In a 1999 developer interview. Keiichiro Toyama says “What is it that sets Silent Hill apart from other games? If I had to answer that question in a nutshell, it would be the atmosphere, which I suppose is vague and ambiguous. However, if you play the game, I think you will understand. Silent Hill is an orthodox game with no outlandish or innovative gameplay mechanics, but it is suffused with a unique atmosphere and mood, not only in its appearance but also in the story and sound.” - Director of Silent Hill 1(SH1).

I couldn’t help but come to the same conclusion as Toyama’s answer of ‘atmosphere’ as the final credits rolled in my blind playthrough of Silent Hill 1. The atmosphere permeates throughout my time running through the titular town full of dense fog. As I controlled the main character. Harry Mason. An everyman who has no special titles, or special powers, is neither rich nor an individual who has super connections of note. He is simply a regular dad desperately searching every house and street for any clue, to recover his missing daughter Cheryl after a car crash gone wrong. And so begins our journey, as he battles/evades otherworldly creatures all while unknowingly trying to survive in this horror-filled place.

Storywise, I found his journey to be a cross between safe storytelling mixed with a jigsaw puzzle. Looking back I can construct how the narrative is achieved by effectively omitting key details. By the time I had all the pieces, I could complete the ‘puzzle’ so to speak. In doing so I was treated to a relatively safe journey in regards to not throwing my suspension of disbelief into smithereens while spreading the plot breadcrumbs interesting enough to lure me further into the mystery. In spite of the slow threads in the beginning. Be that as it may, once I hit my stride in schools and hospitals my will to continue deepened further. Enabling me to question everything and everyone within the bounds of not delving too outside the box to conjure. The regular who, what, where, when, why whodunit. Kept my brain tingling for morsels of information to seek the answer to my relentless inquiries. And thankfully the ending I received satisfied me to a measure I cannot help but applaud for. Well at least for receiving the ‘G+’ ending. And while there are other endings I’ve seen on YouTube. The overarching narrative felt uncommonly used amongst the other horror games I've played thus far. I wish I could give more concrete examples, but that would inadvertently lose the magic and surprise.

The atmosphere toes the line between the unknown and frightening to an absurd, but realistic degree. As I traveled deeper into the mist surrounding the locations of Silent Hill. Taking inspiration from Stephen King's The Mist among other influences. And to its credit, the close draw distance to maximize fog nearly in our faces works cleverly to hide the technical limitations of the PS1 era. The missing inhabitants while replicating a small town out in the country oozes with mystery in a sort of “Will there be something?” is teased mercilessly. I enjoyed exploring to my delight and wasn’t scared too much despite the oppressive silence and lack of inhabitants. Instead, I found otherworldly creatures prowling the dead of the day. Hairless malformed dogs prowling the streets, as winged creatures fly indiscriminately above Mason’s head to claw at him. To the nurses and doctors who are out of their freaking mind looking like a zombie at times. I admit to being scared and simply ran away from these ghastly enemies. The dense fog adds to the intrigue with incessant questions in the back of my mind. “What's happening? Where is Cheryl? What should I do? Why is this happening? How can I survive? Am I dreaming? Is this real?” These questions and more will inevitably pop up as you stumble & struggle.

The struggle is real. As I cautiously checked for enemies in rotten corridors, clean hallways, and entering empty rooms splitting the real and unreal. Confusing me, yet a handy map can be found nearby upon entering a new location. Making backtracking painless. Allowing me to easily strengthen my will, admire the presentation and reference what I had already been to. The map updates as you explore making it a vital tool to utilize. Reinforced by how simple the mechanics are. Mason can run, walk, use guns, and melee weapons, and interact with objects in the environment. The radio too helps as a sort of sound radar for nearby enemies. Helping us to prepare for what's to come. As a result, no gimmicks or very innovative systems at work as Toyama stated above. Focusing on other elements brings the core strengths to the front and center for players to devour. Grayish mist compliments well with the dead air of the soundtrack while feeding breadcrumbs to the player early on to piece and make their deductions. It is fascinating if not slightly stressful since I am playing a survival horror game. Yet I wasn’t all too bothered by the gameplay formula.

Puzzles felt adequate without being too complex. The simple systems lend themselves again and again. Becoming cyclical as you progress further in new buildings without feeling like a drag. Encounter a mysterious item? Maybe we can use this later to open a door or slot into a mechanism to open a path. Hmm, bottle? Must be some liquid I need. Keys? Oh, a locked door I couldn’t enter before surely will this time. Every puzzle I found difficult had a nearby solution to help players give off clues to solve their current dilemma. And usually, they may connect to another component, solving a dilemma could be a key to finally removing an obstacle. Out of all the puzzles I encountered. Only one of them is incredibly difficult. This was the only time I felt compelled to check a walkthrough and once I found the solution I couldn’t help but smack myself silly. So here’s a helpful tip. Check your surroundings to make sure of any missing pieces, having a separate monitor or paper on hand to visualize text hints can offer a different point of view. There are puzzles here without a hint so visuals and any patterns as delicately as I can vaguely say will prove invaluable to the naked eye. Don’t overthink, sometimes the easiest and most gut feeling may prove to be the right one.

Combat I wasn't fighting every step of the way like tank controls. Instead I embraced the simple fighting system and abused them to my advantage. Harry can equip one weapon at a time. Utilizes a multitude of melee and ranged weaponry. From pipes to knives to a pistol, shotguns, etc. The armaments helped tremendously like a hammer and the shooting mechanics aren’t all too complicated due to the absence of a reticle. As long as you focus in the direction of the enemy. You can shoot them with extreme prejudice. And man does it feel good to lay them out on the floor and kick em when they're down. Go close to an enemy? Eat a full round from my shotgun. Enemy closing in? NOPE. Time to run in a zigzag and not look back. Dying in about one blow? Excuse me while I chug a kit and some bottles without a required animation to take effect. See several mobs? Yeah forget that, Ima run past them. Pick your battles, don’t fight everything, to conserve ammo.

Felt the resource collection and using my stockpile satisfactory. Supplies are spread throughout the town so you’ll have to do some exploring off the beaten path to see any health kits or bottles to replenish your vitality. I had a surplus of bullets and avoided combat where I could to save ammo. Didn’t need to heal every time, only when I needed to. I wasn’t hindered by any inventory limit, nor was there any sort of stamina meter. He does have a health meter once you enter the menu with a press of the button. Making the lack of any real user interface where you would traditionally see one noticeable, albeit not necessary to see. I didn’t find any major issues with finding resources.

I’ll talk more about this later, but for now, I'll praise the tank controls. The mechanic where you move the player is similar to the process of how a tank moves. And this is a process you’ll need to contend with throughout the entirety of a playthrough. Nevertheless, as I became more familiar with tank life(This was my first time experiencing the phenomenon.) I found it weirdly satisfying to look at the element from a different angle. The controls accentuate certain camera angles to invoke a sense of anxiety and unease. The combat adds to this which I didn’t mind at all considering the game doesn’t shout to the high heavens to play for the fighting module. This in turn creates anticipation and tension adding to the already unsettling atmosphere. So I like it. For adding depth to the combat and fleeing.

Honestly, this emphasizes cutscenes when they play by displaying different camera angles while the dialogue occurs. And boy do I have some good news. I’m surprised by how little text there is in the conversations. Thereby not slobbering players with text logs or lore logs. Though as a lore nut, I firmly believe as long as you have enough relative lore in hand it could prove beneficial. But that is neither here nor there. Words and phrases are used sparingly as if to uphold a sacred tenet that fewer words equals good. SH1 for example follows this rule to a T. I did not see any wasted text. Puzzles and hints are included. It's like a subtly minimalist Chekhov's gun here. And oddly enough I am praising the usage of short conversations between Harry and whoever is speaking to him to excellent effect. Why? This adds mystery and intrigue to the central locations while increasing tension, fear, etc. Reinforcing the enigmatic atmosphere Toyama envisions. Seriously this is great stuff preserving minimal, but essential text to have players piece their own conclusions. Showing us, but not telling us.

In a 2015 interview from Factmag Akira Yamaoka(composer of a majority of the Silent Hill series) talks about the franchise's soundtracks and why it continues to be as influential as ever. “One of the greatest ways that Yamaoka enhanced Silent Hill’s fear building is by using music and effects in ways that run against what you’re expecting. “I wanted it to be unpredictable: maybe during a big scare I cut everything out, and maybe if nothing was happening at all there would be a lot of sound.” You have an empty hallway? Layer a few sirens and mix it in the red. You have an establishing moment with a villain or environment? Use only the sound of a sharpening knife.”

This unpredictability by Yamaoka works to an impressive degree throughout the entire soundscape. Where I felt the absence of regular conventional instruments in favor of creepy silence, air vibrations, the beating of unconventional items like banging of doors, the scrapping of blades, and the heart-pumping scratches and fluctuating radio frequencies awakens dread. Some examples I’ll pull from the OST have silence integrated well such as: ‘Downtime, never end, never end, never end, alive, nothing else, justice for you, heaven give me say, far.’ These tracks accompany many of the gameplay segments and cutscenes in a congenial manner yet interlaced wonderfully facilitating differences from the usual effects we often hear. Creating an unsettling tone to repeat for days on end as you boot up the game. Not to the point of over-use since a lot of tracks differ in tempo, rhythm, and how untraditional sound works. Seriously listen to any of those tracks and see how it differs from classical instruments. The names of these tracks also share similar connotations. Giving off a break if you will. Or time of rest. By comparison, there is another layer. And that is the panic tracks. Imagine low drums combined with a background of haunting wails or cries of ghastly echoes.

