You Enjoy All The Killing, That's Why

In your first playthrough Silent Hill Origins you will end up with the default good ending no matter what you do. Getting the other bad ending in your subsequent playthrough however requires a bit more work. It doesn't really makes sense why the good ending is the default ending especially for a series that have traditionally favours bad ending, perhaps it's because the good ending ties into the canon whereby the ending sort of leads to the events of the first game.

Anyways in order to achieve the bad ending you have to kill more than 200 enemies to re-discover travis's inner demons which have been kept hidden away all these years. It's no small task even more which the game only reveals to you how many you have killed once you have finished the game so there is no way of really telling if you are close to your target when playing the game. Thankfully you unlock the moon gaunlets after finishing the game once which should be more than enough to mow down every monster in sight. Even so i grew weary of running around looking for things to kill, i'm afraid i may have over done again as usual so it would be interesting to see how many i have killed once i finished the game.

Going Downhill

I have been playing a lot of Silent Hill recently, re-discovering my love for the series which sort of went downhill since the fourth installment. I never really talk about i came to the series mainly because it wasn't nearly half as dramatic as my introduction to Resident Evil , i was introduced to the series by a fellow close friend not having own a PSone yet so somehow it was difficult to form your own opinion with someone constantly telling you how good this is.

Anyway over the years i remained supportive of the series even more so than my friend, to the point where i was being criticised of being biased. I suppose i am to some degree but isn't that what being fanboys are all about? I went back to playing Silent Hill Origins over the long weekend after finishing the first Silent Hill, i'm amazed by how good the game looks when you switched the noise filter off though it isn't to the level i would expect from a Wii game. Speaking of which, where is the trailer for Shattered Memories? So far we have only been treated to a bunch of screen captures and developer interviews, surely they must have put together enough for a trailer by now right? Well the May issue of Nintendo Power should probably have arrived at my local newstands by now so i should start looking for it really soon, seeing that there is a coverage on Darkside Chronicles in there too.

The Professional (mode)

Before trying the hard mode on RE5, i decided to play through professional mode on RE4 first since the game doesn't track your stats like RE5 so i don't have to worry about dying too much. I also don't have to worry about babysitting sheva and could certainly use the challenge especially after having played RE4 so much and breezing through amateur mode as sheva in RE5 a few weeks back. It will also give my a good chance to try some of the weapons i hardly ever use in RE4 as i would need so heavily-beefed up weapons to get through professional mode.

To my surprise, the professional mode really is as lazy as some have said, i have expecting super-human ganados which would required more shots to go down but instead they feel no different from the ganados in normal mode. They certainly inflicit much more damage to leon, a quick grab from a ganado will easily push you to the yellow caution zone if you have not upgraded leon's health meter. The number of ganados feel more or less the same as normal mode, i'll know for sure once i finished pro mode by going back to comparing my stats in normal mode.

The Freaks are Rising Up Through The Floor

After i have finished Silent Hill, i immediately went to work on how i can prevent the fungus on the game box from spreading onto the disc. It's a tricky business because obviously i don't want to have to throw anything away and i certainly won't want the fungus to spread to my other games. So basically i ended up bagging the manual, put another plastic sheet behind the front cover and even threw a dessicant inside the box for good measure. A bit too much? You can never be too careful with your games and i have always been one to treasure my games more than my consoles as my logic has been you can always replace your console but you can't always replace your games. Till this day, i still can't fathom why guys would value their consoles more than their games but i guess that's the mentality you end up with coming from a country where piracy is all around.

Another Translation

Having skipped the PAL release of suda's flower sun and rain, i'm glad that US publisher XSEED has finally finished the localization of the game and scheduled to release it sometime in June. I did in fact try the PAL version very briefly upon its release and while the game is undoubtedly good, i found it a bit cumbersome to have to refer the hotel catalogue in-game all the time. I really hope that publisher XSEED will include the hotel catalogue as part of the game manual when the game ships as i'm sure that's how it's like for the japanese version.

It was rumoured that the US version will carry a complete new localized script compared with PAL version as XSEED was reportedly unhappy with the translation by UK publisher Rising Star Games. Suda completists who have finished the PAL version will do best to check this out as well to see if it's indeed the better version. For starters XSEED seems to have got things right by sticking with the japanese box art for the US version, while i do like the PAL cover art i tend to think all things japanese are superior and hence will gladly pick this up come June.

Emblem Count (again)

I managed to top my first emblem hunt in RE5 in my second playthrough, finishing with 21 emblems this time. The strange thing was i could barely remember where those first eight emblems i found were hidden though it isn't necessary to find them again as the game keeps track of the emblems you found earlier. Since i was playing easy mode to achieve 100% completion, i didn't managed to unlock anything new this time around aside from some figures which i purchase with my bonus points.

I think it's about time for i shelf this game for a bit and play something else.

where are those damned emblems?!?

That Was Then This Is Now

Capcom finally unveiled what looks to be the final box art for the release of Resident Evil Remake on the Wii. While it's mostly what i have expected with the white borders and all, i realised it could have been a lot worse. Now my decision to purchase another copy of Resident Evil hinges almost entirely on how this final box art will look as i have a history of being very picky with box arts, meaning strictly no budget reprints to ruin my collection.

Things became a little complicated when speculations came about that Capcom plans to release both REmake and RE0 together as a double pack for USD30 as i had no intentions to buying another copy of RE0, having already own two copies of that game. It did sound a little too good to be true to have both game retailing for only USD30 although Capcom did eventually published a double pack for that same price during the tail-end of the Gamcube era, that was then and this is now. These were and still are high quality Resident Evil games, able to stand with some of the best the Nintendo Wii has to offer, it would be foolish to think that Capcom would consider selling them together for that price.