The fog has cleared.
PT was the best Silent Hill game in almost 15 years, so itās not terribly surprising. Silent Hill 2 and 3 were spectacular efforts int he genre, and Silent Hill 2 is widely considered one of the best games of all time itās sad to see the series end unceremoniously when the demo was just so damn good.
Combining impossible puzzles, forcing players to question their gaming system, and the simple but effective enemy along with a large number of easter eggs and flavor I had such high hopes for Silent Hills.
Youāve definitely captured the allure of Silent Hill with this piece. Now I pretty much have to pop in Silent Hill 2 for another play-through. Iāve been away too long.
What made Silent Hill (well, the first two at least) resonate so much with me were the environments. Resident Evil had absurd mansions, preposterous police stations and WTF underground labs*. Silent Hill had hospitals, apartments, elementary schools and malls. It took ordinary, mundane locations and turned them into nightmares.
*not that these are points against the RE series. I love those, too. Just not as much as Silent Hill
I like the RE games, but they can never come remotely close to the pant-shitting quality of SH. In RE, you always feel capable and in control, in SH you just hope the nightmare finally ends. I never had to put down any RE game because I was too scared to walk another step that session.
On a side note, I found the American remake of The Ring had an atmosphere that closely resembled that of the SH series, in many ways more so than the actual SH movies.
I never could find the allure of āsurvival horrorā. Maybe Iām shallow, but then I was playing āBloodā back then ā¦ āI live againā¦ā
Did anyone here play Silent Hill: Shattered Memories on Wii?
I got a nice creepy lonely awkward feeling from that game. And the use of the Wii remote as a flashlight and radio/phone was amazing. But I coulnāt play the āmonster partsā of the game. To frustrating.
I donāt think this era is over, just that the directors and developers may be changing. I donāt know if youāve played it, but I found Dark Souls to have many of the same sort of sensibilities without evoking a power fantasy, all the while updating the mechanics to todays game standards. It tells its story through environments, gameplay and text snippets. The world feels hopelessly lost and much of the plot is left to the imagination, yet somehow through all that I felt very connected and touched by it all in the same way that I felt connected to James Sunderland.
Silent Hill 2 is one of the best games ever made and promotes much more thought and introspection than may of todays āartisticā games. I do think itās important to recognize that it was very much an exception at the time and that many layers accidental as well as intentional contributed to that. This medium is quite new and there are many games ahead of us. Perhaps Del Toro and Kojima might be able to reconnect and make something amazing, not affiliated with an existing brand with so many expectations behind it.
Iām so heartbroken for this. Finally, my favourite game making the leap to the post uncanny valley. Games are being better, now more than ever, at making places. Just look at the world of GTAV. What iād not give to walk silent hill again, look at the cracks in itās asphalt, hear the sirens while the walls peel away, lose focus.
There was a hole here, itās gone now.
There was a hole here.
Now, I think itāll always be there 
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