While the foreground is immersed with a layer of banging utensils harshly being hit on steel walls in a pattern that evokes slow encroaching terror. Yeah, terrifying isn’t it? Try listening to these tracks: Die, ain't gonna rain, half day, dead end, ill kill you, bitter season, don’t cry, for all, devil’s lyric, over, until death. I had to stomach through the OST again and it is incredible if not spooky. Yet thankfully enough here’s a secret to lessen the tension and anxiety. Lower the volume, no shame in doing so. I admit to doing so! The naming sense also is interesting to note again, with most of the tracks I chose from a small sample conveying notions of death, threats, and bittersweetness. I could’ve added more, but you can see the rest here and suit the tracks in other patterns. Regardless, I want to focus on a pattern. The silence tracks and panic tracks from the ones I listed earlier follow a theme, eh? The former inhabits an eerie vibe throughout yet doesn’t go to the steep lengths of making the player run to the hills. In my ears, I felt they were used to excellent effect, conveying a tingle of mystery as I ran to new rooms and buildings. By comparison. The latter displays the rush, the unbearing suspense mixed with a persistent rhythm forming an incessant need to get out. Run faster and get the hell out of traps and dead-ends. As a result, the panic tracks I think work in its favor and complement the silence to a proportion, I find myself fascinated by the two accompanying themes.

However, a third and smaller portion of tracks not of the two kinds emerges. And this brings to the forefront the classical tracks to a shotgun-filled bar full of emotions and relief. These tracks finally make use of classical instruments like the guitar strings. For example in the track ‘She’ I felt they provide a profound degree of closure. Some may see this as an abrupt slap of whiplash, on the other hand, I found it comforting. In the near silence and panic-filled corridors of ambiance. I found at the end of my main character’s journey and to my great satisfaction a longing feeling of contentment and tranquility. It is apt and so powerful to hear classical instruments shine so bloody hard. I am amazed how different Yamaoka's style conveys so uniquely and so beautifully to listen to. Granted, the effects on the unused may be perceived as annoying to hear repetitive noise effects. Although, I think it works to its benefit. Complementing the game to magically transport the player into the Yamaoka’s soundscape. Like a puppet master controlling how we feel. Just wow. Very different from other Japanese composers I'm familiar with listening such as Nobou Uematsu, Keiichi Okabe, Yasunori Mitsuda, Yoko Shimomura, Hitoshi Sakimoto, Masashi Hamauzu, Masayoshi Soken, Keiki Kobayashi, Kota Hoshino, Falcom Sound Team jdk, and Xenoblade composers. The OST manages to ride the fine line of not being either bombastic or slamming us with gentility. Filling the player with enough suspense to not overflow in sheer terror while giving enough intrigue to the limit of genuine courage. It is as Yamaoka talks about earlier. Unpredictable in building fear.

As much as I could continue praising and analyzing every morsel. I must talk about my mixed feelings. These are neither positive nor negative, but simply some things that gave me pause, could be better and perhaps a hot take down below.

First tank controls for the unused can make it difficult to achieve the right balance in the beginning. When Harry moves in a single direction, turning becomes difficult. So you’ll have to swerve to the right or left before coming around. Takes some getting used to. I was never familiar with these types of old movements and considering it was my first foray into it. My first 15 minutes were clashing onto walls. I understand it's a product of its time. And while some may say it adds tension and anxiety, which I agree to a certain extent. More often than not I crashed into walls and wished it controlled better. Could be a dealbreaker for some. I’ve heard the newest entries after the first have better controls. Though for a first entry, it's not something I'll judge too harshly. Once an hour passed by I became used to them. To help, quick-turn using L1+R1. Helped immensely for my playthrough and thankfully the game’s runtime isn’t too long or medium to deal with. HLTB estimates put this at a short length.

Second, this might be a hot take. But I think going into the game blind completely would be a mistake. I tried playing blind for 95% of my experience and while I did have a good time, once I removed some tips to know beforehand along with some of my friend's advice I would’ve unknowingly struggled. Please check out some tips. I'll put some links further below to help newcomers. Therefore to prevent further suffering. Not required, but it doesn’t hurt to know ya know? For example, Running away from enemy mobs in the streets to conserve ammo. Quickturn if you hit a dead-end and I abused the hell out of that to counter the rough tank controls. Furthermore, going blind may inadvertently cause players more trouble when trying to achieve certain endings. They can be strict. Without going into concrete details of spoiler territory. To get the G+ ending, players need to somehow pick up a liquid in a hospital and use it in a boss fight. Not the last one. There’s a bit more, but I'll let Before I play handle that. Highly recommend referencing that in hand while you play. I hope that’s vague enough to say. I am not advocating for everyone to achieve that outcome, rather I think it would help in the long run when thinking about the game as a whole. It is simply a suggestion.

Third, boss fights I think could’ve been improved a little more to induce more puzzley in design without reverting into too gimmicky territory. As vaguely as I can say. I usually evaded their attacks, then shot bullets during appropriate moments. I’m torn on this point since I think this ties into the combat not being a true highlight to look forward to. I didn’t come to SH1 to be amazed by fighting. Yet unironically Toyama in another interview back in 1999 echoes similar sentiments by saying how “The action part of the game is really just something to create the horror.” A medium to enhance the horror if you will. Although, I still can’t help but add my suggestions on how this could be remedied to make boss fights more horrory. Off the top of my head: More on escaping, instead of traditional fights. Destroying objects in surrounding environments then switching to a different weapon like melee. Surprise me with dialogue maybe and if I answer wrong, game over. Taunt me while chasing me. I wouldn’t say they're bad by any means. The first, second to last boss and final boss do a decent job.

Fourth, I wish there was more interaction in the environment instead of literal observations anyone can make. When exploring anything of relative interest in his surroundings. Harry will make a direct, blunt phrase. “No useful books.” “Nothing unusual.” “Drugs? Better leave it.” “Just a wall.” Granted, there are plenty of notes, diaries, letters, and documents to give some relevant lore or plot hooks so it’s not all bad. Feels weird though. Why not have him say different lines like “Cheryl would’ve loved this book.” or “Ah I remember this drug from long ago my wife used to use.” See how those suggestions would’ve changed some of the stale observations? Makes me wonder if the other installments made some changes to his inspection.

Ultimately I found Silent Hill 1 to be largely a leap of faith as one Ubisoft franchise likes to say. While it does have some dated mechanics like the tank controls which may vary from person to person. And the story may not resonate with everyone. Along with my other mixed feelings. In the end, hidden beneath these varying qualities I found the everyman plot to be equally as satisfying as my time in Signalis. I can only leave pretty positive after my ten hour playthrough. And oddly enough, I regret not playing this title back then in my childhood. Never played any other entries in the series either. And yet for a PSX title released in 1999, I am pretty impressed how much it holds up. Stands tall amongst the other horror games I played. Sure the title doesn’t boast the Lovecraftian edge Bloodborne grasps. The excellent pacing of The Last of Us. Great lessons from Omori or hitting the fine balance of horror and action in the Evil Within series and Metro 2033. Nor does it provide richly diverse cast to the gills like Shadow Heart and Koudelka.

Rather, Harry Mason’s troubled venture to recover his daughter is a powerful incentive to keep in mind. And the feelings of “annoyance, anger and incredible kind of powerlessness” evoked by the protaganists voice actor Michael Guinn moved me enough to see what happens in the end. Strong to witness amongst the clever backtracking, colliding with interesting and well-thought-out puzzles. Constant showing, not telling, and remarkable use of minimal dialogue I found in contrast to Parasite Eve. Demonstrating how much this little gem can achieve in a concise manner without padding. I wasn’t bombarded by useless cutscenes or tearing my suspension of disbelief a new one. Beyond the palpable unique atmosphere, intriguing everyman story and excellent sound design lies something special to anyone who has never played Silent Hill 1. I’d even go as far as to say the game has made me appreciate horror much more than I thought.

8.5/10

References & Additional Material:
1st interview - Shmuplations translated the 1999 interview with Toyama and others
Wiki links - Everyman - Inspirational works of Silent Hill - Tank Controls - Chekhov’s Gun - SH1 OST - Soundscape
2nd interview - Akira Yamaoka interview
3rd interview - Another interview with Toyama back in 1999. Different from 1st.
4th interview - a 2018 interview with none other than the original Silent Hill voice actor for Harry Mason. Michael Guinn. Fair warning does contain spoilers for SH1 & SH3. I only read the SH1 portions.
Silent Hill 1 Before I Play Tips
Silent Hill 1 manual
A short history article on the origin of Tank Controls - Cool TIL tidbits.
My spoiler thoughts on Silent Hill 1 - Heavy spoilers from beginning to end of the game

There's something oddly unsettling and fascinating about exploring empty human-made spaces and structures that would otherwise be bustling with life and activity in a normal day-to-day context, which for me is the biggest strength of the Silent Hill series and what made it stand out from the survival horror crowd.

Like walking inside a Giorgio Chirico painting, Silent Hill focuses on the haunting presence that pervails inside these communal gathering spots long after everyone is gone and drenches it with surrealism that brings the horror out of the ordinary and mundane. Despite its deceitful open air exterior, walking the streets of Silent Hill instils the sense of constantly being watched and trapped by something, in part due to its brilliant unwieldy and claustrophobic camera and purposefully limited draw distance.

Team Silent had a firm grasp on how to pace and escalate horror from game one, making that first treck to the school after night falls for the first time, and filling the streets with unseeable monsters, one of the most harrowing dashes for safety ever, slowly ramping the dread back up again with a seamless transition into the Otherworld that barrages your senses with nightmarish colors and sounds. This is the king of horror atmosphere, making good use of sparse and well payed off jump scares, a lesser focus on situational combat struggles in favor of a long grueling descent into the unknown, and a mastery of setting that makes the sudden appearance of a new floor on an elevator one of eeriest things ever.

One of my favorite moments in the whole game is when after what feels like an eternity in hell being assaulted by disturbingly child looking enemies, a church bell rings in the distance and the once black windows are now filled with foggy familiar daylight, as a sense of relief and salvation washes over you. You quickly end up appreciating being chased by pterodactyls and resident evil dogs during the day after the game makes you spend just a few seconds on the Otherworld version of the town, where darkness covers everything, even the grated floor in which you stand on.

