Gaming News I Care About

"This is Earthend!"

Patapon 2 hits stores on May 5th. Bizarrely, Sony will be releasing it as DLC-only ($20). Even more bizarrely, you will still be able to go to Best Buy and buy the box. The box will include an instruction booklet and a download voucher. I can only assume this means Patapon 2 will not be an enormous game, space-wise. I'm very excited, for two reasons. First, Patapon may be my favorite PSP game, and one of most artistically brilliant games to hit any console ever. Second, it'll be the first time I've switched my PSP on in months. Sony just doesn't know how to support that machine. That's not all, though. Sony is rumored to be getting a real PSP sequel ready for release (PSP "Go!") that will lack a UMD slot entirely. The plan here, allegedly, is that Sony will begin releasing the most popular PSP games on the PSN. We're gonna need a bigger Memory Stick Duo...I'll probably learn more at E3 (I'm going to E3 this year).

Look, it's Mr. Fat!

I love my DSi. I really do, but I wish Nintendo would support it. The only notable DS release in the past...well, as long as I can remember...has been Pokemon Diamond, and it was released a few weeks before the DSi. I'd like those DSi-enhanced games Nintendo promised to come out sooner rather than later. Another point of contention: the DSiWare released so far has sucked. Tech demos and terrible "minigames" that they can't bring themselves to charge more than $5 for (and honestly, that's too much). Japan is getting a real DSi Virtual Console with classic GB/A games. Bring that over here, Nintendo of America! Don't sit on your damn duffs! Get with the program and remind me why the DSi is so awesome!

This is what happens when worlds collide!

Break out the champaigne bottles: Marvel vs. Capcom 2 is coming to the PSN and Xbox Live. IT will come "unlocked," with all 50+ characters available from the get-go. This is one of the most celebrated 2D fighters of all time, and I'm very excited about this. It's the superior Dreamcast code that's being ported over, with some interesting graphical improvements to compensate for the HD age. Players will have the option of playing with the original pixels, smoothed pixels, or yet smoother pixels. The game will not be coming to the Wii because of file size limitations. The game will cost $15 (must want), include a few different online modes, and support widescreen displays. I generally suck at 2D fighters (see Street Fighter, King of Fighters, and King of the Monsters) but as I recall, this one was pretty kickass.

All your Wesker are belong to us.

I'm still playing RE5--I just can't stop. In fact, I feel guilty for not playing my other games, like Bioshock and LittleBigPlanet. But here's the thing: I fucking love RE5. As if the main campaign doesn't provide enough excitement and replayability (Professional difficulty is a bitch), the online Versus mode is just as fun. It's basically Mercenaries with up to three other people, all competing for points. The only thing that drags Versus down is that you will sometimes end up playing with people in a game in Slayers (kill the zombies) who think they're playing Survivors (kill each other). So you're busy creating an awesome chain of zombie kills and suddenly some deuchbag comes up and starts shooting you in the back. What the fuck, man?! Kill zombies like you're supposed to! I really need to dig my headset out and start cursing these idiots during gameplay. Although I doubt they're going to stop. Then, if you kill them for being a cock, their mission in life becomes vengeance. God, I hate those morons. But when you get a group of good-natured people in a game, it's a great time!

If any of you readers out there want to join me for a rousing round of zombie-killin', my PSN handle is "Sillysaur." We shall battle together...for great justice!

Embolotherium grangeri

Little something I whipped up last night after flipping through Matthew Mihlbachler's epic Species Taxonomy, Phylogeny, and Biogeography of the Brontotheriidae (Mammalia: Perissodactyla, available for free at the American Museum Novitates website. It is almost 500 pages of brontothere excellence.

Fun fact: all those restorations you see of many brontotheres (including Embolotherium) with a giant horn sticking out of the nose is wrong--the nasal "ram" has a deep channel on the anteroventral surface for the nasal septum. This means the nasal cavity extended to the peak of the ram. These were big-nosed animals! Of the two species of Embolotherium, E. grangeri's ram is tame by comparison to E. andrewsi!

Cheap Shot

Spare the rod, Jesus. Spare the rod.

