Dell's Core i7-Based Inspiron Just Dropped to $780

BioShock Infinite

The ending of BioShock Infinite, one of the most controversial and, at the same time, a work of art. Not only does the video conclude the whole loop of the story, but it also cleverly comments on the very nature of the gameplay and game design, which fans reacted very vigorously to, not expecting to see such a thing.

Game Symbols and Payouts

The Silent Movie video slot by IGT offers black and white symbols and characters of the vintage era. Anyway, the game has also six unique symbols that contain color. Let us look at them precisely.

The Silent Movie logo is the main symbol of the game being it’s Wild. It replaces all the rest of the game symbols creating successful winning combinations. It cannot influence five Bonus symbols that look like posters to silent movies: Keystone Kops, A Muddy Romance, A Trip to the Moon, Dr.Jekyll & Mr. Hyde; and a pair of admission tickets.

The players can also meet individual game symbols from the four movies, including:

• Keystone Kops pays 300 coins to the winner;
• Mabel Norman from the movie A Muddy Romance charms a player with up to 400 coins;
• The moon with a rocket in the eye from the movie A Trip to the Moon sends you up to 750 coins;
• John Barrymore from Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde rewards you with up to 1000 coins.

The low-value symbols are the tools from the silent movie era: film reels, a megaphone, slate board, director’s chair, a vintage camera.

Energy bill warning over simple appliance tweaks that could save you £100's

Kaji is known for playing soft-spoken characters, such as Adol Christin from the Ys series.

His voice would fit well with Silent Hill 2 protagonist James Sunderland.

Written by Georgina Young on behalf of GLHF.

Opening Hours

Throughout the year Hidcote's opening hours change depending on the season. Please check the opening hours for the garden and outlets before visiting, these can be found here.

Between 26 September and 30 October Hidcote is open daily from 11am to 4pm, with last entry to the property at 3pm.

From 31 October until mid-February Hidcote is open weekends only, from 11am to 4pm, with last entry to the property at 3pm.

How do you play?

Instead of inserting money directly into the machine, players buy buckets of ball bearings at a counter/machine in the pachinko hall. Pachinko balls cost on average 4 yen each, which works out to about 30p per ball. This low cost of entry means that players sometimes buy balls in the hundreds.

To interact with the machine, players must turn a dial that determines the force the balls are propelled at. The dial also acts as a button, which fires one ball to the top of the machine at a time. Pachinko is fast paced so you could fire multiple balls in quick succession if you're trying to get a bonus.

Instead of winning money, players are rewarded for landing balls in the right holes and completing bonus games with prizes of more ball bearings. The ball bearings you earn can extend your gameplay or they can be exchanged for prizes.

Ring of Contract

Location: In the Jewellery Shop, 2nd floor ‘Nowhere’.Purpose: Used to link chain on refrigerator inside the kitchen, 1st floor of ‘Nowhere’, to keep doors shut and obtain ‘Dagger of Melchior’

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Konami’s in the news again this week, only this time it’s not for their occasional (and, I believe, very intentional) there-might-be-a-new-Silent-Hill-in-the-works teases. This time, it’s because of eFootball 2022, its shiny-new spiritual successor to Pro Evolution Soccer (PES).

• READ MORE: ‘Apex Legends: Escape’ preview – Season 11 brings PVE carnage, a major rework, and more

Initially, Konami was in the news for all the right reasons, too. For twenty years, PES – though thought by many to be mechanically superior to its rival, EA’s FIFA franchise – sat in FIFA‘s shadow, failing to meet its competitor’s sales, impact, or reach. But rather than continue to compete with EA or its aggressive monetisation mechanics, Konami – the same Konami that continually upsets fans by making not sequels of its most famous games but instead creates pachinko versions, a Japanese slot machine daubed with the trimmings of the company’s most successful titles, including Metal Gear and Castlevania – surprised us all by announcing it was going to take a different tack entirely and rebrand PES as eFootball.