Despite what some might want you to believe about the devil cult focus of the plot, Silent Hill is at its heart the story of broken people and the abuse they have suffered. Lisa's famous and outstandingly directed death cutscene represents the whole Silent Hill pathos, and Harry's inability to deal with such distressing plea for help would further be expanded and explored in the sequel. Despite the torment Alessa suffered during her lifetime and her forever distorted view of the world we witness along the game, Harry's love for Cheryl manages to get past the fog of Silent Hill and reach out to her. Was the amusement park a cheerful distant and fleeting happy memory? Was it experienced at Harry's side?

Age has only made Silent Hill better, the low poly aesthetic giving it even more of a dream like feel, and the primitive sound design of Harry's shoes being closer to reality than what we can get nowadays with modern technology. The soundscape created by Yamaoka is still as effective and essential at presenting the Otherworld as a machinery of industrial sounding evil and madness. Despite not having the cohesiveness its sequels would present with their enemy designs, cast of characters and storyline, Team Silent hit a homerun with this first entry, do not let the outdated discourse get in the way of playing this.

PS: For the love of God, change that damn box art.

I spent a lot of my life overlooking Silent Hill 1, and I don’t think I’m alone in that as a Silent Hill fan, as a general Gamer, and having played a few of the later ones of these I KNOW that’s true of later Silent Hill developers lol.

The second game in the series is well known for being in the weird position of being the odd duck that diverges the most from what would become the norms of the original set of Silent Hillses and also the one that most pierced public consciousness, but I think a lot of what’s here to ground the first game really strengthens it as an actual video game that you play? I promise this is a segue I’m gonna stop comparing this game to 2 now.

The town of Silent Hill as presented in the game Silent Hill feels the most like a real place that it ever will in this entire series, even as it retains the bizarre qualities that instantly mark it as something suspicious and hostile. Yes, the streets are too wide and in a weird twist on normal video game logic a lot of the buildings you enter feel too big on the outside compared to the inside, and these inconsistencies lend themselves to the persistent feeling of offness that is aided by, y’know, the monsters and the fog and the static hiss from your radio. But these weird inconsistencies of the town’s anatomy WOULD just feel like normal quirks of video game geography if such close attentiveness wasn’t paid to the mundane details of normal townie life that so many modern games can’t find in themselves. The signage in this game is out of this world good. Silent Hill is a sleepy beach town in Michigan or Pennsylvania with a population of like 800 and one school and I know this because I’ve been there, I’ve been to this bar, I’ve been to this pier, I’ve seen that chainsaw in that window, I’ve seen that bowling alley named after that lady whose name is not super well-suited to naming stuff after. And having such a tangible reality to the locations you visit grounds everything; this game predates the conception of Silent Hill as a purgatorial space for people to work out there own demons, and instead is – and feels – like a real place that something awful has happened to.

This is reflected everywhere: in the state of the world, in the way characters respond to each other and to the events they’re perceiving, in the actors’ performances, even in the flow of the story. There is the expected dreaminess to the plotting and mechanics of getting from place to place. Occasionally Harry will black out and wake up across town or with people mysteriously flitting in and out of his presence. But the sequence of events, the actual A to B to C of the story being told here is extremely straightforward. The game goes pretty far out of its way to make sure you know exactly what’s going on and when and why and how, and I think that’s to its benefit. A very wise friend of mine once said that a lot of horror just boils down to what if a fucked up guy looked at you and Silent Hill 1 might have the least amount of fucked up guy looks at you in the entire series but it has the ETHOS of it down pat. The scares are straightforward too: a kid crying in a bathroom but no one is in there; a corpse nailed to a wall; a scary little kid with a knife and oh no there’s a fence where there wasn’t one! These things are immediate and in your face and rarely subtextual but that doesn’t make them not scary.

And that’s also not to say that Silent Hill 1 isn’t rife with psychological horror and subtext, it’s just, like, actual subtext. People say Silent Hill 2 has psychological subtext and symbolism but those are very loose uses of those words; that’s just, like, regular text! It’s a great game, not a subtle one lmao. Silent Hill 1 has a lot to say about the anxiety of parenthood, our responsibilities to our children, the violence of isolation. It just ALSO says AHH AHH WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT A GIANT MOTH AHHH, which is also good.

Aesthetically, I don’t think Silent Hill has ever looked better and possibly never could have looked better than on the PS1. The grit and the grunge is perfectly at home in the jaggy polys and muddy texture work, even as you can see the console pushing to its limits to render some of the most gorgeous environments and interiors it will ever produce. Set pieces are visual feasts, with the two onscreen nightmare world transitions being actual marvels, particularly the one at the beginning of the game that happens during live gameplay. There are standout visual moments littered throughout this game from start to finish, despite a relatively small suite of areas and a really limited color pallet. Its short length surely helps.

One other thing that CANNOT be understated about this game is that it is highkey hilarious, one of the funniest games of all time. Horror and Comedy trade on the exact same impulses of tension and release, and while bad horror often veers into comedy, a good horror game is just as capable of having fun as it is at scaring you and Silent Hill is truly masterful at both. There are some goofs that clearly aren’t intentional, like characteristic bad PS1 line reads. BUT there’s also stuff that feels winking, and scares so fun that I refuse to believe they’re anything but intentional gotchas. Take the infamous cat scare. Pretty funny. They got you. Then later it happens again, but there’s no cat, then you get control again, and like two seconds after you’re relaxed a corpse falls out of a locker. ICONIC, incredible scare. ALSO very funny, they fuckin got me dude, good one. Or the late game moment where a random refrigerator has a random tentacle monster that randomly eats you out of nowhere if you don’t solve an extremely simple puzzle out of the blue with a bespoke cutscene and everything in a moment unlike any other in the game. Fuck you, absolutely owned, hope you saved recently asshole! OR or or, what about the game’s one (1) sidequest, which has you running all over town for like an HOUR AND A HALF, finding keys and opening safes and constantly making you think you’re gonna find useful items and stuff and you never do never do never do until at the very end you find what seems to be a very important item and then a character you met one time at the very beginning of the game comes in threatens to kill you takes the item and leaves, and Harry literally just shrugs and goes “well THAT was a waste of time.” OWNED. OWNED. LMAO. Funniest game ever made.

And that’s not even talking about the big man Harry Mason himself, a truly wonderful video game himbo, the ur video game dad and the greatest of them, one of the stupidest guys ever to do it but we love him! He has committed no great sins, he has no deep guilt, he is simply a guy who wants to find his daughter, even as things spin more and more wildly out of his control. Always three steps behind everyone else, never able to articulate himself properly when it counts, but nevertheless an extremely good dude who is just trying his best, I sincerely love this guy.

I didn’t really talk about the part where you play this game but it’s really good! It’s short, the puzzles are all actually good unlike in its sequel, and you can mostly just like run past the enemies which is nice. I had a good time running around but I wasn’t so empowered as to just like, feel cool and invincible the whole time.

Great game!

Ok so, I was originally going to give this a 4.5 because of some minor issues I had with the game, but I just... couldn't. This game is just too monumental and important to justify giving anything but a 5. Just thinking about the fact that this released before the 2000s blows my mind. I know it was a bit of a later release on the PS1, but still this is an early example of a more atmospheric, cinematic gaming experience.

Also just the fact that I haven't played anything else like this. The tank controls take some getting used to, but they add so much to the feeling of uneasiness. The game is fuckin freaky as hell too, plenty of incredibly memorable scares are here. It's just such an effective experience that really blew my mind in a lot of ways. Apparently Silent Hill 2 is even more groundbreaking, so hell yea I'm looking forward to that.

Nobody gets it perfect on their first try, but some get a lot closer to it than others.

When something exists for as long as you've been around, it doesn't tend to impress. We're born onto an oxygen-rich planet with a sun and a moon and seasons and weather and days and nights, but these have all been around for as long as humanity has been, so nobody's really all that surprised by them anymore. Electricity in the home is a fairly recent development in the history of the imperial core, but most of the first people to get power have died off by now; us, the ones left, have almost all lived in a world where electricity has always been there. Video games at large are certainly a very new development, and your grandparents probably grew up long before the first consoles released. For you, statistically speaking, video games have always been here.

For me, Silent Hill has always been here.

I didn't really become self-aware until sometime in the later months of 2001, and Silent Hill had already been out and influencing developers for two whole years by that point. I was late to the party, to be certain. I've never been conscious of a world without Silent Hill in it. When you're in a position like mine (and judging by the site demographics, most of you are, too), it becomes difficult to truly appreciate the influence that this has had. Everyone "knows" that Silent Hill is probably one of the most important horror games ever made, but it's another thing entirely to experience it for yourself, to see the origin point; everything branching off from this central root like little fingers, stretching just far away enough until they're distinct enough to become something new. Fatal Frame, Signalis, Deadly Premonition: all titles with other inspirations, to be certain, yet enough of their branches reaching directly back to Silent Hill as veins to a heart.

What you're looking at here is primordial ooze; bubbling, boiling-hot muck that will one day form the foundations of all that is to come. It drips from the stitches holding together the stretched-hide wallpaper and weeps from the sores of the skinless monstrosities roaming the rusted steel streets. It pours in from the gaps of reality. "Blood and pus flow from the bathroom faucet", Lisa Garland writes in her diary, and there's no better way to describe Silent Hill than with that.

Silent Hill is a town unplugged from life support. It's a decaying corpse long before the nightmares start becoming real. The only usable roads are the ones that leave town, and the rest have fallen into disrepair. The young people are leaving in droves — seemingly the only ones to realize that there's nothing here left worth sticking around for. Around the corners of the tourist traps that keep the town's blood pumping, in the dark places where no one ever looks, a black market drug ring works through every night. They churn out bottle after bottle of little white pills, flooding the streets with product. The real, hard stuff. Addictive, hallucinogenic. The type of shit that you'd kill for another dose of. When you can make something that moves that fast, the only thing you need is a distributor. Some people will do anything for money.

