I never actually played any of the early Silent Hill games. Resident Evil was where I got my survival horror jollies, so I always took a spectator role when it came to Konami’s series of mindf--- masterpieces. I watched my roommate play through the first three titles and parts of four, and promptly lost the same amount, if not more, sleep than he did. Eternal Darkness made a good run, but Silent Hill pretty much owned the psychological terror/horror corner of gaming.

But it’s been a tad stagnant as of late. Origins were cool, but mostly retraced familiar ground, and 5 hit with a resounding thud. The team behind Origins opted for a different route with their latest take in the series, and chose to completely reimagine the first game in the Silent Hill series. The general outline and atmosphere are roughly the same, but the mechanics have been shifted from the tired action paradigm and translated into a more adventure based journey.

You’re hands are limited to a flashlight and, eventually a cell phone. The flashlight is perfectly tailored to the Wiimote, and is, basically, your only means of interacting with the environment. The environment was also semi interactive; at certain points I had to unzip mannequin jackets in pursuit of a key, and other times I had to pick up coke cans and shake them for, well, another key.

Anyway, what followed was an eerie adventure through the back roads of Silent Hill. I traveled empty streets, passed through seemingly abandoned stores, saw panicky messages written on bathroom walls, and encountered seemingly normal and slightly creepy residents of the sleepy town. Eventually, perhaps inevitably, things went totally nuts, and gremlin like creatures started stalking my path. The world broke down, blue filters enveloped the screen, and the evasion started taking a precedent over exploration. I needed to follow the GPS on my phone and get the hell out of there. I failed at this several times and had to shake the Wiimote to shed my attackers, but eventually I found my house and made it through the half hour demo.

Silent Hill differs from most survival horror games in one crucial area; you can’t attack anything. The occasional flair can be used to scare away your opposition and create a perimeter for defense, but cannot be used in an offensive manner. This changes the game considerably, and definitely makes the game have more of an adventure/exploration feel. It was a little easy to get lost and I wished I had a better sense of direction, but exploring the whole game myself and, eventually, finding the answers on my own was a rewarding experience.

The disturbing atmosphere is also thankfully present. Before my demo, I was told that the game would dynamically adjust to the decisions I made, and that the opposite would adjust, aesthetically, to my choices as the game pressed on. The beginning of the game also featured a psychological test, of sorts, where I had to answer questions like, “have you ever cheated on someone, “and, “do you think of other people during sex.” The iconic static noise of Silent Hill was also translated through a rather unconventional means; as my heath wore down, the screen became more ‘staticy,’ as if I was watching a VHS tape and the tracking and picture fidelity was decreasing.

Silent Hill: Shattered Memories is due out sometime in the fall.