up throughout the game as new characters (I know I was).


The game mechanics are exactly how a survival horror game should be on the Wii. With the wii-mote, the player has control over Harry’s flashlight. It’s a small detail, but it really adds a fun element to the game that really draws in and makes the player feel like they are a part of Silent Hill. Along with the flashlight, the majority of Harry’s actions revolve around his phone. From it, he receives and makes calls and text messages of the bizarre and disturbing kind, take pictures, and access maps. With the wii-mote, the player can choose to have the sound from the phone come through the wii-mote speaker like it were a really clunky cell phone. Another interesting feature is interacting with the monsters in the Nightmare Mode. In order to fling off the monsters that cling to Harry, the player has to throw the wii-mote and the nunchuk to whatever side the monster is on Harry. A bit of a warning to those who are frantic in horror games, you may run the risk of smacking yourself in the face (I’m not admitting to anything).


Silent Hill: Shattered Memories is a game that is loaded with great ideas and incredible failings. The new take on the horror of Silent Hill is an interesting one, but it still is not the Silent Hill that everyone (including myself) is looking for. Perhaps the next re-visioning or the next game in the series will have what it takes to put the horror back in Silent Hill. Until then, I can walk to my bed with the lights off without the trepidation of some grotesque creature trailing behind me.

GO GO GO  GO

DAGON DAGON DAGON CAN U SEND 6000 TO LAGOS NIGERIA


The ol' LJ was lacking in Lovecraftian references. Thanks samjolnir! :)

That's right. Cthulhu and bacon is all you're seeing in this LJ anymore.


...apparently.

check out more of the comic here

Alright, so, my childhood got badass thanks to some guy off of DeviantArt:



Did yours?

EDIT: A Pan Pony?

Neato!

"Take a picture of yourself right now.

Don't change your clothes, don't fix your hair...just take a picture.

Post that picture with NO editing. (Except maybe to get the image size down to something reasonable.)

Post these instructions with your picture."

So, I've been meaning to update this for a while now.

I finally managed to watch all the Evil Dead (including Army of Darkness) movies. Now, my question being, why the hell are these so amazing? For the first Evil Dead film, I can appreciate the female antagonists and tree rape scene. Don't see that too often. However, the rest of the movie was pretty repetitive and fairly dull. The second Evil Dead had some redeeming qualities, but nothing really memorable. Evil Dead: Dead 'Til Dawn was the best of the three as far as I'm concerned. A little amount of cheese, a fair amount of gore added up to a decent horror flick. But the third one? Ugh. It was hard to watch. I don't care about the cult classic status this movie may have, I got was generally wondering when this thing was going to be over. As far as I'm concerned, I don't care what that Big Chinned actor ever puts out. Man with the Screaming Brain and Bubba-HoTep gave me a sour taste for what Bruce Campbell is capable of. Granted, those were later in his career, but they were wretchedly bad. Basically, I don't know why people were telling me the Evil Dead movies were the best horror movies ever made or why people were so shocked that I -- renowned zombie film lover that I am-- had not seen these flicks. I'm surprised more people haven't seen Dead Alive at the mention of these movies.

Dead Alive does it right. Where Evil Dead has it's cheesy one liners and bizarro scenes, Dead Alive topples it over. Dead Alive is slippery with gore and has some crazy ridiculous dialog. It has it's big chinned actor and a fairly large cast of strange characters. Plus, it's a movie that can always gross me out. Granted it's at the custard scene and I think custard straining through teeth just grosses me out, but still.

Also...zombie film. :P



I did end up seeing the Signal. I love the concept of this movie and I'm fairly disappointed how it piddled out at the end. A movie revolving around three different individuals dealing with the same problem: A signal that turns people into murderous savages. It starts off brutal with the signal that re-wires people to kill anyone. Then, the story switches to a very strange dark comedy seeing the other side-effect of the signal; it makes people utterly insane. I can handle it. I dig it for the most part. The scenes fit. But the last story is leading up to an ending you know is coming or at least suspect. But as grizzly as the film begins, it yelps out a quiet dull ending.

It's disappointing.

I want to see how good horror pans out now a days. I want to see something that quenches my gorehound side as well as putting out a decent story. Mirrors disappointed me in reviews so I didn't bother paying to see it. Midnight MeatTrain was the last movie I saw in theaters that was horror related. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't amazing either. I don't know if I could watch it again. Seeing it once was good for me, I think.

