Silent Hill
PlayStation
Back in the late 90's, survival horror was my thang. I never thought it would be possible for a video game to actually scare me, but the Resident Evil series proved me wrong. I was hooked on those games and would play them religiously pretty much every day of the week. The adrenaline rush I got was like no other. But eventually it got to the point where I knew those games like the back of my hand. They didn't scare me anymore.
I started looking for alternatives, something new and exciting. I tried a few games. Parasite Eve, Dino Crisis, Alone in the Dark, D. But nothing quite hit the spot like Resident Evil 1 and 2 had. And then along came Silent Hill.
With the exception of the original Resident Evil (and later on, Silent Hill 2), I can't recall a game that scared me more than this one did. You have a very limited supply of ammo, you can't see very well, there is macabre shit all over the place, and you constantly feel like you could die at any moment.
I remember renting this game and spending several long nights playing it in the dark at my mom's house. I'd sit real close to the TV, my heart thumping. I loved the thrill of this game. After searching long and hard for a worthy successor to the original Resident Evil, I had finally found it.
I eventually beat the game with a little help from an online walkthrough that I printed up at school and brought home with me. Little known Dan trivia: I am pretty sure this is the first ever video game I needed to consult the internet for help with. Seems like such a long time ago, but really it was not.
I had to return the game to Blockbuster after I beat it, and I never played the game again. I have played several iterations of Silent Hill since playing the original game - SH 2, 3, 4, and a couple PS3 versions of the game that I never finished and didn't enjoy much. Silent Hill 2 scared the crap out of me and Silent Hill 4 had its moments. The rest were just okay.
But I still fondly remembered my time with the original game, and I vowed to return to it some day. Which I did about a month or so ago. I experienced a little hesitation before firing it up again. I knew that the game would look very outdated graphically. I also knew that the controls were a little difficult, even for back in the late 90's. I was worried it would be an unplayable ugly mess. I didn't want to wreck those fond memories of the game I had from my teenage years.
But it turns out I had nothing to worry about. Yeah the game has a lot of obvious, glaring flaws. But I still found it pretty fun to play.
Let's talk about the story line of the game. You play as a man named Harry. Harry is on a car ride with his daughter Cheryl. He gets into an accident and when he wakes up he finds himself in a strange town called Silent Hill. His daughter is missing from the vehicle. He gets out to explore and quickly discovers that something is amiss. The town is covered in a deep fog and there are no people in sight. Harry follows a mysterious figure that resembles his daughter through the fog.
Harry is led into a dark alleyway. As he follows his daughter's trail, he sees some very disturbing things. An unidentifiable carcass, mysterious pools of blood. Rusted out wheelchairs and gurneys that seem to have no place in this random alley. The alley leads to a dead end, and Harry is attacked by a bunch of creatures that look like babies carrying butcher knives. Weird. Controlling Harry, you learn that you can't win this fight, and you quickly are swarmed over by these creatures as you black out.
You wake up in an abandoned diner. A blonde female police officer has rescued you from the baby things. She explains that she doesn't know what is going on in the town. You explain you are looking for your daughter. She gives you a gun and you both go your separate ways to search for answers. This is where the real game begins.
The main focus of the game is to explore the town looking for clues of your daughter's whereabouts. Your journey takes you to all kinds of really freaky places like an abandoned school, the town's sewer system, an old carnival, and a nasty ass hospital. The town itself is almost like a character in the game. Not only is it very creepy to explore, it almost seems as if the town itself is plotting against you. You can't exit Silent Hill because of mysterious craters and pits that bar you from leaving. The town is covered in a dense fog that makes it very difficult to see. And there are morbid creatures attacking you at nearly every turn.
The game can be very scary, particularly if this is your first time playing it. You pick up a small radio early in the game. When you are in the vicinity of an enemy creature, your radio spews static interference that alerts you to their presence. So if you are walking along and your radio starts acting up, you know that trouble is coming. This really adds to the tension of the game, especially when you know an enemy is near but you can't quite see it.
Ammo is scarce in the game, and if you go around blasting everything you are going to find yourself in a very tough spot. You have to learn to pick your battles. Sometimes it is advantageous to stand your ground and fight. Most of the time, though, you are going to find yourself on the run.
There are some puzzles in the game, but nothing that I found too overly difficult. But don't get me wrong: the game is a challenge. Don't be surprised to find yourself stuck with no clue what to do next from time to time. There is a lot of exploring to be done here, and luckily you have a map that tracks your progress that shows you where you have and haven't been. I don't know what I would do without that feature.
Even still, I had to consult the internet a couple of times to find out what to do next. So I see things haven't changed that much between 2017 and 1999. It's been 18 years since this game came out? Man, do
I feel old.
The game can be a little difficult to control at times. You do lock on to your enemies when targeting them with your weapons, but I still had difficulty maneuvering Harry in battle and would get injured a lot more than I probably should have. A lot of times when running from enemies I would attempt to enter a new area to escape, only to not hit the door at the right angle and get hit from behind. Then it would be a struggle to backtrack to get back to the door and enter it without taking any further damage. This happened a lot in the later hospital levels (those damn nurses!).
You really have to be on the ball with precision control of Harry. Try picking up an item or kicking an enemy when it is down and you will encounter the same issues I did. If you aren't 100% accurately aligned with your target, you are going to have problems.
Graphically, the game is a little outdated. It is not as bad as I had feared, though. Yeah the characters are a little messy and not as detailed as we expect by today's standards, but at least the environments look good. But one criticism that is common of this game is very true. You can't see very far in the distance at all. I don't know if the heavy fog or dark corridors are meant to make the game more creepy or if they are there to cover graphical deficiencies. I suspect it is a little bit of both. I choose to take it as the former, however. So it didn't bother me too much. It does add significantly to the game's spooky atmosphere.
And it is the spooky atmosphere that really makes Silent Hill shine. The game is scary and it really starts to get to you after a while. Play this in the dark with headphones on. Soak it all in. It is a combination of so many things. The lack of ammo. The static sound you hear when enemies are in the vicinity. The fact that the town and all the buildings are empty and abandoned with mysterious signs of recent violence everywhere. Fear and tension is palpable everywhere you go.
What scared me the most was when things would "change". An example of this is when you are searching the school. Yeah it is full of murderous babies with butcher knives and it is creepy as hell. But it is still just a school. Then you hit a point in the game where you seemingly shift into an alternate world. It ceases to become just a school. The walls rot out, the floor turns into a rusty chain link. Tortured bodies hang all over the place. It is like you've descended into hell. Eventually things turn back to normal, but this happens quite a bit in this game. And it never fails to scare the bejeesus out of me. That air ride siren that announces the change sends chills up my spine.
The game is pretty fun and kept me entertained for a good while. It has aged, but it hasn't aged as poorly as I thought it would have. I didn't find it to be as scary as I did back in the late 90's but that is to be expected since I have played this game before and I knew what to expect.
Despite the control flaws and the graphical deficiencies, it is still worth checking out if you are a fan of the survival horror genre. The story is a little bit of a mess, and I am still not really sure what was going on in the game. But still, Silent Hill is a pioneer in the genre. And it is not just a mindless Resident Evil clone. Yes, it is survival horror. But it is handled in a completely different manner. In Resident Evil you know what you are facing and who your enemy is. This game's horror is a lot more psychological. And that makes it much more scary to me.
I still think Resident Evil is the better game, but when it comes to scares it is hard to beat Silent Hill.
Overall:
B+
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