Silent Hill's thing is atmosphere. There's a bit of heartstring-tugging, too, albeit not much, as well as a few instances of shock scares, but for the most part the main 'fun' (if you can call it that) of the series is allowing yourself to sink into a game not just about horrific thrills but more about a whole world of intense dread. Make no mistake, these games are fucking terrifying. While horror has always been popular in film and books, it's a little bit overlooked when it comes to videogames, which is a shame because interactivity and horror are the best partnership since gin and tonic. While the modern horror film equates to being little more than a conveyor belt of loud noises and quick editing, Silent Hill is unparalleled in making you feel terrified. Staples of the series include a vision space obscured either by fog or darkness, surreal Bacon-and-Bellmer-inspired enemies, a quasi-Satanic religious subtext and a town full of about ten doors to a thousand that can actually open.
The story begins with Silent Hill, now retrospectively referred to as Silent Hill 1, released in 1999 as Konami's answer to rival Capcom's aforementioned Resident Evil. Its protagonist is the suitably personality-less Harry Mason, whose inexplicable decision to go to the titular town for a holiday leads to the disappearance of his daughter, Cheryl, who serves as the main reason Harry continues through the dilapidated town rather than gets the fuck out. And so the adventure begins. In truth, the storyline of the original Silent Hill is abysmally weak. While Harry's main interest is, of course, his daughter, he nonetheless finds himself bogged down in a complicated web of give-a-shit townsfolk all linked by some mysterious religious cult that sort of explains why the town is so fucked up, or at least it would if magic, or indeed religion, were in fact real. Fortunately, the storyline isn't the high point of the game, the fear is, and in that regard, the game still stands as a worthy effort.
But let's not beat about the bush here. The real meaty masterpiece of the saga is in Silent Hill 2. Thankfully, the developers decided that all the hocus pocus religious crap from the original game had to go, and instead of some lame 'demons caused everything' sort of storyline, they decided to push the focus a lot more inwards. While the original Silent Hill set everything up in its odd little way and put a lot more emphasis on the actual town, its first sequel kept the 'spooky-town-full-of-spooky-crap' idea and used it to develop a plot not just about horror, but about characterisation. Yeah, remember that?
Okay, let's get it straight that the characterisation of Silent Hill 2 isn't perfect, but it's successful in a strange sort of way. Let's take the protagonist, the neurotic James Sunderland. While in SH1 the main character was portrayed as essentially a normal dude in abnormal circumstances, with James, it's apparent from the offset that he's clearly not on the level. He's even a little bit creepy, which is unusual for a videogame protagonist if you think about - he's always talking in a weird, gravelly monotone of sorrow, stopping occasionally to yell at children and begrudgingly converse with the occasional fellow wanderer. There's clear parallels with the original - instead of searching for his missing daughter, James in this instance is searching for his dead wife. Yeah, dead wife, go figure. It's hard to gush about how fantastic the rest of the story is without spoiling it completely, but ultimately, it's twisted, it's grim, it's a little sad, but best of all it doesn't have anything to do with a hood-wearing, riddle-speaking religious cult! And it's open to interpretation, not least because of the multiple endings that make the series so fucking difficult to canonise.
Now, while Silent Hill is indeed advertised as a game, a problem arises in that description in that the gameplay is absolutely dire. Movement is slow and sticky, combat is delayed and awkward and the camera has a tendency to do anything other than show you exactly what's going on, but this is a very rare example of the gameplay's faults only making its better qualities... better. Since the combat is sluggish, combat becomes less of a challenge and more of an annoyance, if not a genuine fear, which is good, because what's the point in all these ghoulish monsters wandering about the place if you could just rip into them with an AK and be done with it? And the monsters aren't just there with no real reason, no siree, if you can call them 'there' at all. This is a 'psychological horror' game in every sense. It's not just a game about horror and terror, exciting as that may be, but it's about one man's own troubled little psyche. The monsters are all recollections of his own guiltily repressed libido, rife with disease and barely human at all save from some feminine features, such as the monster made entirely out of women's legs, or the nurses with the ridiculous cleavage - all harking to James' own sexual desire despite his wife's hospitalisation. I mean, this is all deep and heavy shit. Even the puzzles and the setpieces all relate to the relationship between James and his wife. For instance, one of the final parts of the game takes place in the hotel James and his wife stayed at the last time they came to Silent Hill (probably when it was less foggy and monster-infested). While at first it appears that nothing's changed, aside from the place being a little dark, once James plays a certain videotape, the hotel reveals itself as actually being run down, flooded and completely unrecognisable from his own memory.
Along the way, you meet a few other characters, that is to say people who, for all intents and purposes, do actually exist. They're losers, just like you, wandering about the town fighting their own personal demons. Take Angela, for instance, the runaway whose background of incestuous rape on the part of her father actually manifests itself into one of the game's few bosses. Her story exists for the sentiment, yes, but also to remind you that this a town for troubled minds. It's one of those situations where everything may or may not be real, like American Psycho or Taxi Driver. There's also the little girl, Laura, who doesn't seem to worry about the monsters and to whom the town is just one big deserted playground. There's Eddie, the dumb, fat guy who always seems to be around a dead body or two and seems to be nuttier than a squirrel's shit. And there's Maria, who shares a similarity in name, voice and appearance to James' dead wife Mary, except she seems to be a whole lot sluttier, and she's one of the few characters to actually follow you around the game. Spoiler alert: she dies. And dies. And dies. This game has enough symbolism to give Freud an aneurysm, but it's all so subtle, so artfully made that it really stacks a game with shoddy controls and camera movement to a status as one of the greatest games ever made. Truly.