Silent Hill 3 is one of my favorite games of all time, and Silent Hill 2 occupied that same position for the several years before I’d gotten around to its sequel. In spite of that, though, I’d never actually played the first Silent Hill. The second game in the series is essentially standalone, which means it's more or less fine as a starting point, but the third is a direct continuation of the first. I went into Silent Hill knowing exactly how the game ends, because Silent Hill 3 assumed that I already knew. Oops.

The game starts slow. Real slow. Too slow, for certain. It makes me feel like a bit of a Philistinic dipshit to say it, but there’s a line between slow-burn horror and dragging your feet, and Silent Hill steps well over the former and into the latter. I mean, I get it. There’s very clear intent here — stumbling through an ocean of fog so thick that it actually hurts your eyes trying to make out whatever’s lurking within, groping blindly at painted-on doors and litter on the ground in the hopes of finding something to advance the narrative — but in practice, it's mostly made up of sprinting down a road for a minute or two before realizing you're going down another fucking dead end. Enemies in the early parts of the game are too slow to keep up with Harry at a full sprint, meaning you’re not really in any danger unless you slam face-first into a wall while one is on your heels. Given how wide the streets are, avoiding enemies is pretty trivial, and outrunning them until they de-aggro is even easier. This gets far more complicated as the game goes on, the passageways get narrower, and the monsters get faster and more aggressive, but the town of Silent Hill isn’t especially interesting to run through at the start.

Luckily, it’ll only take about half an hour tops before you get to the school, and that becomes the point where the game immediately picks up and never stops going. You really don’t spend a lot of time in that opening part of Silent Hill; once you clear the school, you cross the bridge to a different part of town and never return. There’s a constant forward momentum that keeps pushing at your back like a strong wind, always demanding you keep driving forward. Monster chases get longer, and the game will start actively fucking with you by playing loud crashes and roars during sprints down long corridors. There isn’t really anything there (provided you’re enough of a Darwin Award winner to actually stick around and find out), but the masterful sound design works in tandem with the tank controls to ensure that you really never want to waste time lingering turning around to check it out. Your radio is squealing at you, the monsters are growling and snapping, the music sounds like someone taking a rotary saw to a concrete sidewalk. Stopping to investigate will often mean eating a hit, if not dying outright. So keep moving. Don’t look back.

It ties in nicely with Harry Mason's character, especially in regards to how given he is to just charging forward into the gaping maw of danger to find his daughter. Unlike a lot of the intense, angry, Liam Neeson Taken-types that have cropped up in a lot of popular media, Harry is just kind of a cool guy. He loves Cheryl and he's willing to fling himself deeper into this hellish town to find her, no matter how many people tell him she's definitely already been killed by the roaming monsters; he wants to protect and help the other people stuck in the town with him, even at his own expense. He's there for Cybil, for Lisa, for Kaufmann. I like Harry. It's refreshing to see a game starring a guy who's completely normal and just wants the best for everyone else, especially when you put him in the middle of the most evil setting imaginable and he still doesn't compromise on those ideals.

The constant escalation offers some great thematic cohesion, reflecting this building fear of running out of time. As Harry chases down one dead lead after another, the town devolves deeper and deeper into a nightmare-scape, no longer able to hold itself together in material reality. It culminates in the absolutely incredible Nowhere, a place constructed from the pure id of a dreaming girl who's been dying for nearly a decade straight — her divided soul keeping her perched on the line between life and the void. Doors lead to different floors despite no change in elevation, keys are hidden inside bags of jellybeans, symbols of protection need to be collected and bartered in order to progress. Harry's already spent enough time today destroying the one symbol that would have solved everyone's problems, so now he gets to collect five of them to open the boss door.

If you play Harry as a decent guy who tries to solve everyone's problems, you're rewarded with a shockingly positive ending for something that, until this point, has been so relentlessly horrific. It's almost completely unambiguous. Everyone who deserves their comeuppance gets it, and everyone who deserves a break gets one. After all of the suffering — felt by both the characters and by you — it's nice to feel your head breaking through the surface of the water to get a gasp for air.

While it feels a little quaint to call the game gorgeous, I can't find another word for it. This is probably the best looking game on the PS1, and now that we've got a glut of indie games going for the same low-poly look, Silent Hill looks remarkably fresh today. What's old is new again, I suppose. I do wish that they had prioritized the performance a little bit more, though, even if they would have needed to compromise on visuals; the game often dips down into the low double digits when there's a single monster chasing you in an open part of the map, and god help your frame rate if you ever get unlucky enough to be attacked by three monsters at the same time. A minor performance hit here and there is acceptable, but this likes to border on unplayable just a little bit too frequently.

Still, though, what's here is phenomenal. It never manages to hit the highs of Silent Hill 2 or 3, but this was their first try. It's already impressive before you take that into account. All it needed was a little more money and a little more time to be truly perfect, and that was a luxury only afforded to the following games after this showed sufficient potential. This one was the first, and it was made by employees who had been kicked down into Konami's basement in the hopes that they would quit. This might be the absolute best that anyone could have done, given the circumstances.

If you stick around past the credits, you’re treated to a little blooper reel of all the characters laughing and mugging for the camera, complete with Happy Days-esque name plates that fade in over a freeze frame while they do something silly. There’s something about making this the final sequence you leave the player with that really stuck with me; this is a game that’s confident. Team Silent is swinging dick. They made something that was impressive, and they knew it was impressive. Nothing reserved, nothing to be humble about. “Yeah, we can end our horror game on shots of Dahlia smooching the lens and Harry posing on a diner booth like he’s auditioning for Vogue. Of course we can. Why wouldn’t we? We’ve earned it. We just made Silent Hill.”

Damn right they did.

(Note: The following is the blurb I wrote for Silent Hill as part of user Pangburn's epic "Sight and Sound Poll"-style project where he essentially established Backloggd's definitive canon. Can't say enough good things about that massive undertaking and the work he put in - and for making me write this. Despite SH being my own "canon" favorite game for, I don't know, fifteen years or something now, I've never written about it. I find it extremely difficult to articulate its qualities - which in my mental laziness I feel like should be totally self-evident - and it's effected me in such a strongly and weirdly personal way that I don't feel I have the vocabulary to describe it. But I do love it, and he knew that, and despite me initially demurring like a chickenshit, he got me to stand up and be counted for this absolutely beyond-godlike classic. So, since I don't know that I'll ever find my way to writing more about it outside of passionate defenses and references in random comments, I figured I should repurpose it here, for posterity. Anyway.)

Building further on the steady development of its progenitors SWEET HOME, ALONE IN THE DARK, and RESIDENT EVIL, Silent Hill expanded the scope of video game horror both outward and inward. Rather than a mansion or series of interconnected buildings, it gave players a sprawling, fully three-dimensional town full of terrors to explore, yet focused on assaulting them mainly with their own fear of the unknown, clouding the story, characters, monsters, and environments in metaphor and dream logic, keeping them submerged in an oppressive sense of dread that made opening any new door genuinely unnerving. The aesthetic - essentially unmatched on the PlayStation - married Japanese sensibilities with the nightmarish imagery of its developers' favorite western horror media, and created a dark and atmospheric, crisp yet deliberately obscured look and sound that threw the doors open wide for a whole subgenre of J-Horror games that would follow. Silent Hill's project and effect on the player can be understood through its most indelible image, one that continues to define scary video games to this day - a normal person alone on an abandoned city street, faced with an enveloping gray fog ahead, crippled by the fear of taking even one step farther into it.

Silent Hill is without question one of the most incredibly immersive games i’ve ever played, with its mix of a horrifying atmosphere supported by a brilliant soundtrack to back it up and classic untouchable survival horror gameplay the game is a struggle to put down as you try and unravel what is exactly happening in this town. Even with its flaws like the emotional beats marred by the wooden voice acting, and puzzles that feel a little too abstract for my pea sized brain, I felt the general experience was, unsurprisingly, an incredible time. Truly a beyond special video game that I feel everyone should experience.

The birth of psychological horror in gaming.

If Resident Evil is an sci-fi action horror with zombies and monsters, then Silent Hill is an psychological horror arthouse drama with cults and demons. Another thing, this is in fact my favorite PS1 game.

The level design and music are the best of the series and the story is amazing aswell since it offers some great mysteries and the arguably most tragic character in gaming.

It's worth mentioning that this is also the scariest Silent Hill game and thus the scariest game ever made. It for sure has the scariest monsters in the franchise. The puzzles are also well thought out but not overly complicated. The boss fights are fine aswell. Better as in SH2 but not than SH3.

The characters are also alright with Alessa being the most interesting in it. There isn't much else to say other that it gets overshadowed way to much by it's successor.

10/10 nightmares become reality.

Check my review for the movie on Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/xgmanx/film/silent-hill/

This is basically a "parenting fail" compilations

This game is a work of art, plain and simple. The atmosphere created is completely in symbiosis with the materials of its time. The vibrant and peculiar 3D of the PS1, its inability to render depth of field, the audio limitations that slow down the dialogues (it feels like being in a Rohmer film): remove one of these elements and the house of cards collapses. Remastering this title is impossible.

The game is TRULY frightening on many levels. To highlight just one element: the radio alarm. You always know there's an enemy nearby, but where? No jump scares: the game doesn't aim to scare us, but rather to terrorize us. I finished the game in 3 sessions and sometimes I was relieved to turn off the PlayStation because the atmosphere is so oppressive. My neck is still tense from this experience. Harry is never in a safe space; the player is always in danger.

The sound atmosphere and music, like any good horror film, are the scoliotic backbone of this hell. Between haunting drones and dark industrial sounds, the hearing is put to the test. Let it be known, I don't think I'll buy the vinyl to listen to it on a Sunday afternoon, unless I'm in need of an anxiety attack (aka never).

