In an effort to expand the Silent Hill franchise Konami has created a game that veers way off track.

Silent Hill: Book Of Memories is an odd game. Not in the traditional way that a Silent Hill game is supposed to be odd either. I expect men with geometrically-pleasing heads and unrealistically large knives in Silent Hill titles, much as I expect turtles in a Mario Bros. game. What I don’t expect however, is an entirely new gameplay system.

Instead of the traditional third-person creeping punctuated with brief moments of horrific violence that we’ve come to expect from Konami’s flagship horror franchise, Book Of Memories is a dungeon crawl. Imagine a slower version of Diablo with even more nightmarish enemies and a notable undercurrent of psychological horror, and you’ve got a pretty good idea of what to expect in Book Of Memories.

Normally that might sound appealing on its own, but in this context it’s a very jarring shift. However, that’s not the biggest problem with Book Of Memories, and even those for whom dungeon crawlers are catnip should think hard about grabbing for this game.

Not Your Daddy’s Survival Horror

Changes to the Silent Hill formula are apparent from the moment you start the game. After you’ve clicked through the suitably eerie title screen and sat through the game’s interminably long load times, you’ll be prompted to create a character. Normally Silent Hill games relish dropping players into the shoes of a psychologically damaged, well-defined protagonist, but in this case you’re free to select from styles like “Rocker,” “Goth” and “Jock” in your efforts to create your perfect Silent Hill avatar. If you’re curious whether this change inhibits the game’s ability to connect players with the strife of a game’s given protagonist, yes. Yes it does. At least when compared to past Silent Hill games.

Once you’ve finished polishing your virtual self, you’re tasked with tapping one of the icons the game presents you with. There’s no content for what these icons do, nor any reason to suspect that you should tap the screen. The game has a habit of expecting players to know ahead of time when they should be using the touchscreen, but once you know this you realize that at any time you find yourself stuck, you may as well try touching stuff on the game’s screen. Book Of Memories gives little in the way of in-play instructions, so blindly tapping at things is how I discovered that my character can pick up items.

Which brings up a good point: While some dead monsters leave behind glowing treasure chests that can be pillaged for items and cash, for the most part you’ll only discover new stuff (especially stuff that’s relevant to the game’s relatively meager plot) by walking right up to it and noticing a small notification bubble appear on screen. Problematically, if you’re walking quickly these bubbles may only appear for half a second, forcing characters to repeatedly walk back and forth over the same area before finally discovering the proper location. Then, without any warning, players must tap the screen to pick up their new-found goodie.

Gameplay-wise Book Of Memories is a standard dungeon crawl with Silent Hill decorations. There’s just no way around it. Instead of cowering from monsters and conserving ammo, talented players are able to straight up punch their demonic foes to death. Silent Hill players wouldn’t expect this to be a sound strategy, but since the game also includes a surprisingly useful block button and features a 3/4 overhead perspective ideal for moving away from foes quickly, combat in Book Of Memories is almost simple action game fare.

While this whole concept still seems odd, I will grant that developer WayForward made a good decision in not giving characters a traditional “level up” system. No matter how far you get into Book Of Memories, your character will remain rather fragile. New weapons and items might make him or her less likely to die in a fight, but your avatar will never become too powerful for any one creature to kill in pretty short order. 

Memories Of The Past

Despite the massive shift in gameplay style, Book Of Memories isn’t entirely lacking in the sorts of things that Silent Hill fans crave (read: lots of gore and unsettling themes). As you’re wandering through the various rooms of this game — which, when taken as a whole bear a passing, thematic similarity to the rooms seen in Castlevania: Symphony Of The Night – you might stumble upon a creepy little girl. This girl will most likely have a task for you (most other dungeon crawls would call this a “quest”) and you’re free to take it on or ignore it. Most often these tasks will be gruesome or expose some new facet of the horror your character is involved in, so while they don’t seem to have any true effect on the game’s plot, they’re still intriguing diversions.

The game’s enemies are all either returning Silent Hill beasts or brand new creations that do an excellent job of mimicking the series’ horrors to date. Likewise, the design of the areas in Book Of Memories faithfully depicts the franchise’s dark horror themes. Lastly, with characters lacking any real way to improve their vitality, Book Of Memories maintains the Silent Hill series’ tradition of forcing players to constantly keep track of how low their health has become.

Still, Book Of Memories is a drastic departure from its predecessors and it just doesn’t really fit with Silent Hill as a whole. When your view of a character is from ten feet above his or her head and taking out the next enemy is as easy as throwing a couple punches, dodging, then swinging a broken board, it’s very difficult to feel any sense of fear or tension. It also doesn’t help that Book Of Memories is the least plot-reliant Silent Hill game in memory, a fact that is highlighted by those who choose to play through Book Of Memories with a group of pals via the game’s multiplayer functionality. Rushing through a Silent Hill game with three friends and guns blazing removes a lot of the horror you might expect to find.

