Silent Hill

I'm not easily scared. In fact, of every "scary" movie I've seen, nothing has come close to unnerving me besides maybe In the Mouth of Madness. This game, however, is sufficiently creepy to make me love it and hate it at the same time. It's almost masochistic playing it, but maybe I'm masochistic, because I've beaten it 6 times so far, and I plan on playing it some more. It just scares the hell out of me every time.

I won't get into the plot as figuring it out is half the fun (and you WILL have to do some figuring. I'm pretty sure a lot was lost in the translation from Japanese because the story can be hard to follow at times).

In order for the game to be rewarding, though, it requires patience, along with nerves of steel and an iron stomach. The game starts out with a bang (or a bunch of dead, moaning, faceless knife weilding babies stabbing you to death within 3 minutes of play, I guess that counts as a bang, right?) This is misleading, though, as the game then calms down considerably for about the next 45 minutes of game time. Before we go on, though, two things: 1) The graphics are fairly blocky, but, for reasons that will become apparent, this doesn't matter. They're well textured, which is much more important. 2) The sound is PHENOMINAL. Always bear this in mind.

You wander the fog enshrouded town of Silent Hill searching for your daughter. Now, here's the great part about this game. It just seems so WRONG from the very beginning. The town is built right to scale and rendered in totality. You can, in theory, go anywhere. You even get a street map (complete with names like Koontz street and Bachman ave. Get it?) After a little exploration, though, you'll find something is amiss. The goal early on is to get to the local elementary school, and this seems easy enough with a street map, but there's one minor problem. The streets have this tendancy to just...end. All major roads leading to the school are just gone. Not there. They stop, and all you can see in the distance is the the fog. Add to this the "monsters" lurking the town. These basically consist of skinless dogs and large pink birdman things, who don't seem so terrifying, really. You get a radio that emits static when enemies draw near, but more on that later. This is all part of the game's attempt to unnerve you. Before you know it, you're across the chasm of the roads and now the REAL fun starts. Now, it's suddenly dark. Pitch black, in fact. You get a weak little flashlight with which to see (a pocket light, really) and THAT'S IT. Now, let's see. We're in a deserted town haunted by things that, while kind of weak and stupid looking, want to kill you. We could see just fine in the fog, but now it's dark. Right. So, we're off to the school, and now things get worse. The dogs are faster now (one constant in the game: The darker it gets, the more powerful and evil the enemies become), and now that you can't see them, it makes shooting at them much harder since they never stand still, really, and all you have to aim with is a weak cone of light that doesn't extend very far. Plus, as you'll soon happily discover after wasting 3 clips firing at the spot where a dog just was, ammo is limited! Yay! And the dogs have now been joined by the bird thingies, who ALSO want to kill you! DOUBLE yay!! So, we run now. Run all the way to the school, past the two(!) dogs guarding the entrance, through the door, and BAM! We're alive. Woohoo! Thank God! Now then...The school! Then it dawns on you: You're in a deserted ELEMENTARY SCHOOL. In the black-as-pitch darkness. With...wait for it...things that want to kill you! The knife-baby things, this time. Righty-o! Having fun yet? Oooh, it gets better. After some puzzles, you'll open the clocktower. By this point, it will be apparent that Silent Hill is home to some sick, sick people. I won't go into details, but trust me. So, as you mutter to yourself about the sick inhabitants of this town, you'll be climbing down the clocktower (yes, DOWN. It has a basement. Well...Sort of. You'll see.) It's here, HERE, that the game got to me. When you come back up the other side (bear with me here, it's hard to explain), you're back where you started, in the school courtyard. But not really. It's not the same...Then you go in the doors, and everything is...Aw, I'm not gonna kill it for you. Suffice to say that THIS is where the game goes from creepy to INSANELY CREEPY, and it just gets worse and worse and worse and WORSE as you go on. By the time you finish the school section and see daylight again, it's more of a relief than you can imagine. I was practically cheering my first time through. After that school, well-lit fog is a damned BLESSING!

