Silent Hill

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Harry Mason is everyone's idea of an everyman. Harry doesn't have the correct resume for a survival horror game: he's no death-dealing vixen or a hardened war veteran. In fact, he's on vacation. Harry brings his little daughter Cheryl to the sleepy village of Silent Hill for some rest and relaxation. And then comes the accident. Harry sees something, there's a flash and presto chango-- car accident. When Harry comes to, Cheryl is gone.

If you were a concerned father, you'd go looking for her too. The search gets horrifying, as Cheryl runs down a pathway filled with gore and utter carnage: the sky gets blacker and the ground more tainted with human blood the more you chase after her. A brisk rain falls on a cadaver amputated in several places, and the walls change into rusted metal. Round the last corner, you find a crucified corpse enveloped in chain-link fencing. Children armed with butcher knives pour from your only exit and stab you to death. Luckily, it's all a dream. At least, it is now.

When Harry awakes again, he's lying on a chair in a coffee shop all but abandoned. The only person in it is local police officer Cybil Bennett, herself trying to piece together why Silent Hill has turned into a ghost town, and why it's snowing this time of year. Nothing is making any sense. Cybil leaves Harry in the coffee shop with a gun to protect himself. Before he leaves, a radio blares white noise at him. Though he doesn't understand at first, the radio will come to signal the closeness of evil. A monster breaks through the window and attempts to kill Harry. Welcome to Silent Hill¡ªthis gruesome introduction fills only the first few minutes, hinting at the horror title's unrelenting pace.

Harry has no combat training; he's an average Joe looking for his daughter and his combat abilities reflect this. Borrowing Resident Evil's third-person control mechanisms is perfect, because the clumsiness that comes in the targeting and evasion would perfectly reflect a civilian's actions in a life-threatening situation. Harry's further hampered by his bad aim: if it's beyond the reach of your flashlight in the dark, you most likely won't be able to shoot it.

Yeah, shoot. Don't get any massive ideas. The largest weapon Harry's able to wield is a hunting rifle he finds in a broken display in the mall. Usually you'll be using your pistol from Cybil. This is still largely more extravagant than most other tools at your disposal, like a rusty length of pipe, kitchen knife, and a small hatchet. Standing in the dark with a melee weapon hoping to strike down a fiend in the gutted basement of a hospital is as tense as it sounds.

Silent Hill is both terrifying and mundane. Silent Hill is any modern town: it has streets, stores, churches, and houses. Everything looks like it would in a normal town, and the painstaking attention to detail in rendering a Norman Rockwell-esque suburb is immaculate. Because of this, a backyard splattered in gore calls much more attention to itself. Silent Hill has no laboratories, no military facilities, and no police stations filled with keys and puzzles. Cheryl's cryptic clues will lead you to a school, a hospital, a hotel, and other common places that everyone has been before. They seem real, and so will the danger and insanity when they¡¯re placed in this context.

The absence of the usual sinister headquarters to explain everything in a neat little package will cause you to interpret the story yourself: at the end of everything, there are no clear answers. Perhaps it is confusing to someone looking for something specific by way of an ending, but Silent Hill's carefully woven story asks its player to interpret it for oneself. Less is more here, where the absences in the story hint at demonic possessions, drug use, futility, and insanity itself.

Silent Hill unanimously has my vote for the best audio on the PlayStation, evidenced by the excellent sound effects produced both by the atmosphere's ambient noise and by moaning, shrieking demons. Add a frighteningly successful soundtrack, which relentlessly provides a fitting industrial score to every situation: it's the only video game soundtrack I own. Factor in amazing voice acting-- although there are some overly dramatic moments, it easily towers over the competition. If you can hear it in this game, it's very, very good.

The graphics are incredible as well¡ªthe PlayStation's usually bulky polygons do little to misrepresent the surrealism of this town. Characters are eerily lifelike in movement and animation, adding a ghostly humanity to the misery and desolation of the environment. The fog, which is often used as a crutch to hide pop-up in the environments, is used here as an atmospheric tool, finally showing how to get good use out of it. Silent Hill lies in thick, perpetual fog