This month, I'm playing two games for the very first time; Silent Hill: Homecoming and Dead Space. I had been wanting to play these games back when they were first released but due to my travelling and work, I couldn't. And because of that, I'm playing the PC versions of Homecoming and Dead Space since both of my PS3 and XBOX360 are out of my reach at the moment. On top of that, I could only play these games on the lowest graphical settings because of my graphics card. It's an NVIDIA GeForce 8 series but it can only perform on the minimum requirement settings. What a letdown.

Anyway, let's start by talking about Silent Hill: Homecoming. When I first heard that a western company was going to develop this game, I had doubts about it because I was afraid they were unable to live up to the Silent Hill's name and in the end, I've mixed reactions with Homecoming. On the positive side, Double Helix Games did a pretty good job with the overall presentation of the game, in particular the audio side of things. Previous Silent Hill games had a very mediocre voice acting as they were mostly dry, lifeless and unconvincing. Homecoming changes this trend by making the characters more lively, more convincing and more realistic- just like Origins. When you see characters in Homecoming angry, happy or sad; you really feel their emotions greatly.

However on the negative side, I was truly disappointed to find that Homecoming isn't scary at all. Silent Hill is always known for its psychological horror where they make the audience delusional and horrified with its disturbing silence, hideous creatures and deranged characters. Homecoming does have all these elements but they weren't conveyed very well. It's kinda like cooking a meal where you have all the necessary ingredients but if you don't follow the right procedure, the meal will taste awful. Silent Hill: Origins had the same problem too. It had the voice acting right but the story and the scare factor were lacking and in fact, it was the most boring Silent Hill I've ever played. Also, they isn't any soundtrack CD for Homecoming. Why not? All the other Silent Hill games (Including Origins) have them, so why not Homecoming?

It's interesting that even though Silent Hill 1, 2, 3 and 4: The Room had not so great voice acting, the games were intensely disturbing which grows on you from time to time. I consider these games to be much more scary than these two new ones. I guess it works like this:

Konami + Independent = Not so great voice acting but great stories and very scary

However

Konami + Western developers = Great voice acting but poor stories and not scary

Shattered Memories is coming out next month and it's got me worried since it's being developed by Climax Studios, the same people who made Origins. Let's just hope they get this one right but if not, please Konami, please don't let other people make anymore Silent Hill games. Just you guys.

Bottom line, despite my ramblings about the negativity in Homecoming, the game isn't that bad and it has an interesting twist at the end. I'm actually playing the game for the second time. Homecoming may lacked what its predecessor has greatly, the game is still worthy to be called a Silent Hill game. My rating: 8.0.

Next we have Dead Space and this game is freaking awesome. I was surprised. People were talking about how great it was back then but I didn't really pay much attention to it because I didn't want to be overhyped by it. Dead Space is a very interesting game and even though it borrows elements from other games such as Resident Evil 4 and Doom 3 (With it's over-the-shoulder camera angle and futuristic outer space station gone wrong plot), it did a good job of making the game look original and not simply looking like its plagiarizing. With all the madness been cramped in here, I can safely say that Dead Space is in fact more scary than Silent Hill: Homecoming. Period. I'm still playing the game and I can't wait to finish it til the end.

I really love Isaac Clarke, the main character because he's so cool looking and has all kinds of awesome weapons at his disposal. I'm even considering to buy an Isaac Clarke action figure in eBay with my refunded money that I got from the broken Memory Stick I bought last month.

That's all I have to say for now. I will be writting some new game reviews here in GameSpot so please do check 'em out when you have the time. Now will you excuse me, I have the USG Ishimura to save.

-Psykhophear

I recently bought a 16GB Memory Stick Pro Duo from eBay and I'm really excited about it. Now I can hold many songs and videos in to my PSP. However, after playing around with it for five minutes, my Memory Stick suddenly stops working. I was able to put some media into the card but after just barely a few minutes, the PSP can't recognize the memory stick. I thought maybe it has something to do with my portable system but when I plugged in my old 2GB Memory Stick, the PSP can read that one instead. Uh oh. Looks like my brand new memory stick is faulty. Guess I have to get a refund.

Here's another problem. I can't contact the seller. He did reply to my email but I couldn't understand a word he said because of his "Engrish" (He's from China, BTW). I then wrote to him asking to explain it the solution in more detail on how does this refund thing works and how do I get my money back. He still hasn't replied. Crap! Looks like I'm stuck with this broken Memory Stick.

I was just browsing the reviews section for Modern Warfare 2 and I was shocked to see many users had rated the PC version as low as 1.0. What happened? It seems that the multiplayer doesn't work according to the forums and reviews. I haven't bought Modern Warfare 2 so I can't say for certain. What about the console versions? I'm sure you guys are having a blast as about now.