Publisher: Konami
Developer: The Collective / Konami
Genre: Survival Horror
Players: 1
Release Date: TBA 2009
Other Systems: Xbox 360
Un-Official Site
Silent Hill V Gallery

Silent Hill has always been one of the best franchises in the genre of Survival Horror to-date. With its eerie environments and beyond freakishly disturbing creatures, one cannot deny its hold on gamers. After the success of Origins on the PSP and coming soon to the PS2, Konami is bringing Silent Hill 5 to the next-gen and they are promising bigger, better and much more frightening then ever.

This time around gamers will take on the role of Alex Shepherd, ex-soldier and lost soul. Alex has just returned from the war and is now no longer the man his family knew. This adds on to the hardship his family went through while he was away; his mother is catatonic, probably because his brother and father have gone missing. As in all Silent Hill games, Shepherd’s only lead is an eerie town to try to find his brother.

The Silent Hill series always tries to bring something new with one exception, the eerie town of Silent Hill; although true followers of the series will notice another connection to a past game: Shepherd shares his name with Mary Shepherd-Sunderland from Silent Hill 2. Akira Yamaoka, music composer from the previous games, has confirmed that there will be some connections between Silent Hill 2 and 5.

There is not a lot of information on the characters but they are as messed up as fans of the series are used to seeing. Our main character, 22-year-old veteran Alex Shepherd, has been driven a bit nuts thanks to the war. In the trailer from E3, we find out that Shepherd’s view of war is extreme. "War is Hell, but there are worse things. War changes you and nobody back home could ever understand. They never understood me. They say you can't go home again - but they're wrong. I just don't want to."

One character to appear in Silent Hill is Elle, a possible love interest of Shepherds. We are hoping she will be a playable character, but we have no confirmation on that. Then there is Joshua Shepherd, the missing younger brother of Alex. He is said to be the only one that can help Alex make sense of what happened to him in the war. Alex will be trying to find his brother in Silent Hill and we all know that is never a good thing. Mr. Shepherd, whom we know nothing about other than the fact that he is Alex’s father, is missing. Finally there is Shepherd’s loony mom, but just the same as his dad, we do not have any more information than that.
Konami is promising monsters that are as disturbing and downright freaky as ever. For all the veterans of the series, they will be glad to know that the nurses are back. This probably stems from how much they were loved from the Silent Hill movie. They will be easy to avoid if you are quiet. Smog is showing some similarity to the past body-bag creature from Silent Hill 2; although Smog is up and moving around trying to get his grotesque hands on Alex. Other monsters include Schism, a disturbing creature that appears to have his head split open and Siam, a grotesque medical procedure gone wrong. It seems he/she..it is the combination of a huge male and seductive female merged together in a game of bondage gone wrong. We will be watching for more information and more creatures as it is released.

While the game is still about a year away and not a whole lot of information is out we can see Konami is moving in the right direction. There has been a huge improvement visually as one would expect from a next-gen title and one of the best survival horror series. The game is expected late 2008 or early 2009 and Dpad will be keeping their eye’s open for more information to come.