But what I'm looking forward to and praying that it isn't five levels of suck ... Repo!: The Genetic Opera . If you weren't privy to one of the dozens of IMs I sent out when I saw this ... Here's the video that sold me on this movie.



Catchy, sexy song....cutting up Paris Hilton (which I didn't believe until I IMDB'd her)...harvesting organs. What's not to like?

I would love to see at least something new like Repo! popping up more often rather than Friday The 13th being remade with Tara Reid.


Anyway, that's all I have. I could ramble on and on about horror, but I've gotta head to work.

I'm never going in the fucking water

ever

again.

There's several reasons why I don't finish the three games that are plaguing the gaming shelf with their presence. Silent Hill Origins is one of the few that I just can't seem to stomach playing for long. I mean, don't get me wrong. I'm a huge, HUGE Silent Hill fangirl. I love the Silent Hill series including it's bastardized fourth game no matter how much I say otherwise, but Origins is one hard game to swallow.

The premise is great. Most of the game is fan service; blatant fan service. The begin of the game, Travis--our scruffy trucker hero--finds the reoccurring character of Alessa in her house while it's burning to the ground. THE ORIGINS OF SILENT HILL. WHAT ARE THE ODDS. Which, at that point, I'm grinning like an idiot and proclaiming loudly to anyone in the room at what's going on.

"That's the girl from the first and third game. OH MY GOD THIS IS SO COOL! I'M A TRUCKER!"

You go through the same song and dance that you do in every Silent Hill; the hospital. At this point, I don't know how annoying the game is going to be, so I'm eating this up. The nurses, the story, the new battle system; it's all golden to me. The game itself looks a little iffy. Although, I hardly let so-so graphics get me down. For one, it's a port of a PSP game. Second, it's Silent Hill. There's still the other characters that I know and love show up. Lisa, the bloody faced nurse from the first Silent Hill making a cameo. The plot is kind of out there. I can understand that the protagonist is supposed to be Joe EveryNiceGuy, but if I saved a girl from a fire and then I got sucked into a world full of demon nurses, I could probably be okay with skipping out to town. But, once again, it's Silent Hill and plot usually isn't really top. This game is pretty much the same in regards to the other Silent Hills: Filled to the gills with cheesy dialog, running into random people that soon leave you alone in the monster filled town, and dead girls. So, I make it out of the hospital level and I'm ready with bated breath for the next area of awesomeness.

Next area I'm starting to notice more of a trend. I can't see a damn thing. I understand darkness is supposed to be scary, but there's a certain point where I have to turn up the brightness on my TV because I can't see anything that's in the small beam of the flashlight. Oh well, right? It starts to just go downhill from there.

The next level I'm starting to see a trend. There's a lot of enemies that are somewhat tricky to run past. The game seems to encourages you to fight seeing there's a plethora of weapons lying around. Silent Hill 0 almost has a Dead Rising vibe to it, seeing as it lets you pick up a lot of miscellaneous items like toasters, meat hooks, katanas. The problem being between the lack of light, the weapons breaking too quickly, and the loudness of the music making it impossible to hear if any monsters are in the area according to your radio make the combat frustrating. So, I'm in a dark hallway, squinting at the screen to see if there is something in front of me, then Travis gets throttled by a weird armless creature with a defined asscrack.

I'm serious, whoever came up with the enemy design may have been molested in a highschool gym shower or something traumatic that involved buttocks. I didn't think I'd ever had to write about something like this, but the enemies in the game are laughable. Yeah, there are nurses and scary dolls, but the others are just ridiculous. Asses aren't scary in most cases. When connected to a zombie like creature that proceeds to go at Travis like a Re-Dead from Zelda: Ocarina of Time, it's hard not to either laugh or be completely insulted. Although, the best has to be the obese skinless dogs with deflated heads. I can't seem to find any pictures on them, but this is the best I can do:




The first thing I say I soon as I see this creature, "Is that a gigantic ass?" All I see is this giant ham of an ass down a dark hallway that Travis' flashlight happens to catch.


The game gets crazily frustrating from that point on. The controls work against me as I'm still in the mind set of "MUST CONSERVE ITEMS." I don't relate Silent Hill to a melee game. I always think of it as a survival horror game. Always. I don't care if the game gives me approximately one hundred pieces of wood to kill enemies with. Not only that, but it's damn near impossible to kill something at some points. I understand the scalpel isn't going to do a lot to a giant ass-dog, but when I have to go through about five weapons before the thing drops, there's a problem.