Silent Hill 2 isn't just one of my favourite games ever; it's grown to be just one of my favourite works of art ever. It isn't just a horror game - horror games essentially end the minute the console's switched off, with maybe a little apprehension for a night afterwards. This game will haunt you. Horror isn't just in scary moments and creepy settings, but in the grim stories that these things are a part of. That's why masterpieces like The Shining kicked so much arse. While it starts out as being a bit dull, a bit creepy, and not as flashy as your average space-age FPS, as the credits finally roll and one out of six possible endings melts away with gloom, all the pieces come together in one big miserable Jungian mindfuck. A real fucking classic.
Silent Hill 2 would never be surpassed in the series again, probably because while SH2 stands apart from the rest of the franchise, with Silent Hill 3 the story inexplicably dives back to the Wicker Man weirdness of the first game, going as far to make the main character the teenage daughter of SH1's Harry Mason, and the game suffers as a result of this. It's still a thrill ride, sure, and I have to admit I could never play it alone for the sake of my own blood pressure, but in the end, you'll never give a shit in the same way you could in SH2. And all the magic-and-mayhem bollocks and bland sob stories about Alessa Gillespie make the game a whole lot less dark and depressing as SH2, for while the emotions of guilt, remorse and regret exist in the real world, gods, demons and magic do not, and that's pretty much the best story elements SH3 has to offer. It's not a bad game by any means, I mean, I definitely enjoyed every minute I slogged through it and nearly shit myself every five minutes, but it's just a little shallow is all, as with its original predecessor.
Silent Hill 3 had some brain-burningly creepy imagery, and for all its faults was probably the last 'classic' Silent Hill game. Silent Hill 4: The Room came out in 2004, and while SH3 was criticised by some to be lacking in innovation, nobody could say the same about The Room. Considering the game doesn't even take place in Silent Hill, has little connection to the series apart from a passing mention of one character in a written note within the second game, and has such jarring features as an occasional first-person perspective and limited inventory space, The Room was the series' massive doolally sidestep. The game was criticised by many, and lambasted by most if not all of the Silent Hill fanbase, but in all honesty, it's not the idiotic monstrosity that you might've thought it to be.
For one thing, these brave changes to the series' well-established gameplay and style don't make the game any less scary. In fact, I'm surprised how well the implementation of the 'room' itself actually worked. In previous games in the series, save points were scattered everywhere - down wells, on desks, on walls - but in The Room there's just one single, solitary save point, and it's found in the living room of the apartment which the game centres around. The game doesn't take place in a town but through various levels that are accessed by a big old hole in the apartment's bathroom wall, and as such there are various tunnels throughout these levels to return to the apartment whenever the need to save arises, which in videogames is equivalent to the inevitable need to sleep or eat. Which means you need to do it lots. At first this is barely even an annoyance - need a break? Tea's ready? Nip back to one of the many holes in the wall located about your dilapidated subway or whatever and save without a problem.
But then the game takes a massive change in direction about halfway through as the apartment starts getting haunted. Yeah, haunted. Silent Hill was never one for ghosts, but in this case ghosts are actually fucking terrifying, particularly with the stifling first person view that dares you to take a look around your suddenly menacing little hidey hole. The feeling of safety that once was easily attributed to your apartment is masterfully erased, leaving you with complete helplessness and constant danger, even going so far as to strip you of the health regeneration that made the apartment so damn cosy in the first place. Yes, The Room's a little fucking nutty, definitely the adopted son of the series' four oddball children, but in terms of this gameplay mechanic, the developers were onto something. That and the room with the big head. If you've played this game, you will know the terror of the room with the big head.
Okay, so it's not brilliant. The ghosts in the levels are pretty retarded, the level design is a bit lame, the burping noises the nurses make is laughable and the fact that half the game is spent playing the same levels over again with slight changes to the layout is both a cheat and a bitch (like my ex girlfriend, hur hur hur). But at least it shakes things up a bit! What's more, it's the last actually good game in the series before the Americans came and fucked everything up with the pointless film adaptation and the slew of depressingly Western-ised sequels that followed. While I could talk for a thousand years about the depth and breadth of the awesomeness of Silent Hill 2, it's become apparent that there's actually not much else going for the series, and that that particular game must've been some anomaly of genius in the now tired franchise. But if you get a chance and you've either a love of intense fear or nerves of iron, I'd definitely take the time to put yourself through the terrible gameplay and occasionally boring puzzles and wild goose chases. And the depressing storylines. Oh, and godawful voice acting. And the confusing ending sequences. Well, we all have our issues.
Silent Hill 2 Trailer
Silent Hill 3 Trailer
Silent Hill 4 Trailer
The music of the Silent Hill franchise is composed by Akira Yamaoka, and it's all, predictably, amazing. Just so you know.
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