From its origins in Pagan worship, Halloween has become a day when lazy parents send their under tens out onto the dark streets to scrounge for sweets to substitute their proper dinner, while teenage young offenders in costumes do untold amounts of damage to houses and cars, safe in the knowledge that no one can tell they're violating the terms of their ASBOs. Apart from this, Halloween has also become a day that developers like to tie the releases of their scary games to and, with Manhunt 2 currently detained indefinitely at the BBFC's pleasure, this year's PSP fright scene has been left almost completely to Konami's Silent Hill Origins. Not only is this game the first from the franchise to appear on Sony's portable but, as its name suggests, its storyline takes the series to the very beginning and, for better or worse, much of the rest of the game follows suit.

A keystone of every episode in the Silent Hill saga has always been the storyline. Despite the franchise consistently being lumped in together with the Resident Evil games under the 'survival horror' heading, whereas Resi was more of a B-movie experience, Silent Hill sets its intellectual sights slightly higher, being as much about your character's search for his or her self as their search for a way out of the town; as much about the horrors in your head as the ones shambling towards you out of the gloom.

In Silent Hill Origins you play Travis, a trucker whose life jack-knifes in a major way when a young girl appears in the road in front of him, forcing him to slam on his brakes. Seeing no one around, he makes the decision to leave the safety of the life he has created for himself in his cab and descend onto the road. There then follows a chase and a dramatic rescue from a burning house, after which Travis collapses and, when he awakes, finds himself in everyone's favourite version of hell's waiting room - Silent Hill.

Just like in previous episodes, Origins' main story revolves around your character. This time, however, the central plot also has to share time with the back-story of the town itself. Whilst Travis' tale is interesting, for anyone new to Silent Hill, especially anyone who hasn't played the original game, the intertwining nature of these two narrative threads may lead to confusion rather than suspense, as they will not understand the significance of many of the people Travis meets and the places he visits. For those who have played the Silent Hill games before, Origins walks a fine line between being the key that unlocks a lot of exciting doors that lead to the very core of the overarching narrative of the town and a retread of old characters and locations, rather than something original.

Apart from the people and the places, another feature making a return is the combat system, which has remained virtually unchanged since the first Silent Hill game and is still as unbalanced as ever. Slower enemies, like the nurse, can be dispatched with the use of Travis' fists or one of the many inanimate objects you can collect on your travels. Consistently trying to employ either of these methods against quicker opponents, however, will see you taking way too many hits to your energy, meaning that the best way of dealing with these opponents is to use one of the firearms you pick up. At the same time though, you also need to preserve as much of your ammo as possible for the massive boss battles, where Travis' dead eye shooting really comes into its own - and this disappointingly means that your best option remains the sissy one of just avoid regular fights altogether and running past them.

As always, the basic gameplay requirements in Silent Hill stay exactly the same for Origins. You walk and run around an area, moving back and forth between the real world and its nightmare alternative, exploring for information and items you can use to solve puzzles that open up new sections and carry the storyline forward before you move on to do the same at the next location. You also need to collect energy-replenishing items, such as first aid kits and energy drinks, along with ammo and melee objects - each of which becomes unusable after a set number of times you imprint its shape into one of the game's monsters. At points you'll also find yourself in a test of strength with an enemy, which requires you to hammer one of the buttons. These struggles are one of the very few newly introduced wrinkles to play and are virtually immaterial, as they usually result in a stalemate.

This fifth outing for the franchise also sees very little change to the particular brand of horror that Silent Hill likes to serve up. The series has always been one that makes you feel extremely uncomfortable rather than really scared and Origins continues this trend by being a game that consistently pushes you to the edge of your seat rather than making you jump out of it. In one major change to previous titles however, rather than the game deciding when you move into and out of the nightmare realm, you control your entries and exits by using any mirrors you come across as doorways. This shift from previous episodes replaces the fear of constant uncertainty that came with not knowing when you were going to be sucked in or let out with a different type - one where you know you need to switch worlds to progress and have to try and build yourself up to take the step and hold your nerve for as long as is necessary.

Throughout its various incarnations, Silent Hill has always aspired to making itself as close as possible to a cinematic experience and has consistently done a very good job at this. Despite the PSP's small screen size working against it, Origins continues this tradition, managing to create one of the most cinematic experiences to grace Sony's handheld to date. The cut scenes are a combination of dramatic action and brevity, with Origins carrying on the Silent Hill tradition of demonstrating the rule that less is often more when it comes to building tension and intrigue. Moving around the normal town, the game has a grainy sheen, making it appear like you're watching an old reel of film, whilst the world on the hellish side of the mirror still has the ability to quicken the pulse and shorten the breath, despite locations like the infamous hospital looking like they have always done - with a cleaning and maintenance regime that appears only slightly better than that adopted by the NHS.

The building of Silent Hill's atmosphere doesn't come without cost, however. For a start, many of the camera angles seem to have been selected for dramatic effect rather than ease of play and when one view switches to the next it often means an alteration to the directional controls, which can leave you frustratingly flicking back and forth between the new screen and the previous one. Many of the nightmare sections are also extremely dark and, although Travis turns his head in the direction of points of interest, this results in difficulty making out monsters and items, particularly when you're running to avoid fights. A final design flaw is the way the camera often swings round to point straight at Travis rather than showing the way he's facing. Despite having the ability to snap the view back to behind your character using the left shoulder button, this, combined with the other problems, means that the game often leaves you completely disorientated, resulting in far too many occasions when you need to call up the map to sort yourself out.

Whilst visually Origins is disturbingly beautiful but flawed, sonically it's just disturbingly beautiful. Apart from an annoying cackling in the background, the sound effects in the realm of horror are industrial and menacing, raising the tension tenfold. In the human world the music is so considered and appropriate that it's one of the few compositions in any videogame worthy of calling itself a score.

The Silent Hill franchise has always had a very distinct identity and Silent Hill Origins certainly doesn't create any kind of split personality. It reinforces the fact that one of the consequences of Sony's making their handheld almost as powerful as the PS2 is that its become a machine that is often home to replication rather than innovation. Whilst it may disappoint some that Origins introduces nothing new in terms of gameplay to an ageing brand, this is to miss the point. As its name indicates, it never intends to do anything apart from be a PSP version of a PS2 series that extends the history of the titular town. It's an accomplished and engrossing game that features the multiple endings fans expect and is certain to leave anyone playing it this Halloween, or at any other time, with a silent alarm ringing within.

Reviewed by James Hamblin for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).