7th of November 2023

A comparison screenshot of the original and updated version of a skybox texture showing a view of a lake.

A boat approaching an island that is very foggy and hard to see.

I was looking over old update videos for the Silent Hill 2: Enhanced Edition mod and I noticed when they were showing off the updated skybox texture for the lookout area that they added in just off-screen (the area highlighted in red is the only portion of the texture visible in-game) the island church from one of the endings that itself is only barely visible in game.

Caoimhe

24th of February 2024

I was thinking about this again and I found the full, clean images, on the project’s Github page if anyone wants them

Caoimhe

24th of June 2024

I was thinking about this again again and I thought I’d consult a map of the area too. This is a fanmade map by Guy-onthe-Couch on Deviantart that combines in-game maps from the games into one big map. It's obviously quite undetailed outside of what is there for gameplay and it doesn’t really match the skybox very well but it’s interesting anyway to try and see what might line up.

The white lakeside structure on the right is presumably the Lake View Hotel, a nice addition to the skybox as it is the final destination of the game. That being on the very right and the island being (offscreen) on the far left indicates we are only seeing a very narrow slice of this map from the observation area where this skybox is from (in the bottom right of the map) and that the amusement park would be just off to the right of what can be seen.

Lone Survivor ★★☆☆☆

Caoimhe ⬥ 26th of July 2026

via Backloggd

Lone Survivor is a game I have started a few times but never followed through to the end before and coming back to it I was reminded fairly quickly why that is the case. It does do a good job of capturing the atmosphere of Silent Hill and translating it into 2D, but the pacing and gameplay leaves a lot to be desired.

It uses up most of its tricks with regards creepy horror stuff fairly early on and doesn’t have much to escalate with, while also establishing very early that the protagonist’s perceptions of things are not to be trusted and the apocalypse may not be what it seems, but only the vaguest hints exist to suggest how to interpret things through any other lens, and the story moments that are there being so deliberately mysterious does not intrigue me as make feel very detached.

In terms of gameplay the food and sleep system feels like a constant drag and your options for getting past monsters is either quite rudimentary combat or very tedious stealth. I found myself killing enemies that I could sneak past just because getting past them repeatedly was tedious. I got to one ending and I don’t feel any desire to replay for others.

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One X per year

Caoimhe ⬥ 19th of February 2026

I previously posted lists I’ve made picking one game and one film per year since 1990. 1990 acted as a good arbitrary stopping point as it’s a nice round number, it’s the year I was born and the number of games I’ve played at all from before then is pretty small, and it would be be fairly difficult to pick out shows for each year before then for me too. I’ve made a dedicated page on the site for these picks, made a few substitutions, added a pick for each for 2025 and added one series of television per year as well. All put into one table with the ability to toggle off which media you want to see selections for as well as some dynamic rearrangement based on screenspace, all done with (a horrendous mess of) Cascading Style Sheets and no Javascript.

These are not necessarily my favourite from each year. I have tried to be deliberate to give a spread of different styles and series I like as well including some weirder picks. Especially with games I spent a lot of time weighing choices for particular years based on what series I wanted to include and some years are just packed with formative games for me. 2001 has Metal Gear Solid 2, Silent Hill 2, Commandos 2 and Halo (and Grand Theft Auto 3 and Advance Wars and Worms World Party…). I eventually gave the year to Metal Gear Solid 2 after weighing up that I could have Resident Evil 2 and Silent Hill: Shattered Memories covering some bases for Silent Hill 2, Shadow Tactics was spiritually taking up a place for the Commandos series and there’s already plenty of shooters there to justify dropping Halo.

Similarly Prey is spiritually covering for System Shock so that I can have a childhood favourite Soleil for 1994 and Half-Life would probably beat out Resident Evil 2 in a head-to-head but there’s already two Half-Life games on there and I wanted it to carry the survival horror water for both the aforementioned Silent Hill 2 and for the REmake that got booted out from the previous iteration to make room for Robot Alchemic Drive. And yes after going on about carefully spreading out my choices I did give three picks to Sonic games, one to another Sonic Team-developed game and two more to Sonic-inspired indie games (and four different series of Doctor Who for the TV list). I will not be taking feedback on this.