Silent Hill 4 trailer

Konami has launched a new official website for PS2 and Xbox survival horror title Silent Hill 4: The Room at www.sh2004.com. As you know, we don't normally mention websites (disgusting places!) but this one happens to have a two-minute-forty-six-long trailer of the game, which looks decidedly encouraging.

Available in three sizes, the trailer darts between dark and grimy alleys, dark and incomprehensible scenes of slaughter, mutilation and puzzling creatures with a pacing and tone slightly reminiscent of Ringu. It's a lot nastier and more inexplicably malformed than we remember, too, and the locked and chained kitchen door and haunting visitations are just the start. By the end of the trailer the player is facing down a two-headed paraplegic child racing down a blood-soaked corridor squealing with rage. Triffic!

For more info on the mechanics of Silent Hill 4 (as opposed to the vision of insanity that you get witnessing it first hand), be sure to have a read over Kristan's preview of the game based on a presentation at a recent Konami press event, and don't forget the 11 blood-splattered screenshots we dragged back either.

Meanwhile, in other survival horror related news of which you're already no doubt acutely aware, Capcom's rival Resident Evil series took on a new shape late last week following the discovery of leaked magazine scans outlining the series' fourth instalment on GameCube in grisly detail. It has to be said though that the two titles look massively different.

While Resi 4 (early 2005) has taken on a beautiful but familiar B-movie shape with more of a whodunnit atmosphere, Silent Hill 4 (late 2004) looks like yet another extraordinary journey through an horrific imagination. We can't wait for either game.