Oh, and it was going to be free-to-play.

Imagine that. After 18 releases, 26 years, and 111 million sales, Konami had the balls to go F2P.

Konami’s often the butt of gaming in-jokes, but I’ve always thought it is (well, used to be) an interesting publisher, and one prepared to take risks and experiment with new tech and opportunities. Silent Hill Shattered Memories, for instance, was a Nintendo Wii exclusive for a brief while, capitalising on the system’s motion controls to create an immersive horror experience that hadn’t really been seen before. Yes, there were issues with that game, but the novel control scheme wasn’t one of them.

Dumping a 20-year-old franchise and replacing it with a game that – theoretically, anyway – players can access without spending a penny? That’s a ballsy move. But it just might be the only thing that will unperch FIFA from the footie top spot.

Fast-forward to September 2021, and Konami’s meme-worthy attempts at dethroning FIFA have come crashing down. Free-to-play or not free-to-play, eFootball 2022 currently holds the dubious title of being the worst-reviewed Steam game of all time, which is quite an achievement given the obnoxious number of shovelware, asset-flip bollocks we see pop up on Steam with depressing regularity. Its dodgy graphics, peculiar AI, unresponsive controls, and stunning lack of features have earned not new players, but scorn, with one player succinctly summing up their thoughts in the Steam review section with: “I don’t care that this game is free, I still feel ripped off. I demand a full refund”. And I couldn’t agree more.

It’s tempting to look at free games and apps through a different lens than premium games, isn’t it? After all, those games are released for “free” – well, ostensibly, anyway – even though it’s taken developers money, time, and effort to put that game into your hands at all, let alone provide further updates – be they for bug fixes or extra content – later down the line.

But you’ve heard the saying, right? If the product is free, you are the product, and never is that more apparent than when it comes to online gaming. By that same mentality, then, by giving a free game your time and perhaps even a little money via the occasional microtransaction or two… well, the game really isn’t free, is it? And if we take that as read, then free games should be held up to the same scrutiny as premium ones, shouldn’t they?

Just because a game is free doesn’t mean it’s okay for it to be a buggy mess. Just because a game doesn’t cost anything upfront doesn’t mean it’s okay to stuff it full of locked-off content and microtransactions, endlessly prompting you to relinquish a pound or two for a pretty cosmetic skin. I suspect we’re more tolerant of this shit in free games, but it’s the acceptance of this in F2P titles that is starting to bleed into the premium market – and that is not okay. Mobile games, in particular, are rife with “time-saving” extras that can be unlocked for a couple of quid, and now huge studios like Ubisoft have cottoned onto those lucrative “player recurring investment” tactics in a bid to keep you forking out money long after you’ve paid £60 or £70 just to open a game, let alone finish it.

That’s not to say there isn’t a place for free games, of course. If nothing else, they enable a player to try a game before they invest real money into it, which is particularly important given not everyone can afford to fork out for the eleventy gazillion “AAA” games released each year and the video game demo is an endangered species these days. I routinely buy the battle pass for F2P Apex Legends, for instance, not because I particularly care about the cosmetic skins it unlocks, but because it’s given me hundreds of hours of entertainment. It’s my way of supporting Respawn and demonstrating that I value the game.

But that doesn’t mean it gets a free pass. Nor does it mean I hold it to a lower standard than premium games. And neither should you, quite honestly.

Vikki Blake is a columnist for NME. 

Keen to cash in on the Silent Hill name without, you know, having to actually make another Silent Hill, Konami has unveiled its latest game in the landmark horror franchise. Well, two of them actually.

– ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW –

Silent Hill Escape and Silent Hill Return are pair of new slot games available to play on an upcoming cabinet Konami plans to show off G2E – the Global Gaming Expo in Las Vegas. These games look to borrow from Silent Hill 3 and the more recent Silent Hill Downpour, presumably featuring audio and video based on the two horror titles.