Basically, the only reason why I haven't given up on this game is because I can't stop playing it to save face and I can't bring myself just to YouTube the rest of the game and sleep well at night about it.

I mean, don't get me wrong. I still love Silent Hill and I'm still really excited about Silent Hill 5 to show up, but this wasn't the game I was expecting. Maybe that's a good thing, but if this is the direction Silent Hill is headed, I may be a bit hesitant to follow.

So, I'm out for a walk tonight and its nice afternoon to do it. It's about seventy degrees out, gentle breeze, somewhat cloud. Beautiful day, really. I'm walking with Brandon and we're talking about games, moving, and just general stuff really.

We both happen to see a few kids off in the distance. They're laughing real loud and doing something that I can't see. Point being, I don't really care what they're doing. But one of the boys catches a glance of us walking by and looks notably enthusiastic to see us.

"Hey!" he shout as he's already running up. "Wanna see something gross?"

Instantly, I'm thinking some kind of A) Dead animal B) Feces or C) Combination of. The boy doesn't have anything in his hands though, so I think we both curious so we stopped walking to see what he was up to.

At this point, he rams his fingers down his throat and starts to dry heave. He sputters, doesn't look phased, and does it again, this time resulting with some red-orange vomit. He looks all proud when he looks back up at the both of us.

Both of us are not really disgusted. I mean, we have the internet. This kid is small potatoes next to Japanese porn or Two Girls One Cup. He's not gross. We both generally confused.

His friends are pretty syked about it though. "Whoa! It looks like the Doritos you ate!" Which, after saying that, they did offer Doritos to us. Needless to say, we decline.

Then, Brandon asks this kid, "Why are you inducing vomit?"

The kid looks at him like he should understand more than anyone else and states rather matter-of-factly, "'Cause it's fun."

Kids these days. Are kids generally that bored?

Sorry, I don't really know what to say about this one.

...

After only two weeks of surviving the city sprawl that is Tokyo, I have some mixed feelings about being back in the states. While I do immensely enjoy seeing family and friends, there's a feeling of disappointment. This could possibly be that I live in a state with roughly 200,000 people and the city itself is basically dead after five o' clock in the afternoon. It upsets me that the return home felt more like a kick in the shorts than a welcome home hug.

When we arrived in Narita Airport, everyone was so quick to help and to do it with a friendly smile. I can't stress how mind boggling it was to see everything in an airport that could hold so many people, could be so clean. No trash, nothing out of place. Airport customer service was quick to get luggage off the plane, pile it up and help customers find their luggage by running up and asking their names to help find baggage.

On the flipside, returning to Chicago O'Hare airport, we have to wait about an hour for our baggage to finally get out of the carousel. When I asked directions to our gate, this women who wasn't doing anything in the information booth except smearing make-up over her jowls, told me in a smarmy voice to look at the floor for directions.

Maybe I miss the excitement of a breathing, thriving city. I think it was amazing to see that many people functioning. I can't even fathom the number of people we ran into. I don't even know if I want to. At points, drifting through a literal sea of people, I was terrified about being swallowed up or separated from Brandon or getting in someone's way. Despite not knowing the language, it was easy to get around the trains/subways without a lot of help from anyone but our maps. We only ran into one really packed train, but that was our fault for going during rush hour.

The language barrier is what really concerned me. While it was easy to go about Tokyo without knowing a great deal of Japanese, speaking to people was difficult. Or trying to read kanji? Forget it. Unless a place had an English menu or pictures, it was quite the shot in the dark. But, even without knowing their language, every restaurant we went into was more than happy to try to explain "free salad bar" without knowing English.

I felt a little let down getting home is all. It's probably just "I have to get back to work monday" blues, but at the same time...

Once again, don't get me wrong. I'm happy to be home. I missed our soft bed. I missed our normal eggs and bacon (seriously, Japan knows not how to make scrambled eggs or edible bacon). I missed our television shows, our games. I missed our friends. I missed understanding people. I missed how it didn't feel busy all the time.

Japan was an adventure, to say the least, but I'm not sure if I could leave my home for it. I mean, I could adapt. But the question is, would I want to?

So, I'm going to Japan.


You can track my zany adventures by going to my flickr account. Nothings up there yet, but we'll (Los Brandonalonas and I) be arriving on Saturday.

I might have a twitter account because I want to see how it works and I thought it would be neat to have up while we're around Japan.

If you have any suggestions on sights to see, drop me a comment, otherwise,

see you in the funny papers.


EDIT :

Twitter

Zombie Rats

fucking awesome