Games Inbox: Silent Hill PS1 remake, Spyro The Dragon re-review, and WipEout Omega Collection for cheap. I think a possible reason why Sony are rushing out a PlayStation 5 can be found in the. Could a NEW Silent Hill Remaster be possible? Cut in Silent Hill 4. Release it on PS4, Xbox One and PC and name it 'Silent Hill Origins Collection' and i guess maybe throw in Silent Hill: Origins as a downloadable. Plus a Final Fantasy 7 Remake would be A LOT harder to make than a Silent Hill 1 remake due how much data FF7 had which.
In an era where backwards compatibility has either been completely abandoned or stripped away via revised hardware, HD remasters make for an excellent alternative: why not take the games of yesteryear, port them over to current-generation consoles and make the most of precision high-definition visuals, higher frame-rates, cleaner artwork and improved texture filtering? In titles such as the and remasters, we've seen how, with careful nurturing, original PS2-era artwork can shine when rendered in high definition.There's no reason why the Silent Hill HD Collection couldn't have joined the ranks of those highly acclaimed titles, but unfortunately it's a deeply disappointing release - and the game's fanbase is at all. There's actually an argument that the first game in the collection - Silent Hill 2 - has its unique atmosphere diminished in the transition to high definition.
This is a game that is defined by its lo-fi visuals, where detail that isn't obscured by the thick, murky darkness is blended away to certain extent by an intentionally aggressive grain filter.The original artists at Konami would have built their artwork around this presentation, and the net result is that the HD version is unintentionally compromised as a result - the lack of texture detail in some areas becomes over-exposed in a way that was never intended by Konami's artists, and the game has a pin-sharp, pristine look entirely at odds with the ambience generated by the original release. Elsewhere, other effects (such as water) look fundamentally broken.Just as bad - if not worse - is the way in which the game's fog effects have been handled in both Xbox 360 and PlayStation versions of the HD Collection. Thin, wispy and insubstantial as opposed to thick and cloying, the look of the outdoor scenes is fundamentally transformed, with far-off detail that should never have been seen now painfully visible. It's almost as though complete layers of fog are now omitted from the overall presentation, meaning that the sense of real volume to the effect is now fundamentally lacking.To illustrate the complaints levelled at the work, here's how the Xbox 360 version of the game compares up against the original PlayStation 2 version running on a PS3 via full backwards-compatibility.
A is also available, as well as a - not that there's actually much to tell them apart in terms of image quality.' Silent Hill 2 is a rare example of an HD remaster that is actually less satisfying to play than the original PlayStation 2 version of the game.' At a basic level, conversion-smith Hijinx has opened out the field of view to accommodate a 16:9 presentation, and used original PS2 artwork assets in their entirety - little or no work appears to have been carried out to ensure they look good when rendered in HD. Aside from typography and UI elements, there is very little evidence that there has actually been any kind of actual 'remastering' of original artwork at all - a far cry from the kind of extensive touch-up work carried out, for example, by Just Add Water with its superb.
Indeed, sometimes we get the impression that textures are actually being omitted - for example, the ground frequently looks bare compared to the PS2 game.The original Silent Hill games ran on hardware that didn't enjoy the benefits of hardware anti-aliasing and it appears that Hijinx hasn't made any effort to introduce it here. Resolution is confirmed at native 720p, but there's no evidence of any edge-smoothing as such. It's more than a little disappointing when directly compared with Bluepoint's work on the Metal Gear Solid HD Collection, where both MGS2 and its sequel flowed smoothly at 60 frames per second with multi-sampling anti-aliasing adding greatly to the quality of the overall presentation.Another disappointment concerns the video cinematics. Hijinx appears to have had no access to high-quality assets, so clumsy upscaling has been performed on the original videos, and in the process the aspect ratio has been shot to hell - expanded sideways in order to fill the 16:9 screen. These FMVs segued into gameplay almost perfectly in the original PS2 title, but the jump from muggy, badly blown-up video to ultra-pristine HD is very jarring on 360 and PS3.Where there has been a genuine attempt to refresh the game is in the inclusion of new voice acting, re-recorded from scratch with new talent for both Silent Hill 2 and its sequel. Opinion is somewhat divided, but the good news is that Silent Hill 2 offers players the choice between both renditions.Bizarrely, the same choice is not afforded to players of the remastered Silent Hill 3, where only the re-recorded voices are an option. It's a frustrating inconsistency between the two games and an inexplicable decision certain to annoy the Silent Hill fanbase.
It's a shame because, in a great many other respects, the HD version of Silent Hill 3 works rather well. Konami significantly upgraded the engine in the original game, allowing for higher-quality models, improved animation and more detailed artwork.Freed from the resolution constraints of the original hardware, the artwork has much more room to breathe and often looks quite impressive running at native 720p.
While the remastering work is as basic as it is in Silent Hill 2, there's never really the sense that the original vision of the developer is being compromised - the thick grain filter of the previous game is gone, for example, and while the fog implementation remains an issue, the fact is that it is deployed in far fewer situations in the sequel and isn't a fundamental element of the game's visual make-up this time around.Here's how Silent Hill 3 looks compared between the original PS2 game and its PS3 counterpart. As with the previous comparison we also have an, plus an.' With Silent Hill 3, Konami significantly upgraded the engine, allowing for higher-quality models, improved animation and more detailed artwork, leading to a more successful HD port.' Performance is an area in which the Silent Hill HD Collection has also received plenty of criticism, specifically from PlayStation 3 owners. The original PS2 titles operated with a 30 frames-per-second cap but were prone to dropping frames. However, in our tests the Xbox 360 version acquitted itself well, adhering to the same 30FPS limit as the original game and providing an absolutely rock-solid level of performance throughout.Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the PlayStation 3 game.
