Silent Hill

What a kicker of a game, Silent Hill takes ideas from Rosemary's Baby, The Shining, and even a little Jacob's Ladder, and runs with it, making it the most horrifying game ever released, even topping Resident Evil 1. Harry Mason, the main character, decides to take his daughter Cheryl on a vacation. Harry is a writer and has just lost his wife to an unknown disease, and decides to take a break. While driving to Silent Hill, Harry is passed by a motorcycle cop in quite a hurry. The cop looks at him, and zooms off. Harry pays no mind until he sees the motorcycle wrecked a couple miles up the road, he quickly takes his eyes off the road to check out the wreck and spots someone walking across the road. Harry slams on the brakes and ends up wrecking... He wakes up in Silent Hill, his head is bashed a little bit, but other than that he's fine, except for the fact that Cheryl is missing... The game sends you on a hellish mission to find your daughter, with the help of Cybil, the motorcycle cop. Silent Hill turns out to be a nightmare town, full of evil creatures. This game screws with your head as Harry undergoes several sequences that makes it seem like he's trapped in hell. You fight several different creatures during this period like evil devil children and hellhounds. But it's all just a dream... isn't it? The music doesn't make the playing experience any easier on you, evil and ominous industrial music adds to the tension of yours and Harry's quest. Great graphics and great music, and great gameplay. Instead of screwing with your nerves like Resident Evil does, Silent Hill screws up your brain. Is this real? What is that creature? Who do I trust? The only beefs I have with this game is that it's short, and when you find out how to solve every puzzle, you can breeze through the game when you play it a second time. In my opinion, Hollywood should quit trying to come up with the right script for Resident Evil and should put their attention into Silent Hill. It's a much smarter and much more frightening game with a better script and a better plot... what's the main plot? Beats me, there is never an exact plot to begin with...

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!

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.

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...

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.