Here’s the official description, for those desperate to find out more:

Konami’s aim is empowering operators with exceptional entertainment to reach and engage today’s players and beyond. We are actively leveraging a combination of top technology, talent, design, and development to deliver a host of new products at this year’s event, through the immediate years to come.

This cabinet is a striking combination of sleek entertainment, premium packaging, and player comfort, backed by a rich library of original titles. Everything, including its shape, screens, betting surface, and available merchandising, has been engineered to maximize both player experience and operational results. This latest cabinet is a first glimpse at great things to come from Konami.

At this point we’re hardly surprised at seeing Pyramid Head and pals slapped on yet another gambling game after Konami’s Silent Hill pachinko machine debut in 2015, much to the ire of fans.

On one hand it makes perfect sense for Konami to leverage dormant IP for its gambling division. However, for those who have been waiting for a new Silent Hill game, it’s yet another slap in the face. One that follows a string of lukewarm entries and the cancellation of a Hideo Kojima helmed Silent Hills. Speaking of which, there are some pretty wild theories floating around about P.T. and how it was a deliberate middle finger to Konami.

Silent Hill isn’t the only series that continues to languish. Metal Gear Survive did nothing to inspire any hope the series can thrive without Hideo Kojima in charge. Meanwhile, the latest Contra sits on a Metacritic average of 40. Castlevania has been disappointingly quiet since its Lords of Shadow reboot last gen though a new mobile game, Grimoire of Souls, actually looks promising.

Source: Press release

– PAGE CONTINUES BELOW –

Silent Hill was one of the world’s most popular game franchises before it was unceremoniously cancelled back in 2015, so fans were excited to hear the news that a new game would be coming out this year. But it is not the sort of game fans had expected.

Released 20 years ago, the original Silent Hill “shocked the games industry with its tense world of terror” with each scene more nightmarish than the last. Alongside Resident Evil, the game create the horror/survival genre of videogame in the late 90s and early 2000s, and has had a lasting impact on the games industry more broadly with its weaker and more confused protagonist, which stands in sharp contrast to the traditional heroes gamers play in the majority of titles.

The latest game, however, is focused less on the horrors of a confusing and apocalyptic landscape and more on Konami generating the most revenues from nostalgia of a genre-defining game. Yahoo Finance reports that Konami’s igaming subsidiary has launched a new slot machine called Silent Hill Escape, which makes use of the games “thrilling scenes, sounds, and characters from Konami’s recognised entertainment legacy”.

Whilst gamers may remember the Konami name best for titles such as Castlevania, Contra, Frogger, Metal Gear, Pro Evolution Soccer, and Silent Hill, the company actually originated as a jukebox company and has long been a major player in producing machines for the casino floor from its US base in Las Vegas. And they are not alone amongst game developers, many of which see gambling as a relatively easy way to generate additional revenues from past popular titles. Many top-rated UK casino websites offer games with names licensed from popular videogames, movies, or even pop bands, but Konami is rare in that they manufacture physical gambling machines as well.

For gamers that are disappointed by the news that the new Silent Hill game is not the sort that will make it to their favourite platform, some technically savvy individuals are still discovering new playable content from the Silent Hills playable teaser that was released back in 2014 before the game was cancelled.

This showcased the Silent Hills project that Hideo Kojima was working on before the MGS mastermind and Konami parted ways.

PT was a truly terrifying, jaw-dropping experience that gave an exciting glimpse into what Kojima had planned for the Silent Hill series.

Sadly, when Kojima and Konami’s long-standing partnership ended so too did the dream of ever seeing Silent Hills released.

PT itself was taken off the PS Store following the Kojima and Konami break-up, with the MGS visionary going onto work on Death Stranding instead.

