Silent Hill: Book of Memories is the latest chapter in the franchise, but as for placement it may as well be an alternate universe. Instead of following the timeline of the mystery town that seems to warp to wherever weirdness is required, it's all contained in a book that your character receives for their birthday. Inside is every memory ever had, so of course why not try rewriting the memories?
This opens up your character and three of your friends to a version of Silent Hill that's a lot more dungeon-like, by which it plays like a top-down adventure game where you're encouraged to beat the hell out of the monsters like Pyramid Head and the Nurses instead of fleeing in terror.
Polygon goes into more detail about the actual mechanics:
"Combat itself isn't particularly deep - you can swing wildly or take time to ready more powerful blows, but most of the encounters I had came down to button-mashing until the hellish beast in front of me disintegrated. Characters move much faster and hit harder than in previous Silent Hill games, as well, which allows you to grind through hordes of enemies before the game is over."
Mind, the tradition of Silent Hill is true survival horror that trains players to run and only fight if there is literally no other way. Otherwise, you're almost guarenteed to be torn apart. Or bludgeoned or cleaved or eaten by giant cockroaches--the list goes on, really. So it's an interesting switch by Konami to change that entire format to a dungeon adventure game where, after beating enemies, you loot them for weapons and health.
The game, exclusive for the Vita, features online multiplayer so you and your friends can grind your characters stats further and further until taking on the escalating demons is just like playing a more emo-version of Diablo III.
Silent Hill: Book of Memories comes out on the Vita sometime this October.