However, I must admit that I played it like a 'walking sim' by putting the game on 'easy' mode. The gameplay itself has aged relatively poorly, and the boss scenes are particularly bad. The interesting part lies in exploration and puzzle-solving. Its way of revealing the game's lore through objects and descriptions enhances immersion. I also have to admit that I am particularly a fan of the 'evolving' map system that prevents us from having to repeatedly open a locked door 15 times in a row. I look forward to playing the sequels

Part of Spooky Season 2023.

It’s easy to see why the Silent Hill franchise is one of the two pillars of the survival horror genre alongside Resident Evil. So much of Team Silent’s first title has aged like fine wine. While it doesn’t quite stick the landing in every single regard, the aspects that the game excels in are done in a truly unparalleled fashion that very few games can compare to.

This game has some of the strongest presentation in the medium. Its art direction is succeeded only by later entries in the series. This is absolutely one of the best looking games of its generation, and I think that age has only made the game look even better. From the worn and weathered look of it’s industrial environments where you’re never quite sure if the floors and walls are covered in rust or blood, to the horrific imagery of bodies that have been merged and entangled with steel cages, to the enemies that appear to be animals and people that have been twisted and corrupted by some truly evil force that is impossible to fathom… it's all breathtakingly striking and leaves a tremendous and lasting impact.

Then there’s the game’s utterly phenomenal sound design. Words fail to truly describe how perfect it is. It does such an impeccable job at making you feel like you’re never truly alone, that the world around you is alive and is constantly watching your every move with utter hatred and contempt. There are short music tracks that just consist of noises that sound like something angrily stomping on a metal floor or high pitched whining that will play either in certain locations you discover or after you complete an action. It feels like the music and sound is constantly reacting to you and what you do, and combined with the disturbing art and imagery, it makes Silent Hill one of the most immersive games that I have ever played.

The story definitely requires you to have a taste for ambiguity to truly appreciate it. You’re going to have to put bits and pieces of the story together for yourself, as Silent Hill never really gives you the full picture of the events that lead up to and take place over the course of the game. I really like the optional items that you can find in the world that add clarity to what’s going on, like the video tape, or the various newspaper clippings you can find across different areas. I’m especially a big fan of how the game tells elements of its story through its environments.

Silent Hill’s gameplay is the survival horror standard that was established by it and Resident Evil. It has the tank controls, clunky (complimentary) combat, puzzle solving, and inventory management that the genre is known for. Compared to Resident Evil, Silent Hill seems to be a bit more encouraging of combat, and it doesn’t really place as much focus on inventory management. You’re not limited in how many items you can pick up, so you really only have to manage your ammo. Even then, the game tends to be pretty generous with ammo drops (at least on normal). However, if you’re just shooting everything, you may still end up putting yourself in a difficult spot like I nearly did. Thankfully the game has plenty of melee options to choose from (though the hammer is pretty much the go-to as far as these are concerned), allowing you to engage in combat without having to spend ammo. You are a lot more likely to take damage when engaging in melee combat, but the game is also pretty generous when it comes to healing items as well.

I think that the game is at its best when you’re exploring the various… dungeons I guess? I’m not really sure what to call these locations, but I’m referring to places like Midwich Elementary School and Alchemilla Hospital. They’re similar to dungeons from The Legend of Zelda or the Spencer Mansion/Raccoon City Police Station from Resident Evil. They’re multi-floored buildings that have various locked rooms with corresponding keys and puzzles to solve. These locations are phenomenal. They’re immensely satisfying to explore and navigate, and I especially love when they transition from a simple and mundane location to their corrupted horrific counterparts, as that’s where the game plays very clever tricks on the player, such as the bathrooms that teleport you between floors in the Hospital.

The last quarter or so of the game before the finale gets rather slow and a tad annoying. The sewers and everything leading up to the amusement park aside from the optional quest you can do at this point in the game was just really straightforward and very boring. You travel through these more linear locations that have an abundance of enemies, too many to fight, so you need to run past them in order to stay alive. There’s so many enemies in fact, that the game’s framerate will actually start to drop here. These locations aren’t nearly as interesting to explore, or even particularly frightening outside of the music and environmental noises. I think this section would be even worse if you miss out on the optional stuff you can do at this point in the game.

The bosses in this game are okay at best. They’re all pretty simple and mostly involve just blasting them with the best guns in your tiny arsenal of weapons. There’s little strategy to them, and in all honesty, thanks to the generous amount of healing and ammo you get over the course of the game, you’re able to just stand in one place and tank hits while firing at several of the game’s bosses, including the final one.

The puzzles are a mixed bag throughout the entire game. I found a lot of them to be rather decent, and others to be very obtuse. I was able to solve a few of them, but I had to look quite a few of them up, more than I was happy with. I really don’t know how much of a skill issue that is on my part and how much of it is an actual issue with the game’s puzzles. I was able to figure out the infamous piano puzzle on my own for example, but other puzzles like the zodiac one left me completely clueless as to what I was supposed to do.

Another issue I had is that it can be easy to miss items and objects you can pick up or interact with. While most of the time, items do contrast well with the background and aren’t too difficult to spot, there were times where I did miss and had to backtrack for a key or other important item simply because I didn’t see it. I also nearly missed an optional but sorely needed weapon because I barely noticed it was even there. I don’t remember off the top of my head if early Resident Evil games did this or not, but in certain titles in the series, items that you can pick up and interact with would have a little twinkle on them, which made it a lot easier to see them, especially in cluttered environments.

Despite its flaws, which I think can be mitigated slightly if you choose to follow a spoiler free guide, Silent Hill is still an extremely impressive and well-crafted game, especially for its time. It is immersive in ways few other games I’ve played can possibly compare, and when it’s at its best, it’s a satisfying and thrilling survival horror experience. It might frustrate and annoy me at times, but overall, it's still a worthwhile experience that is very much worth playing today.

"harry mason introduced the everyman to survival horror" "as an ordinary man harry mason can't take many hits and struggles with firearms" my man is standing here nailing headshots with hunting rifles like it's nothing. he's getting pounced on by flesh gorillas, mauled, and then crawling out like he just took a scratch. he's surviving electrocution and then nailing noscopes like it's easy. and there's no question he's been doing his cardio as well, sprinting across an entire town while barely breaking a sweat. barely loses his composure until a lady literally turns into a blood demon in front of him. even then he takes a second to sit with it and then starts running around literal bizarro world again as if nothing happened. what does chris redfield have that harry doesn't?

when I played silent hill 2 I managed to self-impose the dread and anxiety required to fully immerse myself in the dilapitated corridors and alleys of the titular town. not so much this time. my friends/roomates were really into watching this one so I rarely played this one alone in the dark like I did its sequel, and I played the game accordingly. lots of riffing and plenty of laughs at the stilted dialogue, creepy setpieces, and oddball puzzles. when I got to the lighthouse I was really having to strain my tank controls prowess to run up the spiral staircase, and as a bit I made a couple other people try it to prove I wasn't crazy; I'll always remember that shit.

but I can't deny that when I played this alone for a bit in the otherworld version of the school, even as I worried that I couldn't remember how to envelope myself in that fear, I could feel those telltale signs occuring. the tightening of the chest, and that prickle in the throat letting me know that the imagery of strung-up bodies and rusty grating were starting to make me anxious. even with few prior antecedents that managed to capture this disgust and visceral psychological torment within the digital world they managed to perfectly envision it on such limited hardware. scenes like the rows of windmills placed in the middle of nowhere after the caterpillar fight or something as simple as covered corpses on beds in the hospital convey sickness and decay without hesitation. the lighting as well, from the muggy daytime streets to the narrow beam of the flashlight control the player's gaze so perfectly, unsettling them as they dare to peek into a corner or open yet another door.

what perhaps surprised me the most was the game's structure. from back to front the game isn't particularly long, and unlike its sequel the actual dungeon sections are much less heavily emphasized. these locations in silent hill 2 contain heavy story significance and a much stronger sense of relevance to james' history and mental state in comparison to the school and the hospital, which serve more functional purposes to harry than thematic ones. the rooms as well feel much more cookie-cutter by comparison, with fewer key areas of interest and more vessels to contain keys of various shapes. where this game succeeds in disorienting the player most is in the ever-shifting locality of the places you visit. building floors that disappear, bathrooms that exit on different floors than you entered on, and entire city streets melting away before your very eyes; all of this culiminates in the nowhere, where previous areas are stitched together into a dizzying maze detached from any semblance of reality.

silent hill also has significantly better puzzle design than its follow-up thanks to the lack of any sort of item combination feature. keys are keys, no need to weld multiple random items together to get to the next area. instead the progression feels much more directly drawn from resident evil, with a mixture of fun little brainteasers and lock-and-key matching. surprisingly these appear very little in the second half of the game, assuming that you totally skip the kaufmann side quest as I did (thought I looked around a good deal and yet totally missed the bar, and as soon as you walk down the street on the boardwalk you're completely locked out of this whole section unfortunately). past the hospital there's quite a while of just running past hordes of enemies completely incapable of keeping up with you: in the town center, the sewers, the dock on the way to the lighthouse, and then the sewers again. not really an issue considering you still get to take in the sights regardless, but I would've preferred a little more "dungeon-crawling" so to speak.

when I first tried this game years ago the clunky combat and controls threw me off, and if you feel like you're in this boat take some time to get used to it and explore. items are ridiculously common and taking damage usually yields little risk provided you keep tabs on your health. although I didn't use the strafe at all and barely touched the backjump, overall these are some super tight controls. would not blame anyone for trying the second game first and then coming back to this one like I did.

