Konami's Silent Hill franchise has forgotten more about keeping us hiding beneath our covers than most games will ever know. Even EA's own Glen Schofield tips his hat to the series, telling us earlier this week that he considers the 1999 PlayStation original to be among his favorite survival horror games ever. But after nearly a decade of stumbling through the fog, it's easy to feel that the dilapidated burg of Silent Hill has gotten a bit too long in the tooth.

For the series' sixth installment, Konami has handed the blood-soaked baton over to external developer Double Helix Games, a recent mash-up of The Collective and Shiny Entertainment. The result is this fall's upcoming release, Silent Hill: Homecoming, and we recently puzzled our way out of mist long enough to ask the game's lead designer, Jason Allen, just why we should care about this latest return trip to Silent Hill.

Did we mention just how creepy the latest Silent Hill installment is in our most recent update on the game? Let's see ... yes, we did. Still, for those who either refuse to believe us – in which case you're meanies – or aren't yet convinced of its (dare we say?) fear factor, we offer you a ghastly gaggle of new shots from the game, by way of Konami. Just don't blame us if you have trouble breathing eating seeing walking talking sleeping after viewing them.

What's scarier: Silent Hill, or finding out that the latest game in the series isn't being developed by the folks who made the last five games? For many fans, it was the latter when, at E3 2007, Konami revealed that Western outfit The Collective (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Marc Ecko's Getting Up) – now Double Helix – would be crafting the creeps this time 'round.

Things, as they are wont to do, change ... but from our time with the latest playable version of Silent Hill: Homecoming, we were more scared by the game than we were about how it's going to turn out. The generally positive vibe was generated in large part by what lead designer Jason Allen told us is changing – but also what isn't. Full impressions after the break.

Wait ... where are the floats, the cheerleaders, the awkward slow-dancing? Oh, its not that kind of homecoming. No, it's a Silent Hill homecoming, which means it's really foggy, those "cheerleaders" are grotesque creatures, and the dance move of choice is called "running for your life."

Konami finally rolled out a playable build of the series' fifth installment at its press event last night, and we were on hand to, well ... get our hands on it. We're writing up our impressions, along with Double Helix design lead Jason Allen's musings on bringing the series to a new generation. For now, get tickled by the first screens (on your console of choice) -- and several new videos embedded after the break!

When you're a blogger and you don't have a lot of facts to go on, one of your greatest tools is hypothesizing, or as it's more commonly known, guessing. For example: Konami has announced that Silent Hill V has been retitled Silent Hill: Homecoming. Now, we don't know the reason for the change, but we're going to hypothesize that people were uncomfortable with an American-developed game that appears to be a departure from previous Silent Hills being one of the main, numbered series. See what we did there? That was just guessing.

They also say that the game will be out in Europe at the end of September. We're going to hypothesize that it will also arrive in America around that same time, but honestly we have no idea. [Update: Hypothesis correct!] Feel free to offer your slightly less authoritative hypotheses about the name change below.

Whatever last remnants of identity clung to by both Shiny and The Collective were lost today as the duo were merged together by owner Foundation 9, creating a new, wholly unfamiliar entity known as Double Helix. Studio head Michael Saxs Persson calls the new name and logo, which were chosen from a pool of employee submissions, a "perfect" match for the company, adding that "making games is in our DNA."

The founding follows the initial merger, announced last October, and according to Foundation 9 creates a studio "that is now able to build upon its previous experience to gain new heights in quality and efficiency." And all it cost us was our fond memories of a simpler time spent playing the likes of MDK and Earthworm Jim. While the company remains coy regarding what it's up to currently, today's announcement notes that Double Helix is developing a trio of multi-platform licensed games, one of which we assume to be the already announced Silent Hill V.