At the crux of everything are puzzle sequences that drive the game forward. Moving between locales and uncovering bits of the story requires solving dozens of tricky riddles and unlocking all manner of doors. While this adventure-style gameplay is decades-old, there's no doubting its central role in the series. In the level on display at Konami's event, Alex needed to decipher a numerical password in order to activate an elevator deep within a dilapidated hospital. Only by finding cut up pieces of a chest x-ray could he discover the correct combination to proceed. Nothing innovative here in the least, but that's the point. Allen hopes that the changes implemented to the combat system will be palatable given that the puzzles and story are so traditional to the series.

An unbelievably rich musical score and new graphics could help in that endeavor as well. Acclaimed composer Akira Yamaoka returns to draft a score for the game--the only original member of the core team that is working on this Western-developed sequel. Allen points out the importance of Yamaoka's music in setting the tone, "His discordant musical score truly helps in providing a sense of suspense unparalleled in the genre."

Visually, the game hopes to achieve the same haunting tone. Running on a 32" LCD display it looked fantastically gritty, dark, and disturbing; however, Allen's footage shown on the projection screen failed to capture the same quality. Jagged edges, blurry textures, choppy animations, and atrocious lighting plagued the videos Allen narrated. We're hoping the real-time demonstration we played on the smaller screen via a PlayStation 3 debug unit is more indicative of the game's visual fidelity than that shown during his presentation.

Given the game's September release, a few more months of development could do much for the presentation. The alterations being made to the combat system look extremely promising, though, even if it marks a departure from the series' rather static combat formula. Keeping the adventure-style puzzles could assuage fan concerns despite holding the game back in terms of innovation. Regardless, we're confident that Silent Hill: Homecoming will nail the most important element when it ships in the fall: it'll scare the crap out of us.

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