Konami Flips off the Lights for new Silent Hill and Saw Game

Both games offer exploration, puzzles, and some gruesome scares, while the new wardrobe options in Karaoke Revolution are gruesome in their own right.

It takes some imagination to use the Wii remote as a controller for a golf club, bat or tennis racket, but as a flashlight, which you’ll wield it as in Silent Hill Shattered Memories, you might just mistake it for the real thing. Moving a character around with a joystick and pointing at the screen with the Wii remote to cast light on your pitch-black surroundings feels as natural as doing it in real life. And just as creepy.

The plot for the new Silent Hill revisits the same premise as the original game – you’re a father searching for his daughter – but story that ensues from that original nugget has been “reimagined,” in Konami’s own words. Unlike many survival horror games, and others in the Silent Hill series, the player has no access to weapons this time around in an attempt to remove the sense of safety that players get from being armed. Hiding spots won’t be safe for long, either, with the end goal being the feel that safety is only ever temporary – monsters can always get you, and even opening the menu (which is the protagonist’s cell phone) won’t pause the game to get you out of a bind.

Continuing in the trend of creepy E3 offerings, Konami also unveiled a Saw video game this year. It follows the story of Detective David Tapp, whose story is left unanswered from the original Saw movie. In the game, he wakes up in an abandoned insane asylum and must escape, encountering crazies and traps along the way. Thanks to the Unreal 3 engine running things behind the scenes, it looks just as dark and atmospheric as the movies – with gore that’s just as cringeworthy.

Finally, we took a look at the new Karaoke Revolution for Wii, Xbox 360 and PS3, which follows in the same vein as previous karaoke games, but throws in an improved vocal engine and far more customization. The character we played as, for instance, had completely over-the-top tattoos and garish outfits completely design by our (not very fashion-conscious) demonstrator.