A Lesson in Taxonomy Starring Puijila darwini

Phylogenetics is kind of like the mythical hydra: for every gap closed by a new fossil, three new gaps appear. This makes paleontology very exciting, but it also makes the science easy to pick on by Creationists and other science-deniers. Why are three gaps opened instead of just two? Well, because we weren't around to see one species branch directly from another, taxonomy assumes that all common ancestors are unknown. All you can really do is say that Velociraptor and Deinonychus share certain features inhereted from a common ancestor. Even if Tyrannosaurus evolved directly from Daspletosaurus, it's just not something we can ever know. So because every animal in the fossil record (and in the modern world) exists on its own "sidebranch" to the main line of faunal evolution, then three gaps appear:

1) The gap between the new taxa and the common ancestor;
2) The gap between the common ancestor and its the next rung down;
3) The gap between the common ancestor and the next rung up.

Here's a simplified Dinosauria cladogram illustrating this point:

When I say "shared characteristics," I mean things like number of fingers or length of cervical ribs, things like that. Some of these relationships are based on very technical measurements and features. At any rate, the tree is designed to show that Sauropodomorpha is closer to Theropoda than either is to Ornithischia. That doesn't mean thatt Dinosauria is polyphyletic, it just means that Saurischia is a more exclusive group than Dinosauria. You could say that the features diagnostic of "Dinosauria" are entirely arbitrary, and you'd be right. The whole point is to show relationships, though. If we decide one day that silesaurids should be dinosaurs, the label "Dinosauria" would be moved one rung down to include Silesauridae, which is currently considered more or less an outgroup to the Dinosauria proper.

So what happens when a new fossil fills a critical gap in an otherwise poorly-known transitional series? Let's use dinosaurs and birds as an example. The relationship was realized back in Sir Richard Owen's time. In fact, he favorably compared the femur of Megalosaurus to that of an ostrich. Anyway, watch what happens when we toss Archaeopteryx between Allosaurus and Gallus:

Because Archaeopteryx shows features unique to it and exclusive to both birds and Allosaurus, it cannot be suitable common ancestor between the two outgroups. However, because it has more features in common with Gallus than Allosaurus, it must be closer to the chicken. But because it has its own unique suite of characters, it is not a suitable ancestor. So it split off from a theoretical ancestor between itself and Gallus. Now, we'll probably never find an actual ancestor-decendant relationship in the fossil record, but we can come darn close and make predications as to what features that ancestor should have. Eoraptor, for instance, is the basalmost saurischian dinosaur known. It's got a few unique characters (apomorphies), but on the whole it's a fine model for the common ancestor between Sauropodomorpha and Theropoda. That is, Eoraptor has lots of features common to both groups.

Here's a simplified theropod cladogram using manual digits as an example of this principle:

So when did theropods lose that fourth digit? More fossils are necessary for that answer. You'd have to find a theropod that, morphologically, falls between Herrerasaurus and Allosaurus (like Carnotaurus) and count its fingers (it has four). Then go farther up the tree to, say, Spinosaurus (who is between Carnotaurus and Allosaurus) and you see that has three fingers. So you've further narrowed the taxa gap for that finger to be lost. Likewise, when did tyrannosaurs lose their third finger? Basal tyrannosaurs like Guanlong and Eotyrannus have three fingers, but later ones like Gorgosaurus and Tyrannosaurus have two. Someday we'll find a tyrannosaur with two full fingers and the third finger has been reduced to a splint of bone (as the fourth one is in Herrerasaurus).

The same process has recently been done with whales. Whales used to be a total mammalian mystery. Aside from the fact that they gave birth to live young and nursed their babies, modern whales were far too derived to pinpoint a fossil ancestor. Because of their bizarre skeletons, shaped by a millenia of marine adaptation, comparisons to other modern mammal groups was virtually useless. The cladogram basically looked like this:

But then, paleontologists discovered Ambulocetus natans, and the whole cladogram changed. It just takes one fossil to demonstrate relationships between any two groups.

Aside from being a vicious shallow-water predator with whale-sized dentition, Ambulocetus had a unique ankle structure shared by it and the Artiodactyla, an enormous group that also includes goats, cows, hippos, pigs, and antelope (and more). But because Ambulocetus also had a very unique inner ear shared only by whales, scientists knew that it was a ridiculously basal whale. More finds would come later further solidifying the artiodactyl link (Rodhocetus) and show that early whales hauled themselves onto land to give birth (Maiacetus). The big mystery now is exactly how far back toward the origin of the Artiodactyla whales go, and also when they lost their hindlimbs (are there fossils that document this? Anybody?).