Conclusion

While it may not be what most Silent Hill fans are looking for, Book Of Memories is a relatively solid dungeon crawl. Given my affection for WayForward (the developer behind the awesome Contra 4) I wish I could say that this might attract new players to the series, but Book Of Memories is also plagued with a number of minor gameplay issues, too many to recommend it based purely on gameplay. I understand what WayForward was going for here, but in a world where Diablo, Borderlands and Torchlight all exist, Book Of Memories comes up way short.

Whether you wanted deep psychological horror or a deep dungeon crawl, Book Of Memories is far from your best option. It’s not that it’s necessarily bad, it’s just so bland and average that this game hardly bears mentioning.

Score: 5/10

(This game was reviewed using a PS Vita copy provided by Konami.)

Own a Sony Xperia smartphone and looking forward to Jelly Bean? Bad news, then. It seems that Android 4.1 won’t be making its way to Xperia devices until early 2013, according to Sony.

Even worse news, several handsets won’t be getting the upgrade at all. This includes the Xperia Arc, Xperia Play, and Xperia Neo. We do know for sure that the Xperia T, TX and V will get the update, though.

While it isn’t that out of place for older devices to not make the cut for major upgrades on Android, many of the Sony handsets that won’t see Jelly Bean aren’t even a year old at this point. If Sony wants to continue to enjoy success in the Android world they might want to step up their game a bit.

For those that are lucky enough to get Jelly Bean early next year, there is a lot to look forward to. From the voice-based search functionality in Google Now to the project Butter speed improvements– there is a lot to love with 4.1. Not enough? There are also improvements to the keyboard, notifications and a heck of a lot more.

For many Xperia fans this will be bittersweet news. Some will be glad that their device is covered, others very angry that they are going to be left out in the dark. What do you think?

After getting off to a brisk start, Apple's international release of the iPhone 5 has ground to a halt. Though it was hailed as the fastest product rollout yet, the phone on sale in fewer countries after a longer period of time than the iPhone 4S. What's going on?

Many Apple fans around the world are beginning to ask “where the hell is my iPhone 5?” Why? Because after Apple’s brisk iPhone 5 launch a month ago, the company seems to have put is international rollout on hold, as the phone has failed to materialize in any additional countries, other than those mentioned during the launch event.

Apple is keeping very quiet on the subject too, perhaps because it boasted the iPhone 5 would be its fastest product rollout ever. Bold words that were perhaps a little premature, because right now, it’s slower than the iPhone 4S.

Sure, the iPhone 5 has been popular but this is Apple’s sixth iPhone and all of them have had bigger launches than their predecessors, so it’s unlikely to have under-estimated demand. Instead, it over-estimated Foxconn’s ability to glue and screw the things together, which combined with a complex manufacturing process and a desire to “fix” its forthcoming financial report, has put undue strain on the supply. Unsurprisingly, it has fallen over, and the international rollout has stopped.

To illustrate the problem, let’s compare the release schedule of the iPhone 4S with the iPhone 5.

iPhone 4S rollout

Apple announced the iPhone 4S on October 4 2011, and it went on sale in the US, Canada, UK, Australia, France, Germany and Japan on October 14. The next set of 22 countries joined it on October 28, and they were Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. Apple announced both these dates and the relevant countries during it’s October 4 event.

On November 1, Apple announced the next set of countries to receive the iPhone 4S. Albania, Armenia, Bulgaria, El Salvador, Greece, Guatemala, Hong Kong, Malta, Montenegro, New Zealand, Panama, Poland, Portugal, Romania and South Korea would all get the device on November 11.

That’s 29 days between both announcements and release dates to put the iPhone 4S into 43 countries.

iPhone 5 rollout so far

Here’s the same breakdown for the iPhone 5. It was announced on September 12 2012, and the USA, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore and the UK all received it on September 21. Then, on September 28, Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland all got theirs too.

Since the iPhone 5 was announced, 38 days have passed and the device has gone on sale in 31 countries, and no further release plans have been announced. While that initial run was fast, it has now stopped dead in its tracks.

Apple’s Phil Schiller called the iPhone 5 the company’s fastest rollout ever. Sorry, Phil, but that doesn’t appear to be the case at the moment. Apple still has time to recover though, as it has committed to putting the iPhone 5 into 100 different countries by the end of the year, which means it still has plenty of time to meet its target. The iPhone 4S made it into 70 countries before the end of 2011, something it achieved with three weeks less time available.

Delivery delays

For those of you living in a country with the iPhone 5, head over to your online Apple Store of choice and you’ll find there’s a 3 to 4 week wait for the phone. Apple loves it when demand outstrips supply, but it’s probably less happy about making its customers wait for a month before they get their phones. Situations vary, and some may get their phones earlier than expected, but these delivery dates have been in place since the iPhone 5 went on sale.

Looking back to the iPhone 4S, MacStories noted that when pre-orders started on October 28 2011 for the second batch of countries, delivery was estimated to be between 1 and 2 weeks. On November 11, by which time the iPhone 4S was available in 43 countries, Mashable showed a screenshot for delivery times of an unlocked 4S in the United States. Guess what? It was 1 to 2 weeks.

Production delays affecting Apple’s grand plan, or vice versa?

