marylily2 submitted:

I found this quote and immediately saw an image in my mind of all the Silent Hill 2 characters, so I decided to actually make this picture. It’s silly really and wasn’t difficult to make but I hope you all enjoy it!

Its Fan Art Friday! Submit your Silent Hill fan art to be published on Silent Haven! If you have any Silent Hill VLOGs please submit those. We would love to see your art in action or hear your thoughts and stories!

Send in your image of what you think Pyramid Head might look like under his helmet!

rjbritton submitted:

my submission for PH without his helmet!

~RJBritton

courtney64 submitted:

My boyfriend as Pyramid Head and myself as Heather Mason for MangaNEXT 2012. Took several months to finish Pyramid Head but it was definitely worth it!

Silent Hill: HD Collection Review

Let me first start off by saying what I do here on Silent Haven is quite a service for Konami. There are many other Silent Hill fan sites like this blog that have just as much dedication and work just as hard as I do usually even harder. I feel that Konami has in recent taken for granted such fan sites and blogs like mine and lazily used them as an outlet for free advertising and marketing service. I feel that Konami is taking for granted all Silent Hill fans and not showing any sort of appreciation and effort for the fans that very loyally back one of their biggest franchises. I believe this because of the poor publishing, multiple delays without explanation and severe technical errors, mostly surrounding HD Collection.

Konami’s recent releases have really opened my eyes these last few months with their poor quality releases and their lack of marketing and communication with the people who give them butt loads of money… More importantly though is the disappointment I had after playing the re-release of 2 of my favorite games ever made. Because of the poor quality I continuously discovered as I played the HD Collection. It really showed me how lazy and careless businesses get when they make too much money. It becomes no longer about creative art, quality and customer service but all about about name and fame and the greens that come along with that. Even though it has pretty much already been heard by every reviewer how awful this game is, I will review it and let you know now that I give HD Collection a 4/10. There really is nothing good to say as all the good things have to do with the underlying original game created by the original team, but thats not what this review is about. This review is critiquing the HD remastered version, SH2/SH3 re-released for XBOX 360 and PS3. So here we go: 

The platform I played the HD Collection on was for XBOX 360. Luckily I got the better of the two ugly twins. I cant even imagine how much worse the PS3 version is with how bad the 360 version was for me. Starting Silent Hill two I noticed something before the game even started and that was “HiJinx Studio”. The name and logo alone made me go WTF? I actually had no idea who was involved in remastering these classics until this point… Upon investigating I found HiJinx to be amateur developers… Why would Konami put two of their classics in the hands of a team that had not done such very intricate work prior? Could it be this publisher was just being cheap? I didnt pay any mind at first and wanted to wait and see if I was pleased with what Konami had put together as this was the most anticipated title for me last month.

Visuals: Now this game is a High Definition Remastered release meaning this game is expected to be an upgrade from its prior out dated form. I could have handled a version that was no different but this HD Collection was a downgrade from both SH2 and SH3’s prior form. The only reason this collection didn’t receive a zero from me is mostly because of the fact Konami did listen to the fans and brought this title to the 360 and I will admit the only plus to this collection is the resolution has been up graded. Many fine details are a lot sharper, text on walls and signs are readable and paintings and images look almost like current day graphics. However, there were far more visual problems. I noticed right away that HiJinx thought it would look like a “better” game if it they deleted a lot of the originals teams creation that really made the games atmosphere what it was. They deleted various textures to making the town look cleaner and less scary.. They deleted much of the fog, which is one very important detail in the original teams creation. The fog really took away much of the players visuals making combat and exploring that much more intense and frightening but it also hid much of the games map layouts and edges..

With the deletion of fog in SH2 HD it really made the graphics look like utter shit, exposing the edges of the game as well as making the 2D layer fog in the distance look like a moving wall… This wall of fog is in both SH2 and SH3 of the collection. Throughout all of SH2 you notice many small things were for some reason changed like the red crosses on walls and health kits, but the next obvious visual flaw was the water texture on Toluka Lake in SH2. The water was so distracting I think I stopped rowing to watch the alternating black and white lines flow out.. I cant see how the development team behind remaster could see this and feel like it is release worthy..

I also had a major problem with the graphical errors when going into a cinematic cut scene in SH2. The image looked fuzzy, it was unmatching, unclear and definitely not an upgrade for its original. I am not sure what they did here.. In SH3 when walking up to Heaven’s Night quite a major visual glitch would happen and walking back out you could actually see a bit of the original fog glitch into screen and then disappear. I was able to make this happen over and over again.. SH3 would actually lag and stutter within gameplay quite a bit more than SH2 did and SH3’s had many parts where colors and tones looked very washed and bland in places they never did before.

The visuals in whole were very disappointing and were enough to give this game a score less than a 5 rating.. This game was delayed multiple times and yet it somehow seems rushed and left forgotten. I feel like my copy should have came with a layer of dust on top as its obvious through its severe technical errors and flaws in the visuals that Konami did not care for this HD release.

Audio: The games voice overs surround a major controversy that I wont get into right now but I’ll just say I was glad to see the original voice overs were available to select for SH2. This was something I actually worked very hard, stayed up late and put stressful hours in for to achieve though communication with and the help of Jeremy Blaustein. Sad to see that you couldnt select the original voices for SH3 but in any case the games new voice overs were actually very good. I especially liked Troy Baker and Angela/Claudia’s new voice actress. I didn’t care too much for Heather or Vincent but for the most part it wasn’t horrible at all and many of the actors brought many emotions to some of the characters that was never there before. I would have to admit the collection won some points here. However, what was horrible was the syncing in SH3, mostly and the random audio lags that made the delivery of these performances distracting from the overall quality and experiences. Almost a waste really… many times the audio would cut out and it would actually lag the audio on my entire console. I had to restart my console to fix this issue every time.

While Akira’s score was still there, well, mostly there, some songs were altered and seemed to be like outtake versions… [SPOILER ALERT] I also notices many sound effects were taken out. I first noticed this in the elevator scene where Maria is killed by Pyramid Head. Usually a stabbing noise is heard and lets you know Maria was killed. The lack of this noise in the HD Collection really made me think “What just happened?” and I played the game before… I couldnt imagine if someone who never played before would have thought about that scene. It really just looks like Maria fainted… It doesnt have as much of an impact at all!! [SPOILER END] I also noticed the noise of a fog horn that plays when james is running down that long hallway was taken out.. Also the noise of a door opening was taken out when Heather walks into the church during that last cut scene.. And just as things were taken out they were also put in from nowhere or actually from Downpour.. Thats right, the sound of a baby that was audio taken from Downpour can now be heard in SH3 during the scene when Heather first meets Claudia.. The audio in the original Silent Hill games was very important in the experience and atmosphere of the game. These non subtle errors really destroy the essence and weight that these games hold. This is not something that should be apart of in an HD remake. This kind of release is unacceptable

Overall Experience/Satisfaction: This game did not live up to any sort of HD upgrade in many terms nor was it even a collection for that matter. The game was even under review on Amazon and for good reason. I really didnt understand why Konami would release such games and with no marketing to back them as if they were not proud of their creation but as it turned out they had no reason to be proud. This HD Collection was a disgrace and it really makes themselves and even worse the franchise and original development team look bad. I really hope Konami will straighten their act and learned something from this massive mistake of hiring amateurs that obviously have no knowledge of the franchise or those original games and know what fine details really do to a game specifically an HD remaster. I really hope Konami will either start putting more effort into their products and start having better business ethics or give up this franchise to someone who knows what they are doing. A sad 4/10 for HD Collection.