So now the whale cladogram is a lot clearer:

So with all that information in mind, I present to you Puijila darwini, a new basal pinniped that sheds light on the transition from mustalid-like carnivore ancestor to flipper-finned seal. Pinnipeds are a group of extremely diverse and successful mammalian carnivores. They include seals (eared and otherwise), sea lions, and walruses. Their closest non-marine relatives are bears and mustalids (weasels, otters). The ancestor of modern seals has been very difficult to nail down, though. The oldest known seal is Enaliarctos, which already has well-developed flippers. So there exists a big morphological gap between mustalids and seals. That gap has now been partially...um...sealed!

It's less than a meter in length and was found on Devon Island, one of those horribly cold islands above Canada near Greenland. Puijila has a seal's head, including the osteological correlates indicating large, sensative whisker pads. However, its body and feet are more like an otter in that it has, you know, feet instead of flippers. The fingers and toes are flattened, though, indicating extensive webbing (same correlates are in beavers, otters, and Casterocauda). And check out that bacculum! I would like to point out, however, that the feet and hands of Puijila are longer than any otter or beaver.

Look at that muzzle--I would not want to come toe-to-snout with Puijila, though it's small enough you could potentially kick a field goal with it. At any rate, a few more interesting points about Puijila. First, it was discovered well within the arctic circle, lending some credence to the notion that pinnipeds originated in the colder northern waters of the arctic. What's more, its swimming style was more toward pinnipeds than mustalids: quadrupedal "doggie paddling" rather than pelvic paddling. Puijila's long tail probably did very little in the water, and the limb-centric swimming style of Puijila could have easily developed into pinniped swimming, which is similarly dominated by the limbs. Finally, Puijila was not an oceanic swimmer. It preferred freshwater lakes and streams, which indicates that pinnipeds went through a freshwater "phase" before braving the deep blue sea. This is to be expected given other marine mammal's ancestral records (Ambulocetus, Pezosiren).

So what's the moral of the story? Puijila represents a good model for the common ancestor between it and modern pinnipeds, both morphologically and ecologically. It helps to close the distance between mustalids (and bears) and walruses, and future fossil discoveries may show other transitions, such as the loss of caudal vertebrae, the perpetual retraction of the hindlimbs, or the enlargement of manual digit I. So think of Puijila as a seal-headed, long-footed otter, and a virtually perfect representative of common ancestry. Feel free to put together your own cladogram!Oh, and here's a picture I whipped together from the description.

Tune in next time for: "The Headache Of Convergence," or, "Ornithischians: a Poor Choice!"

Ambulo...sealus!

I'll do a bigger, better post on this later, but for right now, I suggest clicking on over to Not Exactly Rocket Science and reading about an incredible new fossil!

Lindwyrmus nychognathus

Lindworms, also know as "Chinese dragons" and "lungs" are medium to large-sized creatures with short, powerful forearms but lack hindlimbs entirely. Although secretive and rarely seen, it's clear that lindworms are totally flightless, having no wings to speak of. At first glance, that fact may imply their relationship with dragons, rather than wyverns, as dragons have both forelimbs and wings. However, preliminary genetic comparisons between a dead lindworm recovered from China (in press) and a living wyvern and dragon show that, in fact, lindworms are genetically closer to wyverns than dragons. The obvious taxonomic implications are that lindworms are stem wyverns, sitting somewhere below true wyverns on the archosaur family tree, branching off before wyverns developed wings.

Given their rarity, lindworms are rarely studied. In fact, the first named wyvern is Lindwyrmus nychognathus from Argentina, and it was described only recently (Farke, 2005). Although it features plenty of its own peculiar anatomical features, Lindwyrmus is generally viewed as diagnostic of the entire group. Most impressively, Lindwyrmus is semi-arboreal, rather than semi-aquatic as lindworms are usually thought to be. Farke noted that the bright-green lindworm curls its serpentine body on a branch as would an anaconda or constrictor. The arms are used to help pull the animal up through the trees and clamber across the canopy. While the body is bright green, Lindwyrmus has bright orange flaps of skin on the arms and along the spine. These structures are usually draped across the body or arms, but when aggravated, the lindworm can "flare them up" and create a striking threat display. In fact, the flaps are structured by thin muscular rods akin to the actinofibrils of pterosaur wings.

