I've been playing this game every couple of years for nearly two decades. I don't know how many times I've been through it and I still don't fully grasp the story. I mean, an American town harbors a dark cult with dark aims. They attempt to harness the power of a psychic girl to summon a demon and it goes sideways. Surprise. There's a terrible fire, she burns, and her soul splits. One half ends up a baby on the side of the road in the outskirts of the town and is found by the protagonist, Harry, and his wife who raise her as their own. The other half is hidden away under the hospital where she lives in a state of perpetual agony which soon becomes a living nightmare that bleeds into the town itself. Her pain nurtures the seed of evil the cult placed in her, awaiting the power of the second half of the soul to return to Silent Hill. Now, all that, takes place before the game even starts. I don't really get what I just played. The story is deeply ambiguous and open to all manner of interpretation. I don't fully grasp how the characters relate to eachother. There's something about a hallucinogenic drug ring that I don't really understand. I also don't know what aglaophotis is. Doubt I ever will and that's okay.

I love this game. I have a real soft spot for it. But it has aged. like. milk. The graphics are bad. Character models are ridiculously boxy. Movement is clunky. The camera is disorienting, but sometimes that's on purpose, to be fair. The famous fog effect that covers the town, known mostly for effectively masking loading defects, looks awful. The visible artifacts could be the result of PS3 emulation, but regardless, it's not good. It doesn't help that the developers decided to go with real-time 3D backgrounds rather than the prerendered 2D backgrounds that allowed the early Resident Evil titles prettier scenery and additional processing power. I realize that if they had gone for the latter, they would be bound to the static camera angles as well. I wish they had because the current dynamic camera is really nothing to brag about. It's so dated at this point that it's SCREAMING for a remake. I'm excited the sequel is getting this treatment, but this is where my heart lies. I just don't know if I could recommend this to people if they've never experienced it. It might be too late.

All that being said, the game is haunting. I think it remains one of the scariest ever made. The soundtrack contributes to this greatly. Primal beatings, screeching sirens, horrifying grinding. Nothing is more unnerving. The locales are infinitely memorable as well as the twisted characters that remain. If you have it in you to look past the frustrations of a game older than nearly ever college student walking around, then it is a veritable classic and will always be one of my favorites.