Silent Hill 2 is well known as one of the most terrifying games of all time. Despite being a sequel, the second entry is by far the most iconic game of its series, and really launched Konami's survival horror franchise in earnest. In the years since Silent Hill 2's 2001 release - first for PlayStation 2, and then Xbox and PC - there have been a lot of games produced in the series, of varying levels of quality. As a result, many fans feel that while there are a number of fantastic Silent Hill games, it is a world that is best left alone.

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• HallowMoonshadow
• Mon 14th Oct 2019

Why Konami? Who hurt you?

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• Tasuki
• Mon 14th Oct 2019

Well unless the gambling laws change in my state, this or any slot machine wont be in any arcade here.

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• jdv95
• Mon 14th Oct 2019

"a striking combination of sleek entertainment, premium packaging, and player comfort, backed by a rich library of original titles."

konami just chill out. You made a slot machine,not a silent hill themed ps6.

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• Rob_230
• Mon 14th Oct 2019

"Even with new platforms coming out, we believe high-end console games are the most important. We challenge for innovative ideas and technology within our console games and apply them to other devices, so we will continue to put effort into our console games"

Masami Sato, President, Konami Europe -September 2019 - https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2019-09-02-mobile-pes-and-esports-the-three-pillars-of-konami

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• FullbringIchigo
• Mon 14th Oct 2019

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• Dange
• Mon 14th Oct 2019

For a second I thought the PT demo was getting put back on the store. Genuinely annoyed that this isn't what I was hoping for.

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• Ken_Kaniff
• Mon 14th Oct 2019

I hate Konami so much. They have so many good franchises under their umbrella just rotting away.

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• Gmork___
• Mon 14th Oct 2019

You think thats scary, while swapping over to my new ps4 pro a couple days ago i messed up and lost my PT demo. ............ Kill me

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• Ralizah
• Mon 14th Oct 2019

@Gmork___ lol That's one big reason why I plan on leaving my PS4 the way it is.

Because Konami made the game where it can't be redownloaded (by legitimate means, anyhow), hard drives containing P.T. game data are actually physically scarce these days.

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• RBMango
• Mon 14th Oct 2019

I really wish Sony would find a way to purchase Silent Hill from Konami. It's implausible, but it's a dream scenario.

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• tameshiyaku
• Mon 14th Oct 2019

Sony, are you listening!? Acquire konami and save their dying franchises from themselves!

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• fabisputza00
• Mon 14th Oct 2019

nice clickbait

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• fabisputza00
• Mon 14th Oct 2019

i am more annoyed by the clickbait of this site than i am with Konami

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• themcnoisy
• Mon 14th Oct 2019

@fabisputza00 welcome to Pushsquare fabisputza. I too was lulled into push by a headline and I'm still stranded here 4 years and 8 months years later. Have you got a dinghy? I will make an oar out of that palm tree. Let's set sail for buzzfeed I hear its safe over there.

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• LaytonPuzzle27
• Tue 15th Oct 2019

I wonder why the government of Japan has not made laws on regulations on Pachinko machines?

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• ellsworth004
• Tue 15th Oct 2019

@Tasuki the state i live in slot machines are legal. I have mixed emotions about them. Sure they are bad when people abuse them, real bad, but gambling brings alot of jobs into WV, which is a state with a very high unemployment rate. Double edged sword i guess.

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• blourf
• Tue 15th Oct 2019

@LaytonPuzzle27 There are regulations on pachinko machines in Japan. What exactly do you wonder?

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• LaytonPuzzle27
• Tue 15th Oct 2019

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• GodGamer
• Tue 15th Oct 2019

@RBMango Well the creator of SH joined Sony and made Siren and Gravity Rush. They could get him to create something in the vein of the good Silent Hill games. Hope SH fans finally get something that they will like since I will never get Dark Cloud 3.

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• Arnna
• Tue 15th Oct 2019

This is just.... awful..... AGAIN!I’m still genuinely horrified and bummed out that Silent Hills got cancelled...

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• FX102A
• Tue 15th Oct 2019

HIT THE LEVER!!!!