The skull of Lindwyrmus is very distinctive. There are two pairs of cranial horns which point posteriorally behind the eyes. Two small nasal horns rise from the tip of the snout. The skull is dorsoventrally flattened. Unlike most dragons and wyverns, there is no "lip" around the teeth. Instead, the teeth erupt from the underlying skin as in crocodilians. Most interestingly, however, is the pair of laterally-placed, spike-like mandibles that boarder the mouth. These mandibles are mobile in two places: at the point of articulation with the skull itself and immediately behind the spike-like process. This novel structure seems to serve two purposes: first, it greatly increases the effect of the animal's threat display, and second, the mandibles actually impale prey while the mouth grips it. Bizarrely, the main articulation of the mandibles is a cup-like depression in the jaw just above the mandibular joint, and the proximal surface of the mandible is a ball joint. However, in life, the mandibles are limited to fore and aft movement. Exactly what environmental forces combined to create the need for such a strange structure is not understood. Incidentally, while the mouth is closed, the mandibles are held forward, overlying the exposed teeth and framing the face.

Lindwyrmus subsists on small vertebrates almost exclusively, though Harrison (2007), on a trip to Argentina's jungles, witnessed a pair of lindworms feasting on a dead hog. He was unable to determine whether the lindworms actually killed the hog or were simply scavenging on it. Both he and Farke were unable to tell males from females, and Harrison commented that, generally, lindworms seemed to be solitary animals. Neither man saw juvenile animals, which is unfortunate. It would interesting to see whether juveniles and subadults also posess the strange mandibular array that adults do. Farke estimated the total length of an adult Lindwyrmus at "about twenty feet," though he left open the possibility that larger individuals existed.

Farke said a recent draconology conference that he intends to travel back to Argentina to further observe Lindwyrmus and hopefully find some juvenile animals. Other workers, perhaps inspired by Farke's work with Lindwyrmus, are traveling to Asia to track down other species of lindworm. Hopefully, this little-known branch of the wyvern family tree will soon be better understood!

Farke, A. (2005). The first description of a "lindworm," from the jungles of Argentina. European Journal of Draconology 106(2): 245-258.

Harrison, M. A. (2007). Observations on Lindwyrmus nychognathus (Farke 2005). Draconium 48(3): 402-405.

Troodon Again!

So last time I talked about Troodon and how it was Alaska's most common theropod dinosaur as well as one of the largest. Up here, Troodon was around twice the size of a southern Alberta Troodon. A new paper in Paleogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology (heck of a business card) by Fanti & Miyashita add some surprisingly twists to that story. The paper describes a high latitude vertebrate assemblage from a west-central Alberta. A host of dinosaurs are known from scrappy remains, but include such colorful animals as Saurornitholestes, Troodon, Pachyrhinosaurus, Hypacrosaurus, an ankylosaur, a hypsilophodont, and a tyrannosaur. Evidence of duckbill nesting grounds are included here, with lots of juvenile material and, perhaps not surprisingly, lots of Troodon (more on this in a minute).

What's more important is that lots of squamates and a turtle were found at the site, so the temperatures must not have dipped to the lows of Alaska's Prince Creek formation, where ectotherms are totally unknown. However, it's interesting that most of the dinosaurs in this new Wapiti Formation are also in Alaska (Hypacrosaurus is not). Even more interestingly, the two mammals tentatively identified at Wapiti are also in southern Alberta and Alaska (Didelphodon and Cimolodon). To me, this implies a fairly uniform group of fauna across the northwestern coast of North America during the Late Cretaceous.

But I'm here to discuss Troodon. Fiorillo suggested (in 2008) that Troodon may have grown larger the farther north is occurred, possibly because of its dominance in the carnivore guild thanks to its predisposition to surviving in a colder, darker climate. In fact, the Troodon specimens from Wapiti are comparable to those of southern Alberta and Montana, which means that Troodon did not get larger as a consequence of Bergman's Rule (animals at high latitudes get larger than their more southerly counterparts) but instead thanks to its dominance in the carnivore guild, as Fiorillo suspected. What kept Troodon going during those cold winter months? As it turns out, the presence of hadrosaur nesting sites in both Wapiti and Prince Creek may tell us something about what Troodon did in its spare time.

