Silent Hill

Silent Hill is a major cornerstone for video game horror. It instantly separated itself from genre contemporaries with its heavy focus on psychological storytelling, and a unique "everyman" approach to its characters. Silent Hill was, and still is, terrifying. Its atmosphere is palpable, still rivaling just about every single modern horror game to this day. Getting lost in in the streets of a foggy suburbia, or navigating a shifting metallic hell of blood and rust never failed to get under my skin. But the glue that holds it all together is the horrifying sound design. The infamous "fog" (which originated from technical limitations of render distance on the PS1) quickly became one of the most iconic and recognizable visual motifs in all of contemporary horror. It's legendary stuff. I'm a huge fan of pre-rendered horror backgrounds, but it's very impressive to me that this opted for a full real-time 3D approach. The playable space is shockingly large, offering a ton of exploration opportunities. The map is also super organic, feeling like Harry is actually marking up the map himself. You have to find clues (or even phone books) before getting any sort of "waypoints." It also dynamically marks any points of interest you discover and might need to return to—and which doors are open, jammed, or locked after you interact with them. I love that Harry is just a normal dude, and absolutely sucks at using a gun. He needs to be pretty close to his targets for his shots to land, because most shots of his will miss at any extended range. This also ties into the game's focus on melee weapons, which feels particularly unique for survival horror. The flashlight ties into gameplay as well—as turning it off will allow you greater chances to sneak past enemies undetected, but it will be too dark to see your map, and you'll be unable to search for items. Also, your accuracy will plummet in the dark, so the flashlight needs to be handled thoughtfully. I loved knocking monsters to the ground and stomping on them, and wonder if this directly influenced other horror titles like Dead Space. While unequivocally scarier and more narratively sophisticated than its sister franchise, I can't help but feel that Silent Hill's gameplay falls short of Resident Evil. The combat is less nuanced, and the lack of any real inventory management feels detrimental. Also, as a fan of tank controls, I feel that Resident Evil embraces the limitations of the control scheme and incorporates it into its very own design language—while in Silent Hill it just kinda feels like an impediment. Outside of the very few fixed-angle scenes in the game (which necessitate tank controls), I feel like the controls don't add to the experience—especially if they're just gonna incorporate strafing in anyway. I dunno, it's really not a big deal at all, I just think I've been spoiled with how perfectly it's handled in Resident Evil. Anyway, Silent Hill still feels like an achievement many years ahead of its time, and remains in the pantheon of essential horror.

Also, that bird piano puzzle kicked my BUTT, and every game should have a UFO ending I've just decided.

Postscript: I wanna believe that Harry and Cybil stay together and raise Cheryl 2.0 and live happily ever after 🥺

An excellent game that while following in the footsteps of Resident Evil manages to show its own interesting physiognomy. Silent Hill stands out above all because of an excellent atmosphere, a very accurate graphics and an interesting variety of the proposed puzzles. If you are passionate about the survival horror genre, my advice is definitely not to miss it.

Would be 10/10 if it came out a generation later. Looking forward to playing SH2.

Total playtime: 5 hours

• Beat Feb 2023

A horror classic, which has aged a bit but is definitely still worth playing.

If you're the type of person wanted to get into horror, but hesitant about it due to the fact you're easily scared, I recommend starting with this one.

Silent Hill has an extremely bone chilling atmosphere. There are no jumpscares and no IN YOUR FACE LOUD HORROR moments. You can play from start to finish feeling a little unsettled but not stressed.

I love this game for not falling into the typical horror tropes, rather it's goal being to fuck your mind up by making you feel unsettled the whole way through.

The story is a bit uninteresting and basic, which the sequel does fix. The strength of this game is its atmosphere. Silent Hill is like an even more fucked up Twin Peaks. A setting that is still unique for video games.

This game does fall a little back with some outdated mechanics. But if you can get past that, there is a great survival horror game here.

They call Silent Hill the Holy grail of horror games and there is absolutely no reason to doubt or question that. This game started a franchise that set a standard for all future psychological horror games (or any other horror medium in my opinion) that many other developers tried to achieve but none got even close to.
This game shows you how much the design aspect can be effective in the overall experience of a player through all limitations. Even though jumpscares is not present, Silent Hill uses anticipation and the fear of the unknown to invoke true terror and fear in the player. This is achieved through the spectacular sound design, eerie atmosphere and the level design. There were certain moments where i thought my mind was playing tricks on me, a bizarre feeling i haven't truly experienced through other games. I believe the monster design is a weaker aspect of the game but it's actually reasonable considering that Silent Hill is the first game in the franchise and the developers were able to master the creature design in the sequels. The puzzles are also quite challenging and clever which need actual determination to solve them. The storyline of Harry through the town is also great and there are different endings based on your gameplay; a tradition that was continued throughout future silent hill games.
Overall Silent Hill is truly a revolutionary horror masterpiece which is mindblowing considering how all this was achieved on the Playstation 1 console and through all it's hardware limitations. Don't let the low polygon visuals fool you. This game will truly terrify you and give you one hell of a ride throughout your hellish playthrough.