Video Game Closet: Silent Hill
Hello everybody! On this week’s video game closet we have the survival horror game Silent Hill.
SILENT HILL
| Developer(s) | Konami Computer Entertainment Tokyo |
| Publisher(s) | Konami |
| Director(s) | Keiichiro Toyama |
| Producer(s) | Gozo Kitao |
| Writer(s) | Keiichiro Toyama |
| Composer(s) | Akira Yamaoka |
| Series | Silent Hill |
| Platform(s) | PlayStation,PlayStation Network |
| Release date(s) | PlayStation
PlayStation Network
|
| Genre(s) | Survival horror |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
At the start of the game, Harry drives to Silent Hill with his daughter Cheryl for a vacation. At the town’s edge, he swerves his car to avoid hitting a girl in the road; as a result, he crashes the vehicle and loses consciousness. Waking up in town, he meets police officer Cybil Bennett, who works in a nearby town, and realizes that Cheryl is missing. Finding that the town is deserted and foggy, with snow falling out of season, Harry meets several other people in the monster-filled town: Dahlia Gillespie, who gives him a charm, the “Flauros”; Doctor Michael Kaufmann, director of Silent Hill’s Alchemilla Hospital; and nurse Lisa Garland, who worked at Alchemilla. He also encounters a symbol throughout the town, which Dahlia claims will allow darkness to take over the town if it continues to multiply. Eventually, this darkness begins taking over the town. According to Dahlia, the girl from the road is a demon responsible for the symbol’s duplication. She urges him to stop the demon, because if he does not, Cheryl will die. Harry soon finds himself attacked by Cybil, who is parasitized by a creature; the player must choose whether to save her or not.
Scary Noises were the main reason I wanted to scream and cry while playing this game. As you can see, the graphics aren’t scary. However, you get a radio that emits static whenever a monster approaches. And some rooms just make scary noises to freak you out. The music involves lots of clanking and scary noises and honestly, well done to the sound guys because that’s the primary reason I had to stop playing – scary noise, can’t go on.
This is one of the greatest stories told during the PSX era. I don’t feel like I’m spoiling anything when I say you die in the first five minutes of this game. Or did you? The story is confusing and hard to understand but talking about any of it would ruin the experience. Half of the game you aren’t sure what is real and what isn’t or whether everything is a dream. There are multiple endings and some of them only add to the confusion. Every character introduced has their own connection to the story but don’t expect the game to hold your hand and explain it to you like they do in modern games, there is no big tie up at the end that explains everything.
I found the controls of this game really clunky and difficult to get used to. I’m used to a game where if you push left, the character moves to YOUR left. In Silent Hill, Harry (the protagonist) will move to his left. It’s also been a while since I’ve played a game that involves combat – it took me a few attempts to be able to kill these guys (first enemies in the game). This made combat incredibly difficult as it made the game just so much harder.
Many of today’s gamers are never going to understand why anyone could be afraid of anything in this game based solely on the graphics. The graphics compared to today’s standards are atrocious. You can’t make out things because they are so poorly defined, lines that should be straight curve and move, the colors blend and mix, the lighting barely feels like it covers a few inches in front of you, and even the cut scene’s graphics are laughable compared to most game’s normal graphics. The camera angles you see from would never make it in a game today. This is why when they redid this game in Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, they couldn’t go for a straight remake of this game.
But what is here, especially if you can put yourself in the position to be open minded, is magic. The camera angles limit you most of the time so you can’t see around a corner, even when you KNOW something is there based on the radio static.
PROS:
- Fear.
- Story.
- Replay value.
CONS:
- Graphics.
- Controls.
- Camera angles.
SCORE: 7.0 / 10
Also check out my lengthier video game reviews over at Nerd Bacon Games.
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