I’m slightly moved to tears every time I play Gradius V, Symphony of the Night or Probotector (UK gamer here) knowing the chances of getting any additions to these franchises even remotely like these entries is next to impossible short of a hostile takeover or a well placed meteorite strike during a mass board meeting. I could argue they have attempted to redeem themselves with some of the Classic Collection releases but it’s like they hand us a bag of tasty old style fudge only to then blast some newly formed feacal matter in our faces created by eating said fudge.

@Rob_230 If Contra Rogue Corps is an example of this “effort” then forgive me if my expectations can be described as subterranean.

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• FullbringIchigo
• Tue 15th Oct 2019

@LaytonPuzzle27 Gambling for cash is illegal in Japan, but pachinko gambling in Japanese society has found a legal loophole allowing it to exist. Under the law, pachinko balls won from games cannot be exchanged directly for money in the parlor, nor can they be removed from the premises or exchanged with other parlors; however, they can be legally traded to the parlor for so-called "special prize" tokens which are then legally "sold" for cash to a separate vendor located off-premises. These vendors (ostensibly independent from—but often owned by—the parlor owner) then sell the tokens back to the parlor at the same price paid for them (plus a small commission), thus turning a cash profit without technically violating the law

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• Churchy
• Tue 15th Oct 2019

Can someone just buy out Konami and end their reign of terror once and for all?

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• wiiware
• Tue 15th Oct 2019

Well at least they're honest about it, rather than making pachinko in nba games and rated it E for Everyone like take-two

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• Tasuki
• Tue 15th Oct 2019

@ellsworth004 I have nothing against legalized gambling, heck I lived in Reno for a number of years, I was just commenting more on the writers comment of "Do you hope this slot machine makes its way to your local arcade some time in the future?". Since slot machines are not legal where I am at (only card rooms are legal) I won't be seeing these machines in an arcade or anywhere for that matter here. 😂

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• Party_Cannon
• Wed 16th Oct 2019

Konami: "you will be sucked!"

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• RoyalGuard
• Wed 16th Oct 2019

Lol sucks to be a gamer these publishers just do you any kinda way lmao....

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The Wednesday Inbox wonders what will happen if Metroid Dread is a major hit, as one reader describes Xenoblade Chronicles as un-Nintendo.

To join in with the discussions yourself email gamecentral@metro.co.uk

Break the silenceI see the idea of a new Silent Hill game is doing the rounds again and I really am in two minds over it. On the one hand I’m a big fan of the early games in the series but on the other, I think the reason it faded away was simply that all the ideas had been done, at least with the tech they had then. I really am not interested in a straight remake or a reboot that’s still very similar to the original games.

The P.T. demo had the right idea as it has basically no resemblance to Silent Hill other than it’s scary. Presumably it would’ve got into the lore a bit in the full game but the demo we got was just concerned with being creepy and it did that amazingly well.

The original idea of the game was that Silent Hill itself was a kind of dream dimension that people with heavy amounts of guilty were drawn to. The monsters were manifestations of that guilt, and they were basically in Hell.

If you’re going to do a new game you should just be taking that very basic idea and creating something new from it. Everybody’s different and so should what they find in Silent Hill be. The problem is how much it costs to make, because the more expensive it gets the more they’ll try and change it into an action game and that is absolutely not what Silent Hill should be about.Xane

Quest for the Holy GrailThrilled to hear of the Amiga 500 Mini! It’s about time the European scene was served more retro goodness. What chance the inclusion of the legendary Deluxe Paint IV? Low, I imagine. Same goes for its beautiful versions of Monkey Island 1 and 2.

While we’re on the subject, it doesn’t really look like the N64 Mini is coming any time soon. I still think the holy grail of mini consoles has to be the Dreamcast – here’s hoping.Owen Pile (NongWen – PSN ID)

GC: For us it would be the Sega Saturn. At least the Dreamcast has had some ports and remasters, the Saturn has had virtually nothing.

