February 1, 2010 - Meet Harry Mason. He's crashed his car in the middle of a blizzard on the outskirts of a small town called Silent Hill. He's confused -- his memory is iffy, but he's painfully aware that his little girl is no longer in the vehicle. So with flashlight in hand, he braves the cold, the snow and inevitably the terror as he searches blindly for her. This is the setup for Shattered Memories, which is not a remake but a full-blown re-imagining of Konami's classic horror adventure game.

Scooby-Doo has seen more than his fair share of video games, and let's face it, they haven't been memorable. The canon has had a bit of a revamp with a recent live action direct-to-video film, but the newest video game, Scooby-Doo! First Frights, decided to do a different, separate revamp of the franchise. A revamp that seems to ignore everything about the series and turns Mystery Inc. into a team that solves mysteries with their fists, not their brains.

The game's credits list Vampire Night as published by Namco Hometek and developed by Namco, Sega, and WOW Entertainment. One would think that something produced by the great minds of these fine companies would be nothing less than perfection, but that's sadly far from the truth. The game's development was handled almost completely by WOW Entertainment, the group that's responsible for the House of the Dead series, and despite the collaborative efforts from two arcade powerhouses, the end result is a product that's less than either Sega or Namco's best.

Gun games . . . you either love 'em or you hate 'em, right? Well, I was kinda on mixed grounds regarding the issue, actually, as I sorta-kinda liked the original House of the Dead on the Saturn, and I sorta kinda liked Virtua Cop. House of the Dead II has me leaning more towards the love 'em side, though, with its faster, more varied gameplay, and its incredible graphical style.