Silent Hill

Silent Hill is by far the creepiest and most disturbing video game ever to grace a gaming consol. Taking you deep into the abandoned Town, the game uses amazing lighting effects and frightening sounds to play on the gamers nerve. Whether it be a sudden crashing noise, the quiet eerie sound of static, the ring of sirens, or the simple sounds of a creaking old house, Silent hill manages to find any way possible to scare the gamer... and it does it in a big way.

The story follows Harry Mason as he is driving to the resort town of Silent Hill with his daughter Cheryl for vacation. Late during a mysterious woman jumps out in front of the car, causing Harry to panic and veer offroad. His car slams into the side of a big tree, knocking him out in the process. When Harry awakens a thick fog lingers about him and his daughter Cheryl is missing. Scared and confused he stumbles about, entering the town of Silent Hill.

Everything about his game is brilliant. Instead of being a typical zombie blasting, monster smashing horror game, Silent Hill focuses on the little, more disturbing things. Take for example the most simplistic chill of the game. Harry is standing in the derelict school when a toy phone rings, picking it up he hears his daughter Cheryl crying and pleading to him on the other end of the phone. While it may sound dumb in writting, when actually viewing the sequence, you cant help but shudder at the thought of what may be happening to her. In your explorations you will come across six key lcations: the School, the Hospital, the Church, the Docks, the Amusement Park, and the Sewers, all of which have their own horrifing secrets. I myself got most creeped out in the Sewers. Imagine yourself trudging through a disgusting tunnels in pure darkness, when all around you hear is gurgling noise of a creature and your own heartbeat. And at any moment it may attack you. But from where? You can barely see anything. Belive me when I say I nearly jumped out of my skin every time a creature jumped out or sewer grating dropped out from beneath my feet.

If your looking for a REALLY good scare, rent Silent Hill, turn off all the lights, and cuddle your favorite teddy bear. It is THE best survival-horror game ever. Every town has its secrets, some are just darker than others...

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!

I'm going to review it on 4 different parts:

Graphics: The graphics are decent. They aren't anything special by any standards, but lighting is impressive for ps1.

Sound: Sound design is excellent, and the music is incredibly scary and intense. Constantly puts you on edge.

Gameplay: It's pretty good. You walk around dimly lit areas and fight off enemies. Very scary and lots of anticipation, since you never know their location, but you know that they are there. Truly amazing.

Innovation: This is one of the scariest and most unique games ever made, and is in the top 10 ps1 games.

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...