Silent Hill 4: Disturbing new screens

Hot on the heels of the we recently ran, we have these new shots of Konami's scare-fest. While SH4 was clearly never going to be a laugh-a-minute cutesy romp, it appears to ramp up the grotesque factor every time we see something new of it.

There's plenty of nasty stuff here to be getting your head around, not least the mutated dripping-in-flesh ladies bent on eating your face. However, we have to say that, while we understand Konami's choice in going for a grainy look to add to the atmosphere, it's starting to look a bit too grainy. In short, at times it just looks a bit poor. Graphics certainly aren't everything and gameplay is obviously far more important but there's an audience to be lost if the chosen visual style gives the impression that the game's a bit duff.

Yet if you look at the two environment shots at the end of the batch of screens, the game engine itself clearly promises a stellar-looking title. How the game will look in the final analysis remains to be seen but we hope that Konami pick a halfway house between the environmental models and the grain-for-effect look. Best of both worlds, we say. Even if one is full of tortured souls...

Silent Hill 4 will arrive on PS2 and Xbox in the autumn