Silent Hill is iconic lofi horror for a reason. Incredibly atmospheric, creepy without cheap jump-scares, and occasionally charming thanks to its B-movie cheese.

I strongly recommend people go in with this spoiler-free guide as to how to get a good end: I actually played this twice back-to-back, with my first run surprising me with the bad end ("This game has multiple endings?!"), which felt like a slap in the face. Replaying it took less than half the time and gave me an even greater appreciation for the game.

Overall, a real delight of a game that leaves me wanting to explore more games that can capture the genuine retro horror feel.

realistically, what is there to say about silent hill that hasn't been said already? both positive and negative appraisals of this game have run the gamut. i feel intimidated trying to be original in this review because anything i'm going to say has been said at least 20 times over. that said, i do at least want to give an attempted academic effort on this task.

i think context is most important when look at this game. you can easily say that games like resident evil, clock tower, maniac mansion, or even sweet home penned the survival horror genre, but i feel as though silent hill is the one game that has transcended enthusiast circles and made the largest impact of those early forebears. when you say silent hill, even the music girlies who haven't touched a playstation controller in a decade will know not only the aesthetic you're going for, but also the music. there's this hazy dream quality to silent hill that makes it universal. sure, i'm not a father nor have i ever had to search for my daughter. but have i felt displaced in a world that was simultaneously uncaring and hostile? absolutely, and the vast majority of people on earth could say the same thing.

the sound design of this game cannot be understated. again, i know i am preaching to the choir when i sing the praises of akira yamaoka, but the way that this game uses noises and soundscapes is so totally unlike other contemporaries of its time. noise is used as a warning, as a pretense for anxiety, as something to dread yet cherish because of its informative value. even unassuming areas that have no enemies in them like the nightmare school square or the zodiac puzzle in nowhere have these foreboding tracks that play in them; even knowing the lack of any form of danger in those rooms, i'm still on edge because of the evocative soundscape. for shits and giggles, i did a playthrough of this game on mute, and the difference is stark and immediate. it felt as though i was playing a beta of the game because of how much depth the gameplay lacked without the ambiance granted by yamaoka's audio. the sound in this game doesn't just elevate its design, it gives it the legs it needs to even stand in the first place.

i'm generally of two incongruent minds when it comes to the enemy encounters in this game. by and large, i think they succeed in not only making the player feel helpless, but the sheer number of them also guarantees that you're not going to be able to kill everything you run into (at least, not until NG+ and using bullet assist). it's not quite as elegant as resident evil's design in making you feel overwhelmed without actually numerically being overwhelmed, but it works for this game due to its open-ended nature. exteriors are usually large enough to make dodging enemies fairly easy once you know the behavior patterns, incentivizing you to save your combat experiences for when you're exploring interiors. people who complain about the conservative nature of ammo and healing in this game miss the point: you're not meant to be powerful, and survival is meant to be a genuinely difficult goal to accomplish on a first playthrough. the game is short enough (much like other horror games of the time) where should you need to start over from the beginning, it's not the death sentence of time investment that it would be in a modern 2023 game. there's something principled about that which i respect, it's a design ethos you rarely see nowadays. learn our systems or just start over and do it better. no exceptions.

but, even then, i still have a distaste for some aspects of gameplay. there are certain areas of silent hill where enemies are so numerous that they not only cause the framerate to plummet, but it makes dodging them a harrowing and hair-pulling affair. fuck those weird monkey things, they will sooner condemn their bloodline to extinction than give up chasing you once they've seen you. and while i do enjoy the boss fights in theory, outside of big mouth, they tend to just be healing checks due to the difficulty of actually dodging their attacks consistently. i guess this is more mitigated by the fact that there's not many bosses in the game, but it still rubs me wrong that the final boss is essentially a damage race and if you run out of healing, you have basically no recourse. there's a bit of whiplash going from praising this design last paragraph to now admonishing it, but it's about context. i didn't mind having to restart my first resident evil playthrough about 2 hours in because i had thoroughly fucked myself in regards to resources because it felt like i was still learning the game. i doubt i could summon the same amount of patience if i reached the end of silent hill and got hard walled by a healing check of a final boss.

it feels borderline disrespectful to even consider giving this game a lower rating due to the legacy and cultural impact it has had. don't get me wrong, i had a great fondness for my time with this game, but i almost feel compelled to oversell this game as way of demonstrating status. this game took one of the most damnable limitations of the generation (draw distance) and made it into a defining aspect of its setting (fog that blankets the town). there's such a creative ingenuity there that feels obvious from an outside perspective, but has a deceptively difficult simplicity to it. forgive me for spending the lion's share of this review grappling with silent hill's legacy more than itself qualitatively, but again, what can i say that hasn't been said? if you have not played this game, you owe it to yourself to do so. i don't consider myself the type to get easily scared from horror media nowadays, but this game consistently put me on edge in a way that i rarely find media is capable of doing. this game is a monument while also still being fresh 2 decades removed from launch.

Shocklingly ahead of it's time.
There are so many little moments of absolute genius when it comes to conveying horror through gameplay. The hallway that's a slow descent into the nightmare, the elevator with a mysterious 4th floor that wasn't there before, a bathroom that secretly teleports you, etc...

