Silent Hill

With movie companies wanting to turn games into celluloid, why can't they do it for games that deserve such a distinction. Tomb Raider, Super Mario Brothers and what not were horrible. The industry finally got it right when they made Resident Evil. So now its time to give Silent Hill its due.

As for the game, it was one of the few that ever got my heart racing. The music added so much atmosphere to the game, and the never ending stream of bad guys made my skin crawl a few times. When I get the Playstation 2, I'm going to purchase Silent Hill 2. I highly recommend this game, and its best you get yourself the players guide.

Silent Hill is a cross between King's "The Mist" and Barker's "Hellraiser". And it makes excellent use of both. From the very first moments of the game, you are truly scared. There were so many parts where I was like, "Oh no, I don't want to go out there." There was into the foggy streets, on foot, all alone, and there are monsters out there. EEEEK! I've been into horror my whole life and this game totally freaked me out. I think the Hospital area was one of the scariest. Just wait till you have to go into the hospital basement. And you just know you have to go in the morgue, too. Really scary. This is the best horror game I have ever played. It beats Resident Evil hands down. If you love horror games, this one is the best.

The only reason I finished this game the first time is that my girlfriend kept insisting that I play it to entertain her; even with company it was too freaky for me to play for more than about an hour, and alone? Don't even think about it. The creepiness factor of this game is unbelievable: the soundtrack has only moments of music; mostly it's dominated by industrial machinery or natural wind. The monsters are seriously nightmare-based, ranging from tiny knife-wielding mutant children to nurses with parasites clinging to their backs to these horrific gorilla-like things that jump and make a guttural "Unnh" sound. I mean, it's unbelievable.

There's graphic fog all over this game, but it really adds to the atmosphere, and in all fairness, for a six-year-old PSone game it has remarkable rendering and lighting effects, and some good cutscenes. Of course, the reason to play this game is the sheer psychological terror. Somewhere in Japan, somebody said, "Let's make a video game where everything might or might not be real, where the player probably doesn't have the resources to kill all of the enemies, and where the few interactions with other characters are unnerving and leave you feeling even more lonely than before." By the time you reach the "Nowhere" section at the end of the game, I swear you will be going insane.

Suffice to say that the endings are unsatisfying, but nothing could really sum up a game like this. After playing it once or twice for real, do yourself a favor and get the procedure for the "UFO Ending"; it'll help calm your nerves and keep the whole thing in perspective.

Truly a unique game.

Forget "Resident Evil" if you want to play a game with lots of scares. "Silent Hill" is the scariest game you will ever play! It's certainly the scariest one I've played anyway. What makes this game so terrifying is the sense of isolation and pure silence. I remember running in the streets, and the music track was purely the wind blowing. Then, the radio(which detects incoming monsters) emits a shrieking noise, letting you know somewhere near you, is a monster silently stalking you. The game is very atmospheric, with fantastic graphics that make "Resident Evil" crummy by comparison. Some of the camera angles move up in the air and then pan down again as you move, making it feel cinematic and dynamic. That kind of stuff blew me away immediately! I never completed this game, because it was too frightening for me to deal with. With some respects, video games are much more terrifying than films, because you are no longer observing. You become the characters, who are plummeted into a nightmarish hell of fear. Sure "Resident Evil" scared me when I first played it, but not like this! This was just too much! Try it out, but God knows how long you can handle it!

Let me get something straight: I don't get scared easily. I've played the first two Resident Evil games without breaking a sweat, I watch Hellraiser and The Exorcist alone at night and think nothing of it.

Then there was Silent Hill... This game isn't just another random bloody horror game like the RE series, it's genuinely disturbing, and let me tell you, it scared me a lot.

It begins with a typical cliche... Harry Mason is driving down a road at night with his daughter, going to visit this little out-of-the-way resort town, Silent Hill. A girl steps in front of his car, he swerves to avoid her, and ends up crashing. From here on, strange things start to happen... Harry wakes up and finds his daughter missing, and stumbling through the mist, he sees her disappearing down a dark alley... I won't say anymore, I'll let you find out what happens.

Not only is this game very dark and scary, it's disturbing at a psychological level. It doesn't use big monsters to frighten you; after playing for only a few minutes, the slightest rustle can make you flee in terror. The plot isn't thrown in your face like other games, you have to think, and you're never really told what's going on - perhaps Harry is in a coma and dreaming all this, or maybe he died and went to Hell. The air of mystery and suspense keeps you hooked until the end, and it'll keep you coming back for more.

And I'll tell you this: After playing Silent Hill, those old WW2 air-raid sirens will never sound the same again...