Creo que todos caímos en el error, ya sea en una charla mundana o en una discusión más seria, de alguna vez utilizar el término "pero los demás lo hacen mejor" cuando hablamos de la primera entrega de cualquier saga. Cometí este error con dmc1 y lo volví a cometer con Silent Hill 1. Todos halábamos y hablamos maravillas de SH2 Y 3, incluso el 4 genera más debate y circulación de discursos que SH1. Con este último, siento que se tiene un consenso invisible de que "está bueno, pero los demás son mejores" y si bien no es mi intención indagar en cuál entrega es peor o mejor, voy a explicar los motivos por las que esta afirmación no me agrada del todo y por qué este juego me sorprendió para bien.

Volví a jugar al silent hill 1 en Stream por Halloween, y la que yo pensaba era la entrega más floja de la saga, no paro de asombrarme durante todas las primeras horas con sus increibles virtudes. Simplemente quede atónito ante la cantidad de genialidades que el juego tiene y que yo había pasado por alto la primera (y unica) vez que lo jugué.

Empecemos por el increíble apartado visual. Odio esta mentalidad tan reduccionista que defiende que "Buenos gráficos son igual a foto realismo"quiero decir, sí, ¡esas texturas se ven increíbles ahora! Pero en unos años, cuando las tecnologías avancen y nosotros nos insensibilicemos a eso que considerábamos novedoso, inevitablemente esos "increíbles gráficos realistas", no serán más que algo obsoleto del paso a nuestros ojos, en el peor de los casos, incluso generado el fenómeno de valle inquietante. La realidad es que, sin intentar tapar el sol con un dedo, ¡SH1 se ve increíble! Por supuesto, está sujeto a las limitaciones técnicas de su consola, pero a través de un uso creativo de sus recursos, el juego logra, dentro de y casi que gracias a sus limitaciones, una estética ÚNICA y cautivadora. Es por esto que cuando alguien dice “se ve como un juego de ps1 o ps2”, para mí no es un insulto, ¡es un alago! Y es también por esto que SH1 se sigue degustando mejor a la vista que muchos juegos de las posteriores generaciones, se centra en crear una estética reconocible y no solo ser la novedad técnica. Si uno se toma el tiempo de emular y ver cómo este juego se veía en aquellas teles de tubo de 1999, se da cuenta de lo hermoso que se ve.

Todos conocemos ya la famosa historia de la característica niebla del pueblo de Silent Hill, pero paremos un segundo a apreciar un poco el diseño de la ciudad; el cómo cuando Harry pisa carne, está suena y dejamos huellas de sangre al caminar, la iluminación, el precioso trabajo sonoro de Akira Yamaoka (del cual no voy a pararme a hablar mucho porque su aporte musical a silent Hill requiere un ensayo por sí solo, quédense con que ta god) y como la falta de cualquier HUD deja apreciar el triple todos estos elementos. Soy de los que piensan que este juego es un producto de su tiempo, pero para bien. Simplemente, un apartado artístico con tanto carisma, tan inmersivo e hipnotizante, es, en mi opinión, irrepetible a día de hoy, casi mágico; no importa cuántos juegos indie intenten emular esta estética en 2022, no lograrán hacer algo igual (si, videojuegos modernos intentando imitar un juego de 1999)

¿Bueno, les parece si pasamos a otro de los enormes elefantes en la habitación? Me refiero a los......los controles de tanque y cámara fija!
Voy a ser completamente sincero y breve con este punto. Si te quejas de los controles o la cámara fija, mi estimado, fuiste exitosamente filtrado. Tu típica cámara peli juego-terceraperosna+Tlou wannabe+sony game JAMÁS va a lograr la inmersión y puesta en escena que se logra acá con la fija. ¿Por qué creen que en las entregas de ps2 estos dos apartados se mantuvieron así incluso con los joysticks? ¡PORQUE SE JUEGA ASÍ! No seas puto. Mayor parte de los mejores momentos y peaks, no tendrían ni la mitad de impacto con otra cámara. Si en un caso hipotético implementásemos una cámara libre,  todos estos momentos deberán ser completamente repensados. Realmente los ángulos logran escenas muy memorables (Esas secciones dentro de pasillos estrechos serían injugables, por ejemplo). Nunca entendí la molestia con los controles de tanque. Para mí, jugar Silent Hill fue una experiencia cómoda la mayor parte del tiempo. Me parece más honesto simplemente admitir que SUBJETIVAMENTE esto no te gusta y este tipo de juegos no son para vos.

Otra cosa que no vi ser lo suficientemente apreciada son las cinemáticas in game. Sé que a algunos (a veces por cherrypicking) varias escenas pueden resultarle.....raras. Pero esto, hasta cierto punto, fue deliberado (Tengo entendido que team silent se basó en una película/serie con este estilo de diálogo raro, pero ahora no tengo la fuente a mano para corroborarlo. Así que tomen esto con pinzas). Este tono tan incómodo que me gusta describir como onírico (exacto, como una pesadilla que no se termina), me genera un sentimiento que solo es comparable, bajo a mi experiencia, con yume nikki (el único otro juego que me causa sentimientos similares a SH). Y creo que nada de esto es al azar, SH durante toda su historia juega con el hecho de que quizás estemos en un sueño, la palabra "pesadilla" después de todo, es muy recurrente a lo largo de la obra. 

Aun con todo esto dicho, las limitaciones técnicas se notan. ¿Entonces dónde está la magia? ¡EN LA PUESTA EN ESCENA!
A través del juego de la cámara y los ángulos, las cinemáticas protagonizadas por personajes en polígonos cobran vida. SH hace un uso muy creativo de esto, deliberadamente evitando apuntar a los rostros. Solo para que se hagan una idea, las escenas in-game de este juego de PS1, se ven mejor que las de muchísimos juegos de PS2, como GTAsa.

-Cuando el pueblo cobra vida y el terror se hace cotidiano

La historia de Silent hill empieza con una premisa muy simple, nosotros, Harry Mason, por circunstancias que en un principio desconocemos, nos encontramos en un viaje de vacaciones a Silent Hill. En nuestro camino tenemos un accidente y cuando despertamos, nuestra hija, Cheryl, ha desaparecido. Nuestro deber entonces, será adentrarnos a los rincones más oscuros de silent Hill para salvar a nuestra hija. ¿Sencillo no? Bueno, esta premisa me parece perfecta, ya que no solo hace muy fácil el empatizar con Harry y su delicada situación, sino que también, haciéndole honor a su categoría como juego de horror, Silent Hill juega con esta idea incómoda, que a muchos (incluido a mí) nos pone un poco enfermos: me refiero a “un familiar o conocido pequeño, perdido o secuestrado”. ¿Quién no le tiene pavor absoluto al posible rapto de su hermanito/sobrino/hijo/primito? ¿Quién no ha perdido el aire por completo solo por perder a estos infantes en la playa o en el supermercado? Bueno, este mismo sentimiento es al que yo pienso que SH quiere evocar durante su campaña, y una de las razones por la que es tan fácil querer que las cosas salgan bien para Harry y su hija. Silent hill trae un miedo cotidiano a un ambiente fantástico. 

Mucha gente reduce la trama de Silent Hill 1 como “la típica trama de un culto” y si bien, esto es en parte cierto, es mucho más profundo que eso, tanto en lo que se nos cuenta y el CÓMO se nos cuenta. Una de las muchas razones por las que creo que SH4 es de los mejores juegos de esta franquicia es por su narrativa, no entiendo como en su momento no vi que la filosofía y manera de contar la historia de ese juego, ¡nace en parte ACÁ!

Ni Harry ni nosotros sabemos qué carajo está sucediendo al inicio de la aventura, esto es deliberado (al igual que en el 4) y vuelve a silent Hill en parte un misterio, uno que no se resolverá por sí solo, sino que será trabajo DE EL JUGADOR asumiendo el papel de Harry, averiguar qué diablos está pasando en el pueblo, quien está haciendo esto y que es realidad “silent Hill”. Uno puede terminar la historia del juego sin ni siquiera haber entendido o resuelto estos misterios (lo que llevara a un final MALO), SH no te escupe la exposición a la cara, es sutil, a través de notas, periódicos y videos que el jugador encuentra es que la historia y los sucesos van tomando forma. Es por esto mismo que mucha gente cree que la historia del juego es confusa, pero si verdaderamente le pones un poquito de ganas, es fácil darte cuenta de que pasa. SH no es como esos juegos de terror modernos en los cuales su historia críptica requiere que te leas 800 comics a fuera del juego y que veas 500 videos de teorías hechas por fans para entenderla, es nuestro DEBER explorar todos los recovecos de del pueblo e interesarnos por sus habitantes y sus conmovedoramente trágicas historias si queremos, no solo resolver el misterio, sino también salvarlos a todos y sacar el final bueno. Porque esa es otra cosa, silent Hill tiene varios finales dependiendo de las acciones del jugador. En el 2 y el 3 es muy fácil sacar el final bueno, incluso siendo solo tu primera partida podés sacarlos sin querer al ser los finales que los desarrolladores probablemente buscaban que saques en tu primera partida, lo cual es genial, pero en cambio, en el 1 y el 4 esto es una tarea mucho más difícil, que requiere de más tiempo y una mejor comprensión de su mundo y mecánicas. ¡Y esto me encanta!

Yo en lo personal detesto los finales malos en los videojuegos, por eso siempre me esfuerzo al máximo por sacar los finales felices, incluso si esto significa comenzar otra vez desde cero, por más ñoño que suene. ¡Sé que es un poco tonto, pero simplemente me encantan! Más cuando yo, el jugador, tengo el control y depende de mí y mi habilidad obtenerlos. Es, al final, la recompensa que se le da al jugador por interesarse en el mundo y personajes que los desarrolladores crearon. Silent Hill 1 y 4 tienen en mi opinión esa filosofía y, a pesar de que lastimosamente en mi primer run termine con un final malo (que me hizo re-jugarlo desde el principio para sacar MI PRECIADO FINAL BUENO, ejem), esta característica los vuelven juegos super satisfactorios de finalizar para quien se tomó el tiempo de sacarles el jugo. Es esa recompensa que no viene en forma de trofeo ni de un arma nueva, sino de ese desenlace que deseabas ver.

