The Silent Hill movie tends to pop up on occasion when discussions about good videogame movies happen. The only problem with that is, when compared to everything else in the medium, even the best films based on games tend to be merely decent at best.

So no, I'm not some proponent of the Silent Hill flick. But if it makes you feel better, you can pretend that I am, I guess. As for the impending sequel, I'm not about to defend it. Heck no. After hearing the newest details from Shock Till You Drop, I am downright fearful of this project.

As you might recall, the screenwriter to be, Roger Avary, was sentence to a year in prison. Even so, it's sounding as if the film is still on. "We're just debating whether we can wait for him. He's writing the script for sure," says Silent Hill producer Don Carmody.

Director Christophe Gans likely won't be returning for the follow-up, but Carmody says "he's very happy to consult." According to Carmody, the story "is going to happen years later and the main character is much older and representative to the movie-going public which is in that age group."

"Silent Hill is not a blockbuster game like Resident Evil or the other games out there. It's a connoisseurs' game. It has its own, rabid fan base. You have to appeal not only to the gamers, you have to appeal to a wider audience. So we have to get some story in there that helps explain a bit more," he concludes.

There's no way this will turn out okay, is there?

Oh advertisers, you so crazy! A new commercial for Pringles has appeared that is both awesome and ludicrous at the very same time. It seems to be a rather impressive homage to survival horror games at first, with a surprisingly authentic Silent Hill atmosphere and a Resident Evil style HUD.

Then Lara Croft appears and starts getting sexy.

Apparently, this is what Pringles does now. It makes young ladies appear and start taking their cosplay clothes off in dark and sleazy rooms ... I must remember to pick some up the next time I go grocery shopping.

Konami has finally put a firm date on Silent Hill: Shattered Memories for the Wii -- December 8. How appropriate, considering the game's icy setting. 

If your arms tire out easily, but you still wanted to get your Silent Hill on, you'll have to wait a bit longer. The game is also slated to hit PlayStation 2 and PlayStation Portable, but those versions won't see release until sometime later. Yes, that's all of the info we have. Konami actually said they will be "following shortly." One week? A month? A year? The term "shortly" is relative. 

While you wait, you can hit the jump to check out character bios for the collection of malcontent weirdos that will appear Shattered Memories, straight from Konami.

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You don't often see Silent Hill at the center of a "games made me do it" controversy, but a thirty-five-year-old man claims that Konami's psychological horror series inspired him to break into a hospital basement and shut off the electricity. The man, identified only as Jan H., claims to have been in a state of psychosis and believed he was playing the game.

Jan infiltrated the basement of Sophia Hospital in the Netherlands last April, where he shut off the power and forced a blackout for forty-five minutes. People were trapped in elevators and doctors had to manually keep intensive care patients breathing. Fortunately, nobody was hurt. 

Amazingly, he was found not guilty in a trial last week as the court ruled Jan had "no idea of the true consequences of his deed." Jan claims that, during his warped state of mind, he believed that shutting off the hospital power would allow him to acquire a toothbrush as part of some convoluted Silent Hill puzzle. 

I don't even know what to say ...

Jeff Shiefelbein (the human pictured above) has been working on haunted houses -- which, in conversation, he simply refers to as "haunts" -- for 15 years. Inspired his family's love of Halloween, throwing elaborate holiday parties every year, Shiefelbein found his passion and creativity for making things go bump in night.

"It's not, obviously, like Christmas," he says of Halloween, "where you've got Santa Claus and you put up your decorations. [With] this you can be creative and come up with different things, different costumes. And I think that just kind of held onto me, and I just went from there. It's kind of what sparked my creativity to do this."

While Shiefelbein is hired year-round to revamp scare-attractions around the United States, his creative mind led him to start his own haunt, Sinister Pointe in Brea, California. This October, Sinister Pointe will be home to the Silent Hill Haunted Attraction, based on the videogames and film, in conjunction with Konami Digital Entertainment.

We caught up with Shiefelbein to see how he got hooked up with the Silent Hill franchise, and to find out just how many changes of underwear you should bring to Sinister Pointe.

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...for messing with my favorite videogame series.

Kidding. That was actually in bad taste, and here's why. Screenwriter Roger Avary (Pulp Fiction) is sitting in the slammer for causing a traffic accident in Southern California, says Comingsoon. The recently appointed Silent Hill 2 screenwriter plead guilty of gross vehicular manslaughter and drunken driving for a fatal accident that he caused last year. It was reported that he was driving over 100 mph. Drunk and that fast? That's scarier (and sh*ttier) than any horror game adaptation I've seen.

For those that aren't looking forward to the movie, this could be a blessing. This could actually delay the movie. I'm looking forward to the film, so I'm hoping that Avary will work from his cell in jail. They get pen and paper, right?

The Jeff Schleffelbein’s Sinister Pointe attraction venue in Orange County is getting a very Silent Hill makeover this Halloween, which we already knew about. The 10,000 square feet vacant movie theater will see all sorts of creepy nurses, Pyramid Heads and other scary things from the Silent Hill universe as they try to scare people into having heart attacks.

The haunted maze kicks off on October 2 and will last until October 31. It’ll be open from 7PM to 10PM on Weekdays and 7PM to 12AM on Weekends. There will also be a special media day for the event, and we are so sending Chad to this thing. Nothing better than hearing dolphin boy scream like a little girl.

Visit Sinister Pointe to get your tickets and hear creepy-but-not-really-creepy-at-all sound effects. So who’s going?