Ryan, et al. (1998) suggested that the association of baby hadrosaurs and Troodon in the Horseshoe Canyon Formation (where other dinosaurs are uncommon) could mean that Troodon actively targeted baby and juvenile duckbills. Given that Hypacrosaurus apparantly nested at Wapiti and Edmontosaurus nested in Prince Creek, and that both sites are covered with shed Troodon teeth lends credence to this idea. And, in fact, it might be telling that Troodon becomes a larger and larger faunal component the farther north you go while other theropods become more scarce.

The description of the Wapiti Formation also has broad implications for paleogeographical and paleoenvironmental studies. It might also be time to revisit the question of whether any of Alaska's dinosaurs migrated south--the Wapiti Formation isn't that far away, and it was temperate enough to support a range of ecothermic vertebrate fauna!

Also, give Lukaz Panzarin a hand on his absolutely wonderful illustration for the paper. I especially like the trio of pachyrhinosaurs on the left!

Further Studies Into the Alt-Permian

Here we see a barbouronopsid (possibly Ursosmilus) chasing after a juvenile Dromaeosuchus in hopes of a quick afternoon snack. Like the semi-aquatic dicynodonts before them, the barbouronopsids and sprint-o-crocs are part of a much larger group of alternate Permian beasties. More will be revealed in May, but I thought you'd all get a kick out of this...

Troodon formosus in Alaska

Alaska's theropod dinosaurs have, until now, been known only from dental remains. Shed teeth, that is. No bones attached to said teeth, unfortunately. Our theropods (Dromaeosaurus, Troodon, Gorgosaurus, and Saurornitholestes) are all known from other places (Alberta, Montana), too. There's not a whole lot that sets Alaska's dinosaur fauna apart, aside from their unique living conditions. Interestingly, Troodon teeth are generally larger in Alaska than other spots, suggesting that our big-brained deinonychosaur was bigger. But is it a new species?

A paper published in this month's Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology describes two partial Troodon braincases from the Prince Creek Formation on the North Slope of Alaska. These two cranial bits represent the first non-dental remains of a theropod dinosaur in my state. Braincase fragments aren't a whole lot to get excited about in and of themselves, but they are diagnostic enough to solidify the idea--previously based on dental evidence only--that Alaska's troodontid is Troodon formosus. But more interestingly, the paper points out that Troodon teeth in Alaska are larger than Troodon teeth in Alberta and Montana, and the authors suggest that the increase in body size is a response to the "extreme light regime" of Alaska's North Slope. What's more, the fact that braincase fragments were found at all from Troodon, along with the large number of isolated teeth, implies that Troodon was the most common theropod dinosaur in Alaska at the time. Perhaps its large eyes helped it to survive the dark periods of the winter.

This, coupled with its feather coat, endothermic metabolism and smarter-than-the-average-theropod brain, probably meant that Troodon wintered in Alaska. Whether any of our dinosaurs migrated is up for debate--I imagine the larger herbivorous dinosaurs took advantage of warmer climates in the winter. and the bigger theropods (like Gorgosaurus) may have followed them down. But it looks like Troodon was a permenant resident, which is kind of cool. Now let's cross our fingers for more Alaska material getting published!

Why Dead Space Works, Silent Hill Doesn't, and Resident Evil Switched Gears

Even though I don't get a chance to play horror games very often, that genre includes some of my favorite video games. When done right, the horror genre sucks you in like no other. It's something about the darkness, the ambient noise, and the isolation that puts you right in the character's head and makes you jump at every snapped twig. Up until now, two genres have dominated the "survival horror" genre: Resident Evil and Silent Hill. Both are absolute powerhouses in their own way, but one has evolved into a new genre and the other has languished behind the crowd because of its outdated gameplay mechanics. And then you have a new contender from EA of all places which promises to reinvent the genre itself.

Resident Evil started the whole "survival horror" trend and largely took its cues from Alone in the Dark--cinematic camera angles, puzzle-solving, 2D backgrounds with 3D character models. The first RE game set the tone for most of the series to come. Its scares came mostly in two types: "It's just the cat" seat-jumpers and the stress of knowing that you probably don't have enough ammo to survive the next encounter. It's what you might call "apprehensive" horror. The series continued in this vein for four iterations before beginning to change in RE4. But what RE never focused on was psychological horror, the kind of fear that is instilled over time so that when the big moment comes, you're already seconds from wetting your pants. You need atmosphere for this kind of horror, and it's honestly difficult to pull off.