Dream teamI read the article about the Amiga Mini with great interest. Then I felt disappointed with the initial line-up of games. Love the design and game pad. Hopefully, with there being a mouse with it, the plan will be to release some point ‘n’ click games for it.

My dream line up for the first 12 games would be:

The Colonel’s BequestThe Secret Of Monkey IslandCruise For A CorpseLure Of The TemptressSensible World Of SoccerLemmingsLotus Esprit Turbo ChallengeCannon FodderThe NewZealand StoryRainbow IslandsBatman: The MovieSuper Cars 2

Sadly none of these have been announced yet. So I won’t be planning on purchasing it for now.Tony–1975 (PSN ID)

E-mail your comments to: gamecentral@metro.co.uk

What to expectI honestly don’t know what to expect from the next gen versions of GTA 5. On the optimistic side of things Rockstar has had so long to create new story content and additions to the map you’d think it was basically a given. Except things are never really that simple.

The pessimistic angle makes it easy to imagine Rockstar only adding things to GTA Online – more cars, weapons, etc. Would they add a new area of the map given the amount of work that would be, or are they devoting everything to GTA 6 and would deem that too much work? The first remaster of GTA 5 didn’t add whole new sections of the game, just new options, and I think that’s probably what we’ve got to expect here.

4K and 60fps does seem like a minimum but given the game underneath it all is basically an Xbox 360 game that should be very easy to do. It’s probably best to expect little for the whole thing and hopefully be pleasantly surprised.Lonny7

The end of MetroidI’m looking forward to Metroid Dread but I think it’s pretty obvious it’s not going to be that big a hit. It’s a 2D platformer that’s probably quite difficult, from a franchise most people have never heard of and probably filled with a lot of story elements that don’t make much sense if you haven’t played the other games.

But just imagine that it did sell, what would Nintendo do then? Metroid has always been a low priority for them, because it’s not a big seller but it’s kind of a Catch 22 in that it’ll never get big if they’re always niche games. Metroid Prime has always been the best bet but even they never sold that well – although you could blame that on them being on the GameCube and Wii.

Would there ever be a Metroid that had as much money spent on it as a Zelda or Mario? It’s hard to imagine but I’ll dream about it all the same. Personally, I’m most looking forward to Metroid Dread because it’s the end of the initial storyline. That means they can go in a completely new direction afterwards, although my biggest hope is that Yoshio Sakamoto steps down from the series as I think his ideas, especially in regards to the story and Samus’ personality have been getting worse and worse and that definitely needs some new blood.Meso

Un-Nintendo activitiesAm I the only one that really doesn’t like Xenoblade Chronicles? Especially the numbered ones. They just seem so… un-Nintendo. I hate everything about the character design and story because it just seems so generically anime, like they just put a bunch of cliches into a computer and got it to spit out something that was technically new but somehow exactly the same as everything else.

The combat is at least relatively unique, if you haven’t played Final Fantasy 12, but it’s so boring! You don’t do anything and it just feels as if the whole game would be happier if you didn’t do anything and let it play itself. Which makes me think maybe it should’ve been an actual anime and not bothered with all that interactive nonsense.

The last time Nintendo decided to make their own role-playing game they came up with the wonderfully imaginative Paper Mario. Xenoblade Chronicles is such a comedown from that and I couldn’t care less about a third game.Zeus

Second birthdayI like the idea of a GTA: Vice City, that makes total sense to me. It’s the 20th anniversary next year so I even think it’s fairly plausible. They’re clearly not going to do a remake of GTA 3 this year, on its anniversary, because it’d get in the way of the launch of GTA 5 on next gen but Vice City next year (it came out in October) seems totally plausible to me.

Only problem is we have absolutely no indication from Rockstar, one way or the other, of if this is something they’d do. If things like Mafia, which I’ve never known anyone care about, can get a high end remake then surely Vice City deserves it too?Domino