Those who owned an original grey PlayStation back in the day will no doubt be familiar with Silent Hill, the survival horror series that went on to spawn a host of sequels as well as a questionable feature film of the same name. The series has had its ups and downs over the years, and many feel that it has lost much of what made it so great to begin with, but it looks like the newest instalment is set to bring back what gamers loved about the originals: the kind of tense, tortuous, genuinely horrible horror that makes you consider keeping the lights on at bedtime.
Don’t believe us? Check out these reaction videos from makers Konami.
Last week, a mysterious project known only as “P.T.” was revealed at the Gamescom conference in Cologne, Germany. Short for “playable teaser”, the demo was made available to download for PlayStation 4 immediately after it was unveiled, but little else was known about it.
As it turns out, P.T. was actually a brief snippet of the upcoming game Silent Hills, which is in development at Kojima Productions. Headed by industry legend and Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima with the help of, curiously, Hollywood director Guillermo del Toro (Pacific Rim, Pan’s Labyrinth et al), it was also revealed that the game’s protagonist will be voiced by and borrow the likeness of none other than Norman Reedus of The Walking Dead fame.
▼ No, seriously. Daryl will be in the next Silent Hill.
We tried the demo for ourselves over the weekend, and can confirm that it scared the pants off us. It’s also incredibly nasty, featuring a (talking) gore-covered paper bag, things that do much, much more than go bump in the night, and, a <spoiler> baby-type…thing left in a sink </spoiler>. If scares and unrelenting tension are your thing then you’re going to love it.
Konami has since released a series of reaction videos featuring supposedly everyday members of the public playing the P.T. demo for the first time. The videos also feature snippets of the game itself, which looks gorgeous (well, technically speaking anyway!), so if you haven’t had a chance to try it for yourself yet, check these out.
OK, so these are excitable teens/twentysomethings playing a horror game in front of a camera–hardly the best way to prove that your game is scary, we know. So how about these middle-aged ladies playing through the same demo?
Yup, that’ll do it.
P.T. is up on the PlayStation Store now as a free download. Play it alone in a darkened room with headphones on–if you get all the way to the end without jumping, ripping your headphones off, or checking over your shoulder at least once then you’re way braver than any of the RN24 team.
Source/screenshots: YouTube – Konami 573ch 1, 2