A report by Fortune says Apple pushed to get the iPhone 5 into 31 countries before the end of September, so sales would count in its Q4 2012 financial report and see the device break previous sales records. There was probably much rubbing of hands at the thought of the headlines, but surely the plan would have been toned down if Apple had any idea supply was going to be so restricted.

The gamble may not have worked out quite as well as it hoped either, as analysts are reducing their forecasts ahead of Apple’s fourth quarter results, due two days after its October 23 event. On average, iPhone 5 sales predictions have dropped from the low-30 million mark to the mid-20s.

While Apple wanted to grab itself an easy headline, production delays certainly weren’t part of the plan. A Foxconn executive told The Wall Street Journal that the iPhone 5 is “the most difficult device [the company] has ever assembled,” citing Apple’s demanding quality checks and complex design as issues slowing down production.

The ease with which the casing is scratched is also causing problems, as Apple’s strict quality control has seen more cases rejected and assemblers take longer over each stage; a good thing overall, but bad for getting devices out the door.

Then there are reports of workers at the factories going on strike over conditions, where as many as 4,000 employees were reported to have stopped making iPhones altogether. Foxconn denies the strikes took place, but China Labor Watch says otherwise.

So when will the international rollout continue?

Apple hasn’t said when the next round of sales will commence. China Unicom said it would be putting the iPhone 5 on sale within three months of its initial release, so we can estimate it to be sometime during December. A report by BGR.in says that the iPhone 5 is set to go on sale in India on October 26, and that it would only be available through Apple.

The upcoming October 23 event is a prime opportunity for Apple to talk about the next wave of iPhone releases, and an October 26 release date puts it the day after the company’s fourth quarter earnings call. It’s going to have to get moving too, as there are still 69 countries to go before it meets its own, self-imposed target for the year.

But production issues won’t be solved overnight, leaving us to wonder whether Foxconn can manage another clutch of countries. Apple’s eternal quest to be “number one” may backfire so badly that the rest of the world will also be 3 to 4 weeks away from getting an iPhone 5 through the new year.

Telefonica-backed startup Six3 wants to bring video messaging to the masses with its new app -- which lies somewhere between Skype and Viddy.

UK-based, 14-month-old startup Six3 wants to shake up the messaging platform by adding video the mix, and with a backer like Telefonica, the largest telecommunications companies in the world, it might just be able to. There isn’t a direct competitor with any existing mobile app out there, so Six3 describes itself as a hybrid between Whatsapp and Viddy and hopes to be a game changer that opens up a market of users communicating strictly through short video messages.

There are undoubtedly countless messaging and video sharing apps out there, and Six3’s CEO and co-founder Tim Grimsditch categorizes them into three buckets. First there are one-to-one video chatting services, but Grimsditch says that the growth for those companies is slow since users “tend to stick to very tight circles using that service.”

In bucket two are the Instagram-for-video apps. The most well known in this market are services like Viddy or Mobli. Those apps, however, are about producing quality content. Six3 is about bite-sized messages and quick communication.

The third bucket is filled by the all-in-one communication services like Whatsapp and Skype. These apps tend to “focus all of their energy behind a piece of their service that they’re famous for,” says Grimsditch. The video part of a messaging service like Whatsapp, he explains, is weak. “We’re a tiny team with small resources, yet our video messages are twice as fast as Whatsapp.”

Internationally, particularly in Asia, there’s been a lot of experimentation with new types of chat apps — a popular one being WeChat. Its users are so accustomed to its unique voice messaging feature that I was told few WeChat users in China even send text messages anymore. Six3 wants to do something similar by targeting an untapped niche. “[We're] a platform to communicate with video messages in a way that’s easy, mobile, lets people decide on private or public messaging, and lets people use it within their existing network,” says Grimsditch.

Using the app is as simple. You can select a colored filter, record your video for a maximum of 63 seconds (which is where Six3’s name comes from), select the video’s recipients (via email, address book contacts, Twitter, Facebook, or other Six3 users), and press “Send.”

To take social a step further, Six3 announced a deeper Facebook integration yesterday at the Dublin Web Summit’s START conference, where the company was recognized as one of the “world’s 100 most promising early stage startups.” The update adds the ability for users to send private Six3 video messages to individual Facebook friends or share them publicly to your Facebook Timeline, while offering a faster and more seamless user experience. “It makes it incredibly easy to create good looking 63 second long video, share it through Six3, Twitter or Facebook, and respond to the video,” explains Grimditch.

The app will remain free for as long as it exists and you can find it in the App Store (the Android version is in the works), but Six3 will be experimenting with a few revenue models. The ones that Grimsditch was comfortable describing include charging users to archive messages for those important clips that you might have an emotional attachment to as well as the possibility of creating sell premium options like color filters or other visual effects as in-app purchases.

To many developers’ benefit, smartphone owners aren’t particularly app-loyal. Grimsditch is well aware of this and hopes to jostle competitors and become not jut a trend, but a staple app in the sea of 700 million smartphones. “The reality is that we’re just getting started and the dust isn’t going to settle in this market for years and years. So I think you’re going to see many years of explosive innovation, and we’re absolutely planning to be at the forefront of that.”