Silent Hill: Downpour is the official title for the new Vatra/Konami Silent Hill title for PS3 and Xbox 360. Text from the scans was hard to read but here's some info from what I could make out:
-demo takes place in the outskirts of SH
-the town is so large that you can use a subway system to travel between focal points
-sidequests
-avoid fights when possible, better to deliver incapacitating blows and run away (so good!)
-boss fights with quicktime events (not so good)
-water plays a huge part in the game, bizarre water effects like what looks like an upside down river flowing across a ceiling is described
-prominent locations in the older installments like schools and hospitals will not return
-the southeastern part of Silent Hill that you see on the maps in the older games but never go to is the area that will be explored in Downpour
-no weapon inventory, weapons weaken and break
-there will be puzzle difficulty options
Some other notes from the GameInformer article:
- "Murphy smashes a cinderblock into the ghoul's twitching body, which dissolves into a puddle of black tar."
- Some paths are blocked off, for example by a padlock. You need certain weapons to get through, in this case a crowbar. This sounds extremely similar to what was done in Silent Hill: Homecoming.
- Lots of disemboweled dogs and other dead animals and such.
- How you interact with other characters and the clothing you wear have an effect on the story.
- One on the "puzzles" involves you playing an arcade game.
- There's this one part of the article that describes Murphy hearing some enemies, then running away and looking over his shoulder at those enemies and such. Sounds like it's all one big cutscene though. That's a shame.
- They also describe the combat to be similar to the older games. Murphy is inaccurate with his attacks.
- Murphy has a mysterious and troubled past.
