It thrilled and chilled on PSP last fall and now the most recent installment in the Silent Hill series is available on PS2 as well. Silent Hill: Origins began life as a remake of the first Silent Hill game on PSone and soon evolved into a game with its own unique character and storyline. While some environments and areas will be recognizable from previous installments, Origins is, in essence, as close to an all-new Silent Hill installment as we’re going to get until Silent Hill 5 makes its PS3 debut.

I’ve been a Silent Hill fan since its humble, Resident Evil-challenging PSone beginning, and certainly have preferred the series’ somewhat more subtle, psychological horror approach, contrasted with the shock-n-gore approach and George Romero-esque style of the Resident Evil series. Fortunately, this approach is on full display in Silent Hill Origins, which tells the tale of Travis Garby, a trucker who is driving a late-night route when he nearly runs over a little girl – Alessa Gillespie, a recurring character from the series.

When he hops out to investigate, she’s gone but he spots a nearby mansion in foreclosure that seems to be on fire. Naturally, he runs to help and finds the girl inside, burned alive. Yup, he soon finds himself lost inside Silent Hill, the human roach motel of small towns, because folks check in but rarely are allowed to check out – alive.

One thing that struck me on the PSP original was the level of detail achieved on the smaller screen; the game looks fine, but not quite as impressive on the larger screen/higher resolution PS2 platform, which seems to indicate the port-up was not a vast reworking, but done with a bit less attention to detail. Still, the average Silent Hill game is still scarier than a stack of Resident Evil games, so I’m not really complaining here.

The game is a mish-mash of styles; it’s a bit more action-oriented (in the vein of Silent Hill 4: The Room) and yet the control scheme, like this title’s appearance on PSP, is a throwback to the PSone original. Still, as with most Silent Hill games, even in this slightly more action-oriented outing, the best strategy is to avoid any and all unnecessary conflicts with the undead, as they tend to be fairly devastating to your well-being and because you’ll always be fairly limited on your supplies … of everything.

With an intriguing new storyline and main character, Silent Hill Origins is a nice chiller, though a bit shorter than I would like. There’s virtually nothing new to the PS2 up-port, so if you already own the game on PSP, there’s really no compelling reason to buy it again on PS2. Anyone who missed the game on PSP, though, ought to pick it up.

Team Silent, who created the first four Silent Hill installments, were not part of Silent Hill Origins, by the way; however, neither will Team Silent be involved in the making of Silent Hill 5 on PS3, so get used to it, in the short term. The series, fortunately, seems to be in good hands, and at least there are new installments still being worked on for the Silent Hill franchise; last I heard, Tecmo hasn’t announced any next-gen platform plans for Fatal Frame, their popular “ghost photographer” spooker.

In the end, Silent Hill Origins is a must for any fan of the series, but only if you don’t already own it on PSP; if you do, the PS2 version is virtually the same, so pick a platform and buy the dang game already!