Surprisingly solid entry for a handheld.

Silent Hill Origins is Silent Hill's first romp on a handheld console, and oh does it make me hope it's not its last. It makes the transition well, and despite being pint sized, it still lives up to the rest of the titles in the series.
This time we follow a man named Travis, a trucker with a troubled past (okay, even though I'd gladly make love to silent hill if it was human, that part is getting old), while he romps around silent hill with all manner of blunt objects and projectile weapons. The Story is very solid, living up to it's expectations. Travis' story, while borrowing a bit too much from James in Silent Hill 2, was still shocking and horrific. The only problem i had with the story is, in an effort to tie it into the original, you rescue a child from a burning building her mother apparantly tried to kill her in (wink wink). Travis' only motivation for staying in the town until very late in the game is to discover what happened to the child. Not a huge complaint, but it did bother me when i thought of how quickly I'd say "eff this kid" when being attacked by bleeding puppets walking on their hands.

The biggest change you'll notice is that this time, rather than the game telling you when you have to go to the "other world," you have to make the transition yourself by touching mirrors. While many people complain about this, i think this serves to make the game scarrier. Not only does it add another element to the puzzles, as often you'll have to change something in one world to further your progress in the other, but it actually makes being there more frightening. Previously, you'd go through a door, the walls start bleeding, and you're think "crap... i don't wanna be here!" It makes it alot harder to do when you've got to do it yourself. I know it might sound cheesey, but you'll know what i mean as soon as you sit in front of a mirror knowing that if you press the button you'll go into a deralict world filled with horrid sounds, rusty floors, and the afforementioned inverted bleeding puppets.

They added yet another feature to this game, and if it weren't for this feature, i'd have considered giving the game a 5. Your weapons break. You pick up plenty of melee weapons, but you only get about enough life from each weapon to kill a single monster. This made me drastically alter my playing because I hardly ever use guns on anything other than bosses in these games. In the early game, you're hesitant to kill anything in fear that you'll really need a weapon later, making you run from everything and kind of ruining the feel of the game. It mellows out as the game goes on, and it's not really THAT big of a deal. The only reason it bothers me is because I'm clueless as to how anyone could have thought this would have been a good idea.

Also, for a handheld game, there aren't nearly enough save points.

The audio remains true to the other entries in the series, and while most of the ingame music is nothing extraordinary, I'd be tempted to say that Silent Hill Origins has the best "other world" music in the series. I don't know what it is about this time, but it really really increases the sense of claustrophobic dread that these games are supposed to inspire. Just one thing. Headphones are a MUST.

I wanted to save these gripes for last, and i mentioned them before, but if you stop and think about what's going on in the game, you'll notice some serious silent hill 2 ripoffs. Halfway through the game, you encounter a creature that wears a metal helmet, a buther's apron, and has a huge knife. And it ISN'T silent hill 2's pyramid head. I just wanted to get that out there.

If you have a PSP and even remotely enjoyed a silent hill game before, this is a must play. It feels like a full entry to the series, and is not by any means a watered down version of one of the originals. I can say with full confidence that it deserves the title of Silent Hill more than Silent Hill 4 did.