What next for video game horror?

Of all the video game genres, survival horror has achieved most in terms of atmospherics. For the most part they really are creepy, thanks to skillful manipulation of gloomy graphics and, more importantly, sound. Konami's Silent Hill games are sublimely accomplished in this area, with eerie ambient noise accompanying your tense adventures through the horrific locales of the titular town.

The new Silent Hill 3 is a reliable, quality game slotting in with its predecessors with the same effective messing-with-your-head style, all nightmarish settings and deformed freaks. In terms of gameplay, however, Silent Hill 3 doesn’t really do anything the previous titles hadn't already done. Indeed, the Resident Evil games seem to be similarly stuck. For the most part, survival horror has become formulaic. You have corridors, locked doors, incongruous puzzles, limited ammo, awkward camera angles, cryptic non-playable characters and, of course, hideous monsters to be dispatched or avoided.

So where can the genre go next? There have been some efforts to reappraise the formula - Project Zero denied its protagonist a weapon and instead armed her with a camera to see off attacking ghosts. It was a chilling game, but mostly it conformed. As for Clock Tower 3, another game with a young girl in peril, I'm not hopeful.

Silicon Knights' Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem is about the only horror game that's really reinvigorated the genre in recent times, diving into a fascinating multi-era HP Lovecraft-influenced narrative (a refreshing change from the usual reference points of Romero, Lynch etc).

In a novel move, the music of Silent Hill 3 is being released on CD. It's hardly a great gaming innovation, though. The expanded narratives of Eternal Darkness, which take the player beyond one milieu, is so far the only real pointer for a way forward for survival horror. Daniel Etherington 30 May 03

Silent Hill 3 is out now on PS2. It will be available on PC later this year.