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Return to where the horror began in this port of the PS2 prequel.

It's a little hard not to start out with prejudices about a PSP port to the PS2. A game like Silent Hill Origins is a large part of the reason why. Some games turn out to be more than the sum of the parts, but Origins manages to be less.

There are all the familiar trappings of the Silent Hill series, and survival horror in general, but there's precious little here you haven't seen before in better games. The "mirror world" of previous Silent Hill games is here and this time the monsters are a lot nicer about pulling you in. For the most part, you'll jump between mirrors at will. That's not nearly as scary as previous incarnations. This is a prequel, so maybe they get angrier later in life.

As far as the story goes, this time our hero is trucker Travis Grady, a drifter with the obligatory mysterious past. He's taking an ill-advised detour past Silent Hill. Again, since it's a prequel I can forgive him. By the next installment, they really should have blocked off the road to this place.

Travis has to slam on the brakes to avoid hitting a little girl and feels compelled to find out what's going on. Later he finds the girl trapped in a burning house, saves her and passes out. He awakes in Silent Hill and of course, will come to wish he hadn't.

Unlike previous protagonists, Travis packs a pretty mean punch and is a fair hand with guns also. But despite a more robust, rugged hero the combat here feels clunky, uninspired and not a whole lot of fun.

There are melee weapons ranging from metal drip stands to portable TV's. I have no idea how he carries all this junk around, as even by any reasonable suspension of video game disbelief Travis carts the equivalent of Home Depot with him. He really should be made to drop some of this stuff.

It wouldn't be any kind of action game without some quick time button press events but this feature feels hastily implemented too. Maybe I've played too much God of War but I want these minigames to end with a violent payoff. At the very least I'd like to see a dramatic reversal of combat. All Origins gives as a reward is a slight pushoff which is not very satisfying at all.