Silent Hill 2 Ps4
Similar to the other versions, v-sync is engaged but, for reasons unknown, frame-rate is completely unlocked. This results in a wildly varying performance level that changes at any given point - frames rendering either at 16.67ms or at 33.33ms, providing an inconsistent experience. Adding to the problem is the 4GB HDD install (yes, a mandatory install for two PS2 ports). Remarkably, reading in data from the hard drive appears to impact frame-rate during gameplay, resulting in a perceptible dip in performance when background assets appear to be streaming into memory.The result is that while average frame-rates are at their highest on PlayStation 3, the experience is deeply unsatisfactory, manifesting as a near-constant judder with many annoying pauses - something that is completely alien to original Silent Hill gameplay.One of the more curious elements behind the Silent Hill controversy is the delay in fixing issues brought to light by the gaming community. Remarkably, there's already been a patch for the US PlayStation 3 version, which apparently does very little at all (our UK version hasn't asked to be updated thus far) and, certainly, the notion of introducing a frame-rate cap shouldn't be too difficult - after all, it's already present on the Xbox 360 version of the game.' An unlocked frame-rate in combination with frequent stutter makes PS3 performance jarring and inconsistent.
The games feel worse to play than the PlayStation 2 originals.' The real question though is just how nobody at Hijinx HQ noticed this glaring difference between the two SKUs before gold masters were sent off. It's also equally difficult to imagine how most of the other glaring bugs made it through the quality control mechanisms of both Konami and the platform holders. It boggles the mind how the PS3 version's hard-drive-induced frame-rate drops, along with sections of out-of-sync audio, could have made their way into the final game in the first place.The lacklustre implementation of the fog in the two games is a little more understandable, but only up to a point. Transparency effects on the current-generation consoles are relatively expensive to implement. By comparison, the PS2 is a bandwidth monster, with the benefit of operating at a much lower resolution.
That said, we have to remember that GPU resources elsewhere are hardly being taxed - these games utilise low-poly models by today's standards and the original textures would need to have been crammed into just 4MB of video RAM.
For a game that never released and a Playstation-only demo for said game that now un-exists, there’s been a sudden rush of (mostly) good news regarding on PC. No, not for the game itself, because that ship has long since sailed. But if you were enraptured by the spirit of the whole hullabaloo, there’s a lot of neat bonus projects suddenly at your disposal.If you’re not familiar, let’s travel back to 2014: Konami released a game demo on Playstation called that was a mysterious journey through a looping location and a slowly disintegrating narrative wherein horror slipped through the cracks of time itself. It turned out to be a teaser for an upcoming Silent Hill sequel called, obviously, Silent Hills. The Hideo Kojima game fell apart when he and Konami had a very bad break-up, and later the demo was itself removed from the Playstation Store, essentially removing it from ever being playable again, which resulted in modders and developers making their own fan versions for posterity.
People really love this game that doesn’t exist, and I’m one of them.The first of today’s Silent stories is a bit of a bummer, but it has a positive twist at the end, I promise.A 17-year-old game-maker named sunk 180+ hours into a PC fan remake of the demo, where he rebuilt the entire PS4 demo in Unreal, and was close to finishing this remake/port of the now un-gettable mini-game. That’s when a very P.T. Event occurred: a spooky call in the night!“I got a phone call that I was expecting at about 5 am from someone who worked at Konami. He essentially told me that he was very sorry for being the bearer of bad news, but I would have to take down my remake,” Qimsar wrote. “I was told that he and many other people at Konami saw and really liked my remake, but legit due to legal issues that were out of his or anybody else’s control really, he had to ask me to take down my remake project.”Via a very cute/honest post on, it turns out the shutdown isn’t all doom and gloom, all things considered.
Qimsar is getting a bunch of merch (sure, why not?) but also an offer for a possible internship opportunity with Konami, that he hopes will turn into a job.This is not the first time that a P.T. PC remake has ended. Folks just love making remaking that demo, don’t they?This brings us to the mod that went live on Thursday.
Built as a tribute to Silent Hills, Claustrophobia is exactly what its title implies. You are drawn to a condemned apartment complex to unveil its long forgotten story and explore its tight halls filled with unnerving creaks and squeaks. Mannequins taunt you at every corner, walls turn inward and the layout seems impossible. Created by Supernath97, the mod notes go out of their way to remind you that, yes, it is supposed to be this dark and, no, the monsters are not killable.There’s a teaser here. Finally, you might have missed a book release a few months back that I kept meaning to write up here at RPS, and now is as good a time as any to mention it.
Joel Couture from did an entire ebook about P.T. And he treats the entire production as a ghost investigation, of sorts. Couture looks into why the demo grabbed people so strongly and what happened to make the very real Silent Hills into a very dead project. There are digs at Konami and celebrations of Hideo Kojima and honestly that’s about all I’m looking for in literature these days. Hopefully the book can explain why all these games are about (s) but all of these places are infuriatingly loud all of the time, with the sound of flesh and gears grinding against regretful memories.
More like Cacophonous Hills, am I right?You can check out P.T.:A Video Game Ghost Story and Couture’s other book (on Undertale).