If anything I would say that feeling is a bit undermined by how easy the game can be, with controls that allow more movement than Resident Evil's and a melee option that floors 80% of enemies you end up having so many resources you are never really challenged or put in a tight spot.

And the presentation, just plain beautiful, there is so much texture and detail on every corner, an atmosphere so dense you are simply transported into the game. It also helps how masterful the camera work is, static on the right places to fully capture the scenery and moving to create shots that a lot of horror films wish they could accomplish. Just something great.

Silent Hill is one of the most well-known horror franchises in gaming. I tried playing the first game years ago, but stopped at some point. I remember not liking the tank controls, but liking the atmosphere. Out of nowhere, I was in a mood to complete it. I started a new file and finished it from beginning to end. I believe it is a good game that can be hard to play today.

Despite releasing in 1999, Silent Hill is still genuinely scary. The fog may have been used because of hardware limitations of the PS1, but it added to the creepiness. Even with the in game map, it can still be hard to know where to go and that makes it even scarier. You might need a guide and I used one for some of the puzzles and locations.

The only thing that is not scary is the English voice acting. It is terrible and clashes with the tone of the game and story. Almost every character’s performances were terrible and Harry Mason, the character you play as, has the worst delivery out of everyone. When something messed up happens in the story, the tone is ruined by the delivery. It takes me out of the immersion.

The game is survival horror, so limited ammo, healing, and save points. Make sure to conserve your ammo and health for the bosses, the mediocre bosses. The bosses are nothing special and can be beaten quickly.

One aspect of Silent Hill that is a point of contention is the tank controls. Some people think the tank controls add to the stressfulness of a survival horror while others think tank controls ruin games. I do think Silent Hill is still a playable game, but I will never be a fan of tank controls of any game. It is unnatural and awkward to control. Good luck controlling Harry Mason when going up stairs. Since this is a Konami title, that is par for the course.

Silent Hill excels at the atmosphere and story, but the awful English performances and tank controls might make this a hard game to recommend.

remember back in my re1 review where i talked about how the charm of how "clunky" the voice acting and story was made me really appreciate it as trying to emulate a playable b-movie? in one hell of a twist, that same strength works both ways for this. silent hill is actively straining to deliver smth beyond the normal mould of horror gaming, and even putting aside how it spun off into a gigantic franchise and because a blueprint for the genre, it's almost hilarious how deceptively simple approaching the game is. that might sound ridiculous to some, but when stripped down to its bare elements, survival horror is any other video games' concentration on surviving taken up to 11, where every element from saving items, health, and time works to make for a suffocating experiences that's as routine as a game of catch with your dad and him preparing you for the big leagues when you were fiddling around with shit like a nintendo switch just yesterday

but silent hill never loses sight of the ball. every single minute of this game is milking as much gameplay as it can to see how far it can go to actively torment me as much as humanly possible; not so much in the battles or even the puzzles, but some of the absolute best level design and application of tank controls yet, limiting itself to keep me in the dark about what is essentially many elements of stock horror stories drawn out to liminal spaces akin to an open-air prison. the amount of mental suffocation that the game uses at any time (that sound of the glass breaking out of nowhere even when there was no one around made me scream 'fuck' out loud) is staggering, and enough to disorient my already piss poor sense of video game direction, even with the maps

it shouldn't be ignored tho that, at the end of the day, this is just as much indulgence in becoming a part of horror as resident evil was, no matter how many critics and gamers call this game the moment survival horror "grew up." like i said, it's mostly toying around with how far an experience like this can go made with the same love that keeps the genre alive, and it obviously doesn't take much to get spooked for the same reason

ENVELHECEU BEM! O mais divertido de se jogar da trilogia! Ao mesmo tempo que apresenta topicos e ideias complexas para a epoca, consegue ter êxito também no simples.

+ Gráficos que com a popularização low poly conseguem agradar.
+ História interessante com temas enigmáticos.
+ Andar por silent hill é MUITO DIVERTIDO!
+ Boss fights aceitáveis (a 1ª é bem legalzinha)
+ Cenários absurdos.
+ OST de respeito.
+ Puzzles

Se ele não fosse TÃO frustante, seria ótimo. A maior parte do jogo são puzzles muito específicos ou simples demais. Isso só muda na última área, que é bem consistente nesse quesito do início ao fim. Além de ser difícil sentir medo quando você tem 100 balas de pistola e 50 de escopeta. A movimentação também é péssima, envelheceu muito mal nesse sentido

Porém, mesmo sem a sensação de perigo, a ambientação é excelente. Tudo é extremamente cinza e confuso: cenário, monstros (embora não assustem a partir da 3° vez que aparecem), efeitos sonoros etc. O jogo é bem sucedido em te deixar imerso no pesadelo.

Surpreendentemente, as cut scenes não envelheceram mal. São muito bem dirigidas (destaque para morte da ****, extremamente impactante do início ao fim) e muito fortes esteticamente.

Quanto aos personagens:

James - PORTA (muito por conta do VA ser péssimo)
Cybil - ela tá lá
Lisa e Kaufmann - únicos personagens com um arco de desenvolvimento bem definido, além de bem ligados. O Kaufmanm é muito bem caracterizado, a Lisa é ótima, e o desfecho de ambos é excelente.
Cheryl - motor fodase
Alessa - motor bom, ela é muito bem humanizada
Dahilia - vilã ok