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Every week, features editor Anthony Burch discusses/monologues/rants about some aspect of game design or gamer culture that he finds interesting for his "Rev Rant" video series.

Have you played Edmund? This week's rant will probably make a bit more sense if you have (I'd also recommend Back Door Man, albeit for completely different reasons).

Even if you haven't, however, this rant deals with challenge of making sure, especially in regards to "artgames" like Edmund or Silent Hill 2, that the player's interpretational goals and the game's thematic ideas are in the same basic ballpark.

That sentence probably made no sense whatsoever. I'd recommend just watching the video, to be quite honest.

As far as videogame movies go, Silent Hill wasn't really that bad. In fact, for the thirst forty-five minutes, it was actually pretty fun, and if you allowed yourself to ignore the niggling issues only a purist fanboy could have and pretended that the "scary little girl" cliché wasn't being used, it was a decent enough flick.

Naturally, that cannot be accepted, so Hollywood is having another crack of the whip in an effort to make sure we get a truly despicable Silent Hill movie. That's right, Silent Hill 2 has officially been given the green light.

The news comes with word that screenwriter Roger Avary and producer Samuel Hadida have signed on to make the film. If all goes to plan, the movie will be shot next year by Davis Films once Resident Evil: Afterlife has successfully ruined everybody's lives. Davis Films is also working on the Return to Castle Wolfenstein movie.

This will doubtless be based on the Silent Hill 2 videogame, possibly with a returning Sean Bean looking for his wife. Silent Hill 2 is among my favorite games of all time, so I fear that my purist fanboy rage may not be contained for a second outing. We shall see. I am really not very hopeful that lightning can strike twice and we'll get yet another bearable videogame movie.

I see Silent Hill mobile games as one of those things that are just kind of there -- not really great games, but I'm a Silent Hill addict so I'm going to buy them anyway. KnowYourMobile has announced that Konami will release a third title in the SH Mobile series, coming our way in early 2010.

The adventure will be a point and click, alternating with shooting sections where you can take aim at all your favorite Silent Hell denizens. That's all we know for now, but we'll bring you more info on it as soon as we hear it. Are you, like me, such a SH fan that you'll pick this up when it comes out no matter what? Or do you avoid portable SH titles?

Silent Hill: Homecoming will not be released in Japan, Konami's official Web site has announced. The Silent Hill sequel, developed by American studio Double Helix and released in North America on September 30, 2008. Now, a year later, Konami has quietly announced that the expected Japanese version has been "suspended."

"Please look forward to future titles in the series," is all Konami can say in lieu of an actual explanation. This is the first update to the Japanese Homecoming site since November of 2008.

Frankly, I'm not surprised. Homecoming was bloody awful and perhaps the worst console-based Silent Hill game ever made. Yes, even worse than The Room, which happened to have its high points despite what everyone else thinks. If I were a Japanese Silent Hill fan, I'd consider myself very lucky that I dodged a bullet with this thoroughly dickless game.

Will Silent Hill ever be good again, I wonder?

I was going to wait for either Dale or Colette -- both of which are Silent Hill crazy, one of which is a musician -- to write about this. But both are on planes to Seattle for PAX, without Wi-Fi, and I just couldn't wait. 

GameStop is offering an 18-song soundtrack CD for Silent Hill: Shattered Memories for those that pre-order the title. The soundtrack is composed by series regular, AKira Yamaoka, and promises to be awesome. Silent Hill and soundtracks for pre-orders have been a staple of the series, dating back at least to the Silent Hill 3 soundtrack I snagged back in 2003. 

Troubling is GameStop's new ship date, November 3, which (if accurate) means the game may have been pushed back a tad. We'll check in with Konami to see what the situation is, but regardless of when the game hits shelves, good pre-order it remains good. 

[via GoNintendo]

Yeesh. If you haven't already seen it, here's a look at Konami's official box art for Silent Hill: Shattered Memories. The full version is in the gallery below, along with plenty of new screenshots and character renders, all fresh from gamescom 09. There's something unapologetically grim about that image, which might serve to make it my favorite Silent Hill box art ever. 

It pretty well manages to match the creepiness shown in the latest trailer, and If the spooky vibe achieved by everything we've seen so far translates well into the final game, this one looks to be worth checking out. It'll be available for nightmare inducing on Wii, PS2 and PSP later this year.

I got all excited when I went over the details of Konami's gamescom press conference today and saw that there was supposedly footage from Silent Hill: Shattered Memories for PSP (posted here), but watching the new video and seeing a prompt to press a white A button kind of gave away that this is still Wii footage. Oh well. It's still new footage, and since I ruin my shorts over anything Silent Hill-related, I've offered it up for your viewing enjoyment (and selfishly, my own).

The new trailer was also accompanied by more information about the psychological profiling system that Shattered Memories prides itself on. From the press release:

For instance, if a player dashes from location to location, the game will present different reactions from people and situations than if a more considered approach is adopted. Characters may appear more hostile, for example, and less willing to help with the game’s ongoing mystery of the hero’s missing daughter. Similarly, if the player comes across as overtly flirtatious or, at the other end of the scale, stand-offish and reserved, those they meet will dress differently, and also adjust their behavior.

I'm deeply interested in how far this system will go and how multiple playthroughs and different decisions will affect me as the player. The game is still due out later this year for Wii, PSP and PS2. If this is on your must buy list, what version do you plan on buying?

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