Little did I know I had a hospital to look foreward to. And yes, as bad as you can possibly think it could be, it's worse. And when you're done with that...you're not even halfway to the end yet.

This game is all about the overhwelming sense of DREAD it will instill in you, making you almost not want to play it anymore. I've had friends hit the hospital section, take one look at their surroundings, and hand me the controller and leave the room. It's not that it's overly gross; it's not. It's just the prospect of having to subject yourself to the Silent Hill version of a freaking HOSPITAL that makes you almost cringe before you even start. And by the time you get there, you know just what the term "Silent Hill version of" means.

For those brave souls who wish to do it alone (which, by the by, I VERY, VERY HIGHLY reccomend your first time through), do it right. Play it in the dark, late at night, ALONE, with some good speakers set up. If you're new to it, start at the beginning, and enjoy the first part of the game. It's a slow starter, but once it gets going, the only reason it lets up is to allow you to contemplate exactly what else it's going to do to you.

Buy this game NOW if you haven't played it, and God help you.

Oh, and the second one is supposed to be twice as bad. I can't wait!

Silent Hill is a unique survival horror game. The main character is a "regular" guy searching for his daughter. The game features a greatly immersive and often disturbing atmosphere. Instead of using pre-rendered backgrounds like the Resident Evil series, Konami has modeled a 3-d world where you can move in any direction. The graphics contain a lot of fog and are often dark and washed out. It often feels like you're walking around in a dream world. Few places are safe in Silent Hill. You can't sit still for very long. I jumped out of my seat often even though I knew I was getting close to a mutated creature. The tension can really get to you. I found the puzzles to be fairly straightforward. Although a short adventure (8-10 hours), it's not one that you'll soon forget. To the game's credit, it features multiple endings depending on your performance. Compared to the Resident Evil series, Silent Hill is more about eliciting anxiety and psychological terror, and less about using a rocket launcher to blow the head off some zombie. If "Silence of the Lambs" was your kind of movie, then Silent Hill is your kind of game. Recommended.

There's pus spewing from the kitchen sink, the walls are bleeding, the fog is so thinck you can cut it with a knife and this is during the daylight hours. Things get worse at night as a demon world attempts to merge itself with our own. This is the premise of the story as Harry Mason navigates his way through this errily bizzare town that his hauntingly a lot like something only the most twisted and bizar mind could create. Resident Evil has its shock moments, but regardless of what anyone might tell you, for a real scare the original Silent Hill is the game to play. This is hands down the creepiest game, and while it has few of the zombie jumping through the window sort of scares there is a great deal of darkness, and erie sounds to compensate. This is a different kind of horror than RE, a game that bares no resemblance to this original master piece with the exception of the irritating control style, but thats where the similarities end. RE relies on catching you off guard, SH requires you to constantly be on guard and plays on your paranoia the entire time, especially with the radio. While RE comes off as a fun B-movie SH comes off as the darkest dream you don't want to remember, which makes it a worthwhile experience well worth the money.
It also features some of the finest FMV sequences to grace the PS1, topping the work of Final Fantasy VIII. The in game graphics leave a lot to be desired though. This is another game I would like to see remade for GCN, however Konami has taken a very stubborn anti-GCN stance, the likelyhood that this will happen is slim.
As with most Survival Horror titles this game packs an awkward control style that is even more devistating to the overal game than the RE control because the camera moves as though it were stalking you, a cool effect that is hindered by the horrible control set up, a problem that was adjusted in the PS2/Xbox sequel "Restless Dreams". Aside from this complaint the game is brilliant and every horror fan should pick this title up. However, this game is NOT for kids, nor is it for the weak in stomach and faint of heart. It takes a strongh stomach and even stronger will power to get through this game. I don't care how strong you think you are this game will scare you.