Another demo review, this time I’ll be covering Silent Hill. Around 2001 this was considered one of the scariest games to ever be released. People spoke of hearing children crying in a bathroom stall, but no one was there. There’d be shadows that would fly by while in the diner. There was a man who kept switching between the real world and his own dark delusional nightmare world. His name is Harry and he’s a storeclerk. That’s right, no special soldier here. His wife died three years back, and he and his adopted daughter are the only ones left. While vacationing in his former honey moon spot, Silent Hill, he crashes with his car and his daughter is gone. He sees her running in the distance and chases after. He’s now entered a town where it is snowing in the middle of the summer. There is a thick fog in the air and he keeps passing out and waking up.
There are a few survivors in the town that he’ll run into while trying to solve this weird mystery. He runs into a cop, a doctor, a nurse, and hoards and hoards of zombies. Just what is going on? Where is his daughter?
Graphics in this game are reminiscent of the PSX era. I can handle very few polygons, but I cannot handle the grainy/texture look that many PSX games suffered from. This game is one of the worst for it. That aside, many of the characters and items in this game are rendered halfway decent. The characters move similiar to robots though, which is kind of freaky. The atmosphere of this game is where it shines. But most of it quickly wears off and starts to get stupid later in the game, especially if you’ve seen horror movies.
Speaking of which, this whole game starts to get stupid when they explain the backstory. All of the spookiness starts to get really dumb and seems forced. It’s like the backstory was made after the gameplay.
Speaking of gameplay, this game has a few differences in it than most horror movies and other games. There is the radio, which is a trademark in the Silent Hill series. As you approach a baddie, zombie etc, you’ll hear the radio flicker on with static, and the sound of whatever is in the vicinity. The catch is, you don’t know where it’s at. Freaky. You get a few weapons, notably the gun. There are a few bonus weapons, but they are nothing special. There is a pipe, a crowbar, and I think a chainsaw (CHAINSAW!).
Most of the game is spent wandering around trying to explore and gather evidence. If it’s your first time through, this game will take a long time. In the playthrough I watched, it took close to two and a half hours. Depending on what items you find in the game, and how you use them, it’ll determine how bad or good of an ending you get. As you play the game, the mystery is slowly unraveled. Some of it requires a bit of guesswork on the player’s part.
There is a menu system in this game, but aside from a few areas, it largely isn’t needed. There appears to be a map on it, a green/red picture guage to see if Harry is dieing or not, and a list of all of his items. You will explore the whole town in this game, so aquiring maps is essential. Many of the doors in this game are locked. 300ish doors one reviewer wrote, only a few open.
Yozuki’s Drive - 8 in the beginning of the game, dropping down to a skinny 4 as the game progresses.