-El final de un viaje y el inicio para una saga

Al final de todo este montón de texto que nos queda? ¡Bueno, volver al principio! Silent Hill 1 NO ES perfecto; tiene bastante backtracking (que en lo personal no encuentro para nada molesto), un posicionamiento de enemigos deliberadamente injusto/molesto en ocasiones (¿alguien me quiere decir por qué concha los perros y murciélagos tienen la estamina para perseguirme por 5 cuadras?), el sistema de apuntado es en ocasiones un poquito molesto e inexcusable viniendo de juegos contemporáneos a las primeras entregas de RE (si pensamos que esto no fue una decisión deliberada de los desarrolladores) y si bien casi todas las mazmorras me parecen geniales, la de las alcantarillas no solo son un dolor de culo que es literalmente pasillos con mil bichos puestos para putearte y sin puzzles, sino que además el diseño de enemigos de esta zona es él más desinspirado de todo el juego. (¿quiero decir, son reptiles…? ¿O mantis...?) Entre su color y estética no pegan para nada con el resto de la campaña. Pero a pesar de todo esto, sigue siendo un GRANDÍSIMO videojuego, y me atrevería a decir que el más importante para la franquicia. Por eso no me gusta cuando la gente dice de manera peyorativa “pero los demás lo hicieron mejor” ¡es injusto y reduccionista! Porque, después de todo, ni los SH posteriores, ni otros muchísimos videojuegos de terror serían lo que son hoy si no fuera por el increíble Silent Hill 1. Que se sigue manteniendo, y debe ser apreciado no solo por lo que estableció, sino por sus grandísimas virtudes ligadas a su tiempo y espacio, irrepetibles a día de hoy.


Gracias por leer, Eileen Galvin es mi esposa.

I loved this; I think it's my favorite PS1 game so far. It's the first time I've finished a game and thought "Yes! THAT was worth buying a PS3 for!"

I found it surprisingly scary. The sound design in particular was incredible; I was recently impressed by the soundscapes in Doom 3 and I feel like that pulled a lot from this. Just a huge range of atmospheres from unsettling to outright panic-inducing. It blended so well with the cold rusty aesthetic of the graphics which, again, wow.

What really stood out to me throughout Silent Hill was how well they made the system's limitations work for them. Low resolution, polygon count and draw distance would be a fetter to a lesser team, but this game leans into them as strong artistic choices that end up being the pillars of the game's aesthetic.

The whole game is a testament to the Jaws thing: the scariest things are unknown. The graphics, sound and plot all use ambiguity and limited information in the best ways possible. Even with the stilted acting and muddy graphics I was glued to the screen every cutscene trying to soak in any scrap of information to understand what was happening to Harry. Understanding would give me power, but this is the kind of game that withholds more power than it gives and it constantly kept me wanting more.

My favorite TV show of all time is Lost. I love how the plot is doled out in tantalizing chunks, each a degree weirder than the last. I felt that same drip-feed of "Wait what?!" moments playing Silent Hill.

In addition to loving the creative choices, I was also really impressed with the technical presentation. The camera in particular seems ahead of its time. Third person cameras even today struggle in small interior spaces and I was kinda blown away by how they were able to split the difference between a curated experience and full player control. I felt like I could always see what I needed to see, and I was hardly ever fighting the camera.

It's actually kind of funny to see how much of Sony's first party formula is all right here. Cinematic presentation, over-the-shoulder camera, wide linear world design with open segments, ranged/melee action, in-engine cutscenes, sad dad... hell this game might as well be Last of Us Part 0.

I think the game's biggest weakness is its boss fights. I had to retry each one of these a bunch of times which really drained a lot of the momentum and tension. It would be different if it weren't so clunky to control, or the fights were designed around that clunkiness. But it felt like they required a level of dexterity that was hard to achieve, then wouldn't be needed again until the next fight.

I'm not really holding that against it, though, because they always gave you a nice checkpoint and they were good pace breaks. Considering you spend 90% of the game running around and like 5% of it in boss fights, it's probably a good thing that the running around is the best part. Being scared of what's behind you, dreading what's ahead of you, piecing together clues while a horrible sound plays at an uncomfortable volume is where the game is at its peak.

Silent Hill is in such an intriguing position historically; it feels like it sits on a little sliver of the Venn diagram between 20th and 21st century design. You've got these forward-thinking, gorgeous lo-fi 3D environments that are filled with old-school touches like giving each little cabinet and desk its own text description. It really feels unique and special and I'm really glad for my time with it.

This the third game of the franchise that I played, yes I played 4 then 2 and now 1. Don't judge me. The core of story is rather simple, you play a character named Harry who is driving his daughter Cheryl to Silent Hill. On the winding mountain roads, he sees something that looks like girl on the road and swerves to avoid hitting her. After he wakes up, his daughter is gone. So you're goal is to find your daughter Cheryl. This is the easy to understand part of the story, the rest of it is a lot of interpretation and speculation which I liked. The game focuses more on the characters, storyline and building a tense atmosphere than action. The sound design and soundtrack are great and help to immerse yourself into world of Silent Hill. Graphics and facial expressions aren't that great and the biggest problem in my opinion is the combat, the tank controls can be really tiring but the fact that I had 190 Pistol bullets left at the end of the game (which might be the result of me just running away like the coward that I am from most of the enemies) made it a little bit easier. All the "cons" can be easily overlooked because they are just relics from the time when the game was released. Overall I really enjoyed Silent Hill and this might be my second favorite game of the franchise after Silent Hill 2 because the game teases the players imagination with grotesque images and genuinely creepy effects and slowly builds up tension and suspense that way.
The story is wonderfully crafted and the strong atmosphere are the biggest strength of this game. huge recommendation.

Favorite video game moment in recent memory: Harry Mason walks into a hospital room. The important thing about this room is a picture frame on a bedside table. But if you accidentally press the interact button while facing a little more toward the bed than the picture like I did, Harry thinks aloud: “A bed?! What’s it doing here?”

…you’re in a hospital, Harry…

I love this guy. I love this game. I want someone to make a game today where the whole thing looks like Silent Hill’s CGI cutscenes

The way the camera shifts defines the space so much in Silent Hill. Even right off the bat in the dream sequence intro, the game's dynamic angles evoke much disorientation to further emphasize the oppressive mood. These sparks of unsettling creativity aren't limited to just the regular exploration but continue in the cutscenes that slowly piece together the cryptic narrative, world, and characters of the game. The merry-go-round sequence is striking where Harry reveals to Cybil that Cheryl isn’t his biological daughter as the text scrolls by with the obscured attraction in operation. The whole final act in general is so thoroughly cinematic and tense with its own stylish flourishes. Everything terrifying, tragic and so effective can be seen with the scene where Lisa comes to realize her fate as she begs Harry to stay, and he flees and shuts the door on her. It’s the peak of the game for me in communicating Silent Hill’s nightmarish tone and themes on the occult, trauma, and religious abuse and domination, and everything else across the short journey adds to that.

Also contributing to the foreboding atmosphere of Silent Hill is the stellar sound design. The densely fog world is eerily quiet with wind howls and Harry’s footsteps filling the zones until the radio static comes alive alerting of nearby fleshy monsters approaching to kill. The flapping, quick successive pattering, distorted laughing, distant creaks, and many other disembodied groans and moans; it's all very threatening as they chase Harry across the town until he reaches the various locales of Silent Hill. It's hard to pick a favorite out of the many as the brilliant sound design is just consistently great across the board; the hospital, elementary school, nowhere and the sewers are particularly oppressive and unnerving to walk and run through, the darkness obscuring the threat of what lurks beyond. Even silence is a powerful tool in raising anxiety on what happens next.

On less frightening things, the progression of main areas through puzzles felt very intriguing to solve. It's very Resident Evil 1 like but sometimes even more cryptic in a handful of puzzles. Outside of those is a good sense of exploration with extra items that can be collected around the areas and many, while still completely optional, can have fascinating effects on how Silent Hill wraps up in the various endings, upping the replayability of the game. How the game controls might be the only sticking point for those filtered by tank controls, but they never felt too unwieldy and are easy to adjust to. Not to mention the game is far easier and more forgiving than Resident Evil's early titles as a surplus of resources are always around the corner and shooting or hitting enemies connects as long as you’re facing them. This might undercut some tension since you can just mow down or run away from them with little risk to taking damage and ending up saving more resources, but this didn’t bother me. Additionally, the boss fights are pretty simple and short to kill, but again who plays these games for the riveting gameplay?

Maybe not a perfect 5/5 but given, you know, EVERYTHING that's going on here both technically and structurally (whether for it's time or not) it just feels wrong not to give it that. This is like everything I could ask for in a narrative video game. Further proof that nothing matches the original PlayStation's aesthetics. I always kind of push survival horror to the side despite the fact I'm always playing near perfect games from that genre. Haven't played something that's crawled under my skin this well in a long while, if ever. Hope to get the good ending (the one time I don't fully explore an area in this game upon immediately entering it and it SCREWS me) and try out those sequels (legally, but also I'm not paying like $100+ each for them) someday in the future.

ngl wasn't entirely sold on this beyond the level of "great gowns, beautiful gowns" until the final third which is nothing but incredible setpieces, the descent into full occult cosmic horror dovetailing with the fever-pitched intimacy of the escalating drama - the nuanced if somewhat jaggedly contraposed accounts of the abuse of authority and trust, the complicity of a community in the religious trauma of a child, and the nightmarish understanding of the world that that trauma imposes hollowing that community out and turning it into an aggressive, bewildering, decaying monstrosity. the scene with Lisa and Harry in Nowhere is the obvious peak but everything after is really great too, fantastic game

I only had a Genesis at home well into the early 2000s, so a lot of my early experience with the 32-bit era was courtesy of the many afternoons spent on the PS1 at my cool uncle's place. We'd take turns watching each other play, and he let me play Resident Evil when I was 13 (as I recall, he was also the one who introduced me to Doom at the tender age of 9).

