"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.
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.
9 Comments
He does like stumble down awkwardly if you walk off the sides of small staircases though. And he runs like a dork, albeit infinitely.
I find it a bit of a shame that you didn't play it for the first time alone - I still call it my number one favorite game ever largely because of how scary and transportive it was on my first time. If you'll indulge me - it was a dreary spring weekday in 2006, the SH movie was on the horizon and I had never played any of the games but I wanted to see it. I skipped classes and drove to GameStop where I bought SH 1-4 used for just over $50 total, went home and fired up SH1. Middle of the day, gray skies, blinds not even blocking out all the light, tiny TV, but this game sent me the fuck away, man. I felt like I was wearing one of those lead x-ray vests the entire time. I think I blinked about once an hour. The moment after you go through the school, from the fog version into the hell version, beat the boss, and then you're back in the boiler room, and you step out into the dusty gray hallway of the "real" world school again, realizing that cycle was the rhythm of the game - I felt run down like you do when you've been up all night and the sun is rising. I ran through all four games more or less nonstop over the next few days. I've played a lot of really impactful games for the first time with friends, even a lot of scary ones (REmake, RE4, Eternal Darkness, Clock Towers, Fatal Frames, Dark Souls) and had a blast and didn't feel like it detracted at all, but this one was really something special and I can't imagine having a single distraction. It was like submerging. Anyway...!
@Vee thank you! when i first played this years ago i thought there was a secret stamina system or something... not so.
@DJS i think that's a key aspect of it: getting to play them all back-to-back. i could've tried to force the mood but i was already ruined after playing sh2 and seeing how many bullets and healing items i had after playing frugally in abject fear of my surroundings. i think by that point the illusion was already past for me... didn't help that i saw speedruns of the original trilogy at various gdqs and such. i absolutely agree with you that such a phenomenon exists though since i 100% experienced it with sh2, and i think after my initial fears of this first one not resonating with me it ultimately really won me over regardless.
with that said my gf wants to watch me replay sh2 soon, so maybe I'll attempt to recapture that experience... assuming my roommate is fine with me taking the ps2 upstairs lmao
@DJS i think that's a key aspect of it: getting to play them all back-to-back. i could've tried to force the mood but i was already ruined after playing sh2 and seeing how many bullets and healing items i had after playing frugally in abject fear of my surroundings. i think by that point the illusion was already past for me... didn't help that i saw speedruns of the original trilogy at various gdqs and such. i absolutely agree with you that such a phenomenon exists though since i 100% experienced it with sh2, and i think after my initial fears of this first one not resonating with me it ultimately really won me over regardless.
with that said my gf wants to watch me replay sh2 soon, so maybe I'll attempt to recapture that experience... assuming my roommate is fine with me taking the ps2 upstairs lmao
Yeah, I personally didn't pick up on the context for the locations and the monsters and bosses the first time I played - I was just primed to go spooky places and fight weird stuff in a horror game, lol. But as you said, it all clicks when you get that it's Alessa's Silent Hill, not Harry's. The school and the hospital are the two main locations of her trauma, and the monsters are from her favorite children's books (mythological creatures)/childhood interests (bugs), mean children who picked on her, horrifying versions of the adults that took care of her in the hospital. And was there something about her getting bit by a dog to explain those?
yea I think that's all agreeable, I think it's sort of impossible to pick up on a first playthrough given how late you truly learn about alessa but those elements can be gleaned from those environments. I think what's unfortunate about this games' dungeon design is that it pretty much ends at that analysis, as in the takeaway is just "alessa disliked these places" and not anything deeper about her psyche or the situation at play. a lot of that is because like I said in the review, there's just way more copy-paste rooms and otherwise-normal looking areas that individual rooms just stick out a lot less than in the later games. no toilets to reach inside, no pits to jump down, no hangman's chambers, and no meat lockers. but I do agree that you are exploring alessa's version of silent hill as you travel through these areas. the monsters as well are an interesting factoid about the game (regarding how they were pulled from childhood stories) but the symbolic relevance ends there; it's not like you would determine that without reading development notes on the game.
@WildSheepChase I played on normal for this game. played sh2 on easy combat and normal puzzles. the combat is not all that interesting so I don't mind it being easier for the most part, I would rather breeze through than get frustrated just so I can experience each of the areas. I will say I had initially started this game on easy and it was too trivial, I ended up having to restart on normal so I could feel too powerful... part of that is when I initially tried this game + played sh2 I had never played any other survival horror games before, and for this go-around I've now played REmake (plus a smattering of the TPS RE titles), so I felt more confident in my abilities
@WildSheepChase I played on normal for this game. played sh2 on easy combat and normal puzzles. the combat is not all that interesting so I don't mind it being easier for the most part, I would rather breeze through than get frustrated just so I can experience each of the areas. I will say I had initially started this game on easy and it was too trivial, I ended up having to restart on normal so I could feel too powerful... part of that is when I initially tried this game + played sh2 I had never played any other survival horror games before, and for this go-around I've now played REmake (plus a smattering of the TPS RE titles), so I felt more confident in my abilities
I take your point, but it's not all developer talk, there are (somewhat missable) references in-game. Bugs on the walls of Alessa's room in the Gillespie house, a book with a fable about a knight battling a giant lizard in the school that you can read (and that actually provides you with the strategy of how to beat that boss), bullying notes from the mean kids scrawled on her desk also in the school, and I swear to GOD there was something about her being afraid of dogs but I cannot place it
@DJS I looked around for a while and couldn't find any particular in-game reference to her hating dogs outside of dog enemies appearing in both sh1 and sh3, but after reading a bit I'd be interested to replay this one after I sit down with silent hill 3. it seems like that one goes a lot more in-depth on alessa's psyche in a way this game hints at more than anything (the desk with the scrawled threats is a good catch tho, I didn't make the connection when I played)
@WildSheepChase that's exactly what I was comparing between SH1 and 2. there's simply many more environmental elements and unique setpieces in the sequel. that's the main draw of the series after all, though given that this was the first in the series on lesser hardware it doesn't surprise me that assets are reused more often.
Vee
1 year ago
Good read.