Along with Resident Evil, Silent Hill is a franchise that is synonymous with the survival horror genre, and while I still haven't played the first Silent Hill game, I always knew that I wanted to get into the series with Silent Hill 2. Not only is this game the fan favorite, but it has also maintained this legacy as one of the greatest video games ever made more than two decades after its release, and that made me curious to see what the excitement was all about. Initially, I thought that I was going to play Silent Hill 2 through the Inner Fears re-release for the Xbox using backwards compatibility on the Xbox 360, but I ended up playing the original PS2 version instead, and it meant that I got to experience this phenomenal game much sooner than I thought I would. For me, Silent Hill 2 achieved everything that it had set out to accomplish masterfully, and that resulted in a game that was scary, melancholic, uncomfortable, beautiful, dreamy, and nightmarish all at the same time.

Despite how often I've heard people continuously say great things about this game's story over the years, I didn't hear much about its actual gameplay, and so I'm glad that I was able to enjoy it as much as I did. Although other horror games like Deadly Premonition and Resident Evil 4 did benefit from focusing on action, Silent Hill 2 was a lot more effective in actually scaring me, as fighting the game's grotesque and unnerving monsters with limited ammo and slow melee weapons did a great job of evoking a feeling of powerlessness. The combat and puzzles were already good on their own, but what made them so much more engaging for me would be the game's inherently creepy atmosphere, as the foggy exteriors and grungy, dirty interiors combined with the brilliantly oppressive sound mixing, claustrophobic fixed camera angles, and intentionally stilted dialogue gave even the most basic activities a sense of unease that I've never felt while playing any other game. The music in Silent Hill 2 is flawless, as Akira Yamaoka's eclectic score manages to be perfectly evocative in whatever context it's used in while still having a generally haunting feel.

Like I've mentioned earlier, Silent Hill 2 is famous for its storytelling, but even with that in mind, this game's narrative still managed to blow me away. Silent Hill 2 takes full advantage of its survival horror gameplay in order to strengthen the impact of its story, as the more psychological and even outright surreal elements felt naturally integrated into the main plot of James Sunderland reckoning with the death of his wife. A lot of horror media deals with grief, especially nowadays, but the way that Silent Hill 2 handled these themes made them feel unique and honest, along with how the game explores how guilt, abuse, and love affect both James and the various people he meets during his stay in Silent Hill. The story is as disturbing as it is tragic, and on top of having a spectacular ending, it also features one of the most heartbreaking pieces of ending narration that I have ever heard. Silent Hill 2 is a horror game that can not only go toe-to-toe with many of the horror movies I've seen, but also a good amount of media in general, as it is very easily one of the best pieces of art I have ever experienced, video game or otherwise.

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.

"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 dilapidated corridors and alleys of the titular town. not so much this time. my friends/roommates 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 occurring. 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 culminates 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.

I just replayed MGS3S for the first time in years. I'm not sure how to feel about it now.

Don't get me wrong, there's a ton I still adore about this game. The sheer attention to detail is staggering, even by modern game standards. There's so many big-brain strategies that, against all odds, work wonders. I truly doubt there is any single person who knows every single Easter egg this game hides. Hell, we'll probably learn about some absurd secret hidden under our noses years from now.

It's such a shame then that so much of the game's core mechanics and features make this sort of experimentation feel so tedious. I don't like to throw around claims like "this game's controls have aged badly" or something. I think the controls in MGS3 work exceptionally well for what they were first designed for: Metal Gear Solid 1 and 2.

MGS3 has a completely different flow to the previous entries. Where MGS1 & 2 have a fast, arcade-like pace to their stealth, where many of the game's systems are binary, MSG3 is a slower, more open-ended game. MGS3 has you navigating fields of tall grass more often than the metal hallways of previous entries. Enemies can see you from further and there's more to keep in mind. The camo index, your inventory of food, the survival viewer, your backpack, etc. While I know MGS3 pros have mastered the controls and can pull off incredible feats, I don't think Snake's robotic movements and archaic way of handling firearms is a good fit for the more freeform nature of MGS3's levels and encounters.

Purists can say that I'm not giving the game enough of a chance and maybe I'm not. I may have platinumed the HD version years ago but I'm writing this review after only playing through the campaign for the first time in over half a decade. Maybe MGSV has spoiled me, but I think it's telling that every mainline MGS game after 3 used more conventional controls, especially for aiming and crawling about.

It's disappointing because I love almost everything else about MGS3. It has the tight level design, memorable bosses, and loads of character that MGSV utterly lacked but it mechanically feels a lot more unintuitive than contemporaries I played at the time, like the early Splinter Cell games. I suppose I should just be thankful I replayed this game using the HD collection's Subsistence version and not the original Snaker Eater one that exclusively featured the camera style from MGS1 & 2.

Fuck anyone that doesn't like The Pain, though. A man covered in bees that he sends to do his bidding? All while cackling like a little goblin? Beautiful.