So it came as a surprise to me when I saw a copy of Silent Hill lying around at his place, recognized it ("hey, it's kinda like Resident Evil right?") and he flat-out refused to let 15-year-old me play it. A fact that, on finally getting around to playing it just now, I will be forever thankful for.

The RE series' brand of horror focuses on startling the player and grossing them out - much of its iconic feeling of tension and dread comes from the resource-management aspect of the mechanics. By contrast, Silent Hill's flavor of horror focuses on, well, horrifying the player. It's really telling that one of the first items you find is a radio that spits out white noise when an enemy is nearby, as if the game is telling you it doesn't need to resort to jumpscares to be scary. Indeed, the shock appearance of new enemies when going through old environs - a favorite technique from the Resi and Doom jumpscare toolboxes - is almost never utilized in this game! Nevertheless, it managed to evoke a primal feeling of unsettled dread in me as I played - it was not uncommon for me to spend what felt like hours in the nightmarish otherworld only to look at the time and see that 15 minutes had passed!

Resident Evil invites you to engage with it as a game once the initial horror aspect has worn off - it's all about knowing where the resources are, the optimum routes to get where you need, the mastery of movement, and the good judgment to put it all together. Silent Hill is comparatively clunky in all those respects, but as a 32-bit horror experience it really has no parallel.

Not to say that this wonderful first outing in the Silent Hill series is perfect - I think its chief weakness lies in its pacing. It feels rather unfinished, with plenty of sequences in the second half (especially the trip to the lighthouse and a nondescript second sewer level) somehow feeling both too skimpy and needlessly 'fillery' at the same time. And I spent an inordinate amount of time being lost - my first run was over 10 hours and my second (where I didn't do anything particularly different besides just knowing where to go) was 4, which equates to roughly 60% of my first run wandering aimlessly around.

I really do hope that in addition to the inevitable increase in production values, the later games in the series will manage to preserve the special brand of nightmare that this game hit on in its first try. If you'll excuse me, I'll go hug my daughter now.

(Endings unlocked: Bad, Good+)

There's something very wrong with the town of Silent Hill.

From the offset a world covered in endless fog, the only life being those of the inhuman, the subconscious nightmares of a tormented soul.

You, Harry Mason, are trapped in this nightmare. You are just an average man, and you only seek to find your daughter, who went missing after your car crashed on the way into this deserted village.

The unknown creeps upon you with every step you make, harsh static signifying the grotesque have begun the hunt. Can you find your daughter? Will you find her?

The magic of Silent Hill in my personal opinion comes down to the inherent setup. You are playing an average person in way over their head.

Harry is not a Action Superstar, He isn't some magical badass granted the strength of ten men while trying to defend himself from the deadly flesh colored horrors that try to devour him. Harry Mason is a normal, run of the mill family man.

This is shown through many ways, the controls for instance. They are awkward and stilted, Harry turns with the grace of a cafeteria lady placing today's slop on your tray. When you run with him, touching any object in front of him will cause him to bump into it and stagger, which opens him up to be attacked by the enemy.

In any other game, this would be a point of contention but in Silent Hill it is a strength. The awkward nature of the controls is reflective of how awkward it feels to be Harry in this dire and confusing set of circumstances. He is just a regular person trying to find his kid, and in this foggy town, bumping into shit because you can't see it adds to the atmosphere.

The game is also very confusing, which is completely intentional. There will be times where the camera angles change to these very unique, dynamic shots that disorient the player. I think these work to give a sense of anxiety, since now you have to adapt to not being able to see certain things in front of you. Certain puzzles are very obtuse, and while this is a genuine complaint I have with the game, I think it does add to the air of confusion and terror as you begin to feel trapped and isolated in the various locations you visit.

Then there's the voice acting. Many would say it's as awkward and stilted as the controls, and once again I would claim that this is the point. Most characters, especially Harry, speak in a very uncanny, unnatural tone. It gives off this vibe that maybe nobody is what they claim to be, not even the very character we're playing. It makes you question the intentions of every character you encounter, and I think it works to add intensity to the experience.

And to cap it off, the brilliant soundtrack by Akira Yamaoka fits every moment perfectly. From the harsh industrial sounds pushing you where you must go, to the more calm yet sinister tracks, it adds a unique sense of terror to the experience.

Of course I do have a few complaints. Some puzzles are pretty obtuse at points, I think the Zodiac one in particular threw me off because I kept trying to figure out if the pattern was related to the months when it was in fact, an entirely different solution entirely. These aren't so much a problem nowadays since you can look up a hint to the solution if you need it, but I imagine playing the game back in 1999 and doing these might have resulted in some major headscratchings.

Then there's the Boss Fights. They're not good. I accept that they are not the focus of the game and that is completely understandable, but most of them aren't even really a challenge either. It's very much a "shoot them until they die" type of thing, with the only challenge being the boss fight against a corrupted character and that's only because they have a gun.

Want to know my biggest complaint though, and this may sound a bit strange but... the game has too many save points.

Yeah, that is easily my biggest problem with Silent Hill, is that I can over rely on save points and hell, the game even has separate checkpoints where if you die you just start from there. It feels a bit cheap and kind of takes away some of the horror aspect that games like Resident Evil introduced with both limited save points and just limited saves in general.

By the end of Silent Hill I had well over 30 saves, because I am a paranoid fuck, but I still think that limiting that for the player would have made the game even more intense with its horror. Maybe that's what Hard Mode does? I played Normal for this run and while it was challenging, having all those saves kept me from really struggling.

All in all I'm very glad I played this one first, since in truth I don't hear about this game nearly as much as Silent Hill 2, but I've really come to appreciate its vibey horror and just the general aesthetic of such a game.

I look forward to experiencing the horrors of James Sunderland next.

The one Silent Hill that gets shrugged off as dated and uninteresting, which I couldn't disagree more.

The weakest of the main 4 games plotwise (even still, features a more than decent story compared to modern horror games like Amnesia: Rebirth or Alan Wake), but who established most of what makes Silent Hill the best horror franchise in gaming: The dream-like nature, woven with the echoes of Alessa's psyche reverberating through the world; the esoteric symbolism around emotions and trauma; and the relentless suffocating atmosphere of the Otherworld, and its alien nature. All these elements, combined with the game's remarkable art design, graphics and an unforgettable soundtrack (that somehow only improves with each subsequent installment), solidify Silent Hill as a timeless classic.

On a more specific note, I love the piano and zodiac puzzle so much. I remember as a little kid playing this game at a friend's house and never figuring out the solution to the first, even though we tried like the whole day. Well, this time around I spent like 20 minutes alone trying to make sense of the second, and when I figured the solution it only made me feel dumber for not realizing how simple it was, goddammit. As a positive, now I know a little bit about astrology... lol.

★★★½ – Great ✅

KOBE! (That's a dog head)

terrifying in every sense, I'm surprised by how suffocating this game feels. going from silent hill 2 to this game you feel a difference, I can't quite articulate it but you feel oppressed. the game is shrouded in an almost industrial grime aesthetic, and it works wonders. the camera angles all allude to Harry being restricted, even the controls help in making us feel worthless in this town. It's that fear of what's around the corner in an almost ethereal yet grimy atmosphere which keeps you invested. each level feels like its own as you navigate your way through dense, webs of halls and rooms while not feeling frustrating. the game gives you the illusion of non-linearity which helps make the world of silent hill feel so alive despite their being almost no heaps of lore texts and dialogue, it all feels so meticulously planned. mechanically the game is also impressive, enemies are quite responsive and the tension they add is immaculate. one of my favorite aspects of the gameplay is how you are able to stealth past enemies and even distract them to a certain extent. I've had moments where I was able to shoot once and lure in enemies while I slowly walk away with my flashlight turned on. these mechanics add interesting depth to an otherwise dated game which does show in some aspects but is dwarfed by everything else that is good about this game. I was constantly entranced playing this game and its ability to pull me into its aesthetical marvelous world. I really can't talk enough about how much I love the aesthetic of this game, its dense and dream-like nature is gorgeous. I found the game to have a right balance between challenging yet doable in normal mode which I felt silent hill 2 was a wee bit too forgiving in its normal mode. resource management does play an important role and by the second half I was really struggling which forced me to adapt the sneak past enemy method even though it did fail sometimes, I appreciate it for adding another layer of tension to an already intense game. the puzzles were also interesting while not being ridiculous like some parts of silent hill 2, I did struggle with 1 puzzle significantly though and I did not like it whatsoever but that is one out of many. I do think there are a bit too many save points and reducing them would definitely help in emphasizing the feeling of desperation and fear. I do like the story in fact, I think the biggest mistake someone can make walking into this game is expecting something like Silent hill 2 when it just isn't. to me, the story felt more like a convenience for the game rather than something which the player would be greatly invested in. Lisa would definitely be my favorite character alongside Harry. I'm not going to go too in depth the story because I don't have any concrete thoughts. overall I am very pleased with the game which was a surprise. I'm constantly perplexed by how engaging the game is, its industrial aesthetic is something I will always love.

Wow. I mean, I'm kinda blown away by this. For a PS1 game to have this much powerful imagery is kinda mind boggling for me. It gives birth to a dense and emotion packed story about abuse and manipulation, layered under the meticulously crafted setting. It honestly kinda makes me tear up inside, especially with how hopeful this games ending is, in spite of it being in an almost literal hell. Sure, the main combat is serviceable at best, the controls are a little bit clunky, and the bosses can be a bit tedious, but I feel like focusing on those things kinda misses the point. If youre playing silent hill for "the riveting gameplay" you need to play a mario game or something.