Hello my friends. Been awhile since i've put up a blog, but as you all know free time is something I don't get alot of. haha But, right now, at the very moment I am drinking tea and musing over two things: the latest Silent Hill addition and just general gaming itself.

Ok, so lets bein with modern day gaming. For those that grew up with games, you can probably relate to how much games have changed. But for me one thing has changed the way we play games forever: achievements/trophies.

Now, when they were first released on the 360, I thought the idea was a work of genius, you were given points for meeting certain criteria on a game you were cureently playing. You were given a reward for all your hard work you put into that 100g task.

I, of course, fell pray to the craze and began trying my best to collect as many trophies as I possibly could. My life was consumed by all things achievement related -hell, I didn't even have my 360 online, so no one but me could see them anyway, but it didn't matter because it was good to know in myself I could get these achievements- and it got to the point where I actually went... "wait a minute, why is my entire life being consumed by this?"

These days I'm not affected by trophies or achievements, I do still put the game on the hardest difficulty and do all the pointless little tasks they have to offer, but I'm not as consumed by the idea as I once was.

The point I'm getting at here is, if you think back to the old days when trophies didn't exist, you weren't under that constant spell of trying to unlock these points for games, and you just enjoyed the game for what it was --stomp on 30 grunts while doing a backflip *30g*-- and were free to enoy everything the game had by your terms.

I know alot of people that buy really crap games, just because they know they have easy achievements and can boost their point score. This to me is someone who is dominated by the point system and is overlooking the joys of games themselves.

To summerize: the idea of trophies and achievements is a brilliant one, no doubt about it. But when it gets to the stage when your buying "Barbie: the game" to get an easy 1000g, I think it's time to relise the game is playing you.

Now onto Silent Hill: Downpour. This game has managed to single-handedly take over my life this past week. After barley managing to find a copy in my small town I put it on for 4 hours and wrote a review of what I thought of the game. Most of my opinions on that review remain, but after playing it for the second time I've found things in this game I feel need to be said further.

The game is developed by Vatra, another western games developer taking on the task of trying to fill Team Silents work were so many others have failed. But their shorcomings means Vatra have managed to pull out most of the punches.

I feel I need to talk about this game, because of just how close they came to creating a Silent Hill game worthy of following on the series since 4. The only 2 things I could find wrong with the game was the "combat" (always been a problem with the series anyway) and the overall quality with the game.

The game basically suffers from some pretty serious frame-rate and graphical inconsistancies, such as draw distance (Ironic due to the game being surrounded by fog.)

But lets avoid talking about the problems with the game --as my review points out the faults-- I'm here to talk about its brilliance.

The atmosphere in the town has been nailed. It's very, very close to the "Team Silent" atmosphere, and has a very SH2 esque feel to it. This was the main selling point for me. The start of the game you spend the first 1 1/2-2 hours just getting to Silent Hill, but once your left to explore the town and discover, not only the past of our protagonist, but the staggering amount of easter eggs and nods to the series. One easter egg in particular actually had me go "WOW" outloud. It's a joy to look round and you can spend hours doing it.

The story has gone for a much more traditional approach, as aposed to the all too clear story telling of previous western developed games. Sure, the story is clear as the latter, but there are elements of sheer madness which bring back the series to form. You'll go through certain parts of the game that take you to your past and it'll be some bad sh!t crazy area you have to get round -similar to the "nowhere" area of SH1. And there is a humour ending which is a cracker, too!

Research has clearly been done on this game. Past games have stumbled and fallen flat on its face for following the film, and to me a game that gets turned into a film, then the film is the basis for the new games just isn't right. Vatra have gone, right we have all this material to go off, so lets collaborate all the good bits from them and make a great game. As I said, some of the gameplay elements don't work so well, but for the most part they are great. The chase sequences used from Shattered Memories work well in this, the general mechanics from Homecoming work well, the atmosphere and feel of the game from SH2 work really well here, and you'll just about notice an element from every game in here which has been used. Great lengths of research show that they really did try to make a great game.

The side-missions are what steal the show for me though. 14 in total, and each one has you doing something to put a spirit at rest, uncover mystories, each one plays a very different part from the last and this for me is the fresh take the game needed.

Overall, I just want to give Vatra a well done, really. The series has been falling behind for nearly a decade now and this is the first sign of the series climbing from the ashes again. Hopefully Vatra make another SH game and make it a much more polished one, because this was so close to being a huge hit in my eyes. With abit of brushing up on the techincal issues and some better monster design this would have been a 9/10 all the way. But it's crept up as an 8/10 for me now. Can't get enough of it. :)