Silent Hill: 0rigins (PSP)

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Description

Silent Hill: 0rigins is a prequel to the Silent Hill series set in the 1970s. You play as trucker Travis Grady, who attempts to take a shortcut through Silent Hill late one night when running behind on his rounds.

As in the previous Silent Hill games, you move back and forth between nightmare and real versions of the town, here crawling through mirrors to get between. He must gather items used to solve puzzles and open up new areas. Monsters of various types provide obstacles and, in series tradition, are mostly disturbingly twisted versions of humanity.

Travis can fight with his bare fists or use melee weapons. Unlike previous games in the series, melee weapons break after a time. There are also one-shot items that can be thrown and several guns. Combat is performed through lock-on. There is no HUD, but the edge of the screen turns red when Travis is near death.

Screenshots

Promo Images

Alternate Titles

• "Silent Hill Zer0" -- Japanese title
• "Silent Hill: Origins" -- Alternate spelling

Part of the Following Groups

• Console Generation Exclusives: PlayStation 2
• Gameplay feature: Multiple endings
• HUDless games
• Silent Hill series

User Reviews

Short, sweet but lacking the impact of the rest of the series.

AxelStone (37)

Critic Reviews

Softpedia	Nov 12, 2007	9.5 out of 10	95
Retroage	Aug 31, 2013	9 out of 10	90
Purojuegos	2008	8.5 out of 10	85
Play.tm	Dec 11, 2007	80 out of 100	80
GameSpy	Nov 19, 2007		80
4Players.de	Nov 21, 2007	78 out of 100	78
Eurogamer.net (UK)	Nov 23, 2007	7 out of 10	70
Vgames	Mar 05, 2008	70 out of 100	70
Eurogamer.fr	Nov 29, 2007	7 out of 10	70
Diehard GameFan	Nov 12, 2007	5 out of 10	50

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Trivia

Development history

This game was originally started by The Climax Group's (now closed) Los Angeles office, Climax LA. Erik Gloersen was running that section at the time. Phil DeLuca was producing. Anders Granlund was lead programmer. Tim Trzepacz worked as a contract programmer. There were two other programmers on the team, which still left it horribly understaffed.

The project was originally being coded using an original engine that Granlund had written, and which was being shared with a UK team working on a version of Bethesda Softworks' The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion for PSP. About three months were spent building new systems for this engine, when the decision was made to scrap it and go with RenderWare instead, starting over with a code base that was inherited from the Ghost Rider project.

There were certainly some problems moving forward from there. For example, the AI and pathfinding on Ghost Rider were written by people who were no longer working at Climax group, which slowed things down tremendously.

Work on that continued for nearly six months when management changed at the US office. After a period of upheaval, the entire Climax USA operation was closed and the project was moved to the UK. It is unknown if any of the original project's code was used in the new version, but none of the programmers from the US office were credited in the final release.

The game was eventually completed by Climax Solent.

Information also contributed by Tim Trzepacz

Related Web Sites

• Wikipedia: Silent Hill: 0rigins (Article in the online encyclopedia)