ARTICLE: Silent Hill: Revelations 3D & Why Games To Films Don't Always Work

Welcome to Silent Hill.... Again.

I am a big fan of Silent Hill and when I say, Silent Hill, I mean the games not the film - and when I say the games I mean the first, well ... three - and when I say the first three I mean, Silent Hill 2.

It must be said that Silent Hill 2 was one of the greatest games I've played - mainly because it understood that it wasn't a town, it was a state of mind. Silent Hill doesn't exist - it's where you go to be judged. Never before had the ending of a game hit me with such an emotional shock that it made me reconsider the hours and hours I'd invested beforehand with this character. It was amazing,  however, the rest of the games (Homecoming, Downpour etc. which I've played but never reviewed simply because they are so bad I don't want to relive the experience) have failed to reach the heady heights.

The first Silent Hill was great but more a bag of ideas than an amazing game, if you go back to play it again (you can download from PSN store) you'll see how awful the controls are, the voice acting and all that, but the right feeling was there. It could be said that the first Silent Hill film was similar. It had the right idea, it was a mixed bag of Silent Hill 1 and 2, it just failed because it wasn't scary, there was poor acting and it failed to compel. Visually it worked, but there was no real depth. Why they didn't take the story from Silent Hill 2 is beyond me - and it looks like Silent Hill Revelations is a film adaptation of Silent Hill 3 therefore completely skipping over the best game of the series. Very strange.

There's the running argument that games into films just don't work. The main reason is because you can't simply transfer the ideas to a big screen. Silent Hill works as a game because you invest a lot of time into the people, you are truly scared of dying so you don't have to restart from the last save point, you slowly reveal what happens, and to fit in this process into 90 minutes when it usually takes 9 hours or so is tough, especially when people are so concerned about taking the best bits when Silent Hill works best as a slow-burner, with the pay-off's being more story based than 'monster' based. It's not the monsters that scare you, it's the lead-up and anticipation, it's the humans and their motives.

Silent Hill, like all good horror, knows that these monsters, this world, is just an extension of the psyche of the protagonist but the film made it seems like it was a ghostly alternate dimension or something. It just didn't work.

So we come to Revelations where the main pull is that it's in 3D. Unfortunately, I'm going to the cinema to see it, same as every new Silent Hill game that comes out I have to buy and complete - full well knowing that it will be shit, but there's this hope, this glimmer, that maybe I might be able to revisit that Silent Hill I love and detest at the same time, but every time I'm disappointed.

This trailer speaks volumes in that there's again no depth, but looks great

REVIEW: Game Of Thrones 14 Minute Teaser

Don't you love Sean Bean? Didn't you think he was awesome as Boromir? Imagine if there was a bit more, perhaps a TV series, where he was playing someone like Boromir? Let's call it "Game of Thrones" and let's release the first 14 minutes. Oh, go on then.

The HBO series based upon the George R. R. Martin novels and is a battle of power for who should take over the kingdom. A medieval Sopranos apparently. The series even has it's own language developed for some of the characters and is rumoured to be the next big HBO series that will blow everything else out of the water.

I'm not too hot about the writers/producers Benioff and Weiss since Benioff wrote the screenplay for Troy and X-Men Origins: Wolverine but also adapted The Kite Runner quite successfully. However, it depends how closely they stick to the hugely popular fantasy series which I really know very little about. So coming in at this without much knowledge I watched the opening 14 minutes of Game Of Thrones and thought I'd tell you what I think. I would say Spoilers but you're going to find this out as soon as you watch it, so it doesn't exactly ruin anything.

It looks brilliant. The opening scene in the snow is paced smoothly and the occult/horror side of it I really didn't expect. The tense action at the beginning reveals very little but you can tell it's going to be a dark affair. The last seven minutes is on Sean Bean and his family, which seem to be very close (perhaps too close?) as he sets an example for his son. The poor ten year old boy watching a violent spectacle needs to know this because 'the winter is coming'. It offers up very little, but teases well, who are these strange mythical creatures everyone is suddenly scared of? What happens in Winter? The set and look of the piece still has to step away from Black Adder / poor man's Lord of the Rings but I'm sure it will. It all looks good so I'm hoping that once this airs on Sky Atlantic we'll be watching some great British talent doing some cool fantasy stuff until The Hobbit comes out.

Rating: 9/10