But Silent Hill has always been up to that task. Placing atmosphere above everything else (including gameplay), the team behind (most of) the series knows how to craft an eerie game. Blood-stained walls, screams in the distance, view-obscuring fog, and mutilated creatures that evoke terror, loathing, and pity are the stars here. It's all atmosphere, all the time in Silent Hill. Unforunately, the gameplay shambles along slower than any Racoon City zombie. The focus on melee combat slows the pace to a crawl, and the series' indoor levels, while wonderfully gory and "wrong, somehow," are littered with locked doors and tedious progression schemes.

And now we have a new kid on the block--EA's Dead Space, a game that combines the psychological horror of Silent Hill with the frantic gunplay of Resident Evil. But thanks to its next-gen presentation, Dead Space enters the playing field with a bang. The game takes place in an enormous mining space station, where the inhabitants were slaughtered and their corpses transformed into twisted, clawed amalgamations of their former selves. Between the surprise encounters with deadly beasts, players are treated to tense audio recordings of former crew members recalling what happened to their home (and each other), text logs of the doomed mining operation, and hallucinations (or are they?) of your character's lost love. The musical score keeps you on edge and the ship's ambient noises will ensure that you're always checking behind your shoulder for things that go bump in the night.

Thankfully, the gameplay doesn't faulter. Although heavily in favor of gunplay (though melee attacks are present), players are tasked with carefully managing their ammo reserves and shooting precisely. You can't kill these monsters by filling them with lead--you must dismember them to be victorious. You are able to run, aim, and shoot at the same time, which is an enormous step up from Resident Evil (aim and shoot, but don't move) and Silent Hill (gunplay is virtually an afterthought) and manages to maintain the tension.

The latest entry in the Resident Evil series, RE5, continues the trend set by RE4 and changes further from a horror game into an action one. Its pace is similar to an adventure movie, and the addition of two-player co-op (online and off!) means that Capcom can focus on throwing more enemies at you at a time. RE4's strength was that, unlike its predecessors, it overwhelmed the player with guns and ammo, but then threw just enough enemies your way so that you never really felt comfortable. RE5 retains that feature, but the addition of a second player means that even MORE baddies swarm you, and they're more intelligent than they were in RE4. This is the same kind of "apprehension" fear that RE4 had, but instead of dealing with too little ammo, you're dealing with too many bad guys. Neither RE4 or RE5 have any real "scare" moments. There are a few seat-jumpers, but as usual, very little in the way of atmosphere. The sense of scale is impressive--RE5 loves to throw gigantic setpieces your way. But the Resident Evil series has moved beyond the "survival horror" genre and is becoming an action series. That's fine by me, and it works well for both RE4 and RE5.

The king of tension is still the king of tension, but not a lot else. Silent Hill: Homecoming upped the ante from a graphical perspective but kept all the old PS2-calibur gameplay choices, and that really weighs the game down. Trying a hundred doors before you get to an open one is just annoying, and having to get up close and personal to dangerous enemies in order to deal damage to them (melee combat) just isn't fun. There is the option for gunplay, but ammo is still scarce. The player has new combat abilities including dodges (actually present in SH4) and counter-attacks, but in general, combat is an activity best avoided. Homecoming will be fun for series veterans, but newcomers will likely warm to RE5 or Dead Space before this latest Silent Hill jaunt. This is not to say that Homecoming is a bad game--it's just archaic. But in order to regain fans, the series will definately need to evolve.

Dead Space is already getting a prequel for the Wii called Dead Space: Extraction. Although technically a rail shooter, EA cautions that it will be unlike any rail shooter that's come before, and all of the abilities of the first game, including stasis and kinetics, will return here. The game looks absolutely incredible: EA has broken the "Wii" barrier for graphics. Interestingly, the Wii is also getting another RE game, a sequel to Umbrella Chronicles called Darkside Chronicles which will likely focus on parts of the RE storyline left out in Umbrella Chronicles (most of RE2, Code Veronica, maybe RE4). Finally, even Silent Hill is showing up on the Wii soon. A remake of the original PSOne game is on the way, called Silent Hill: Shattered Promises. It will not be a rail shooter, but aside from its remake status, details are scarce. Anyway, it's a good time to be a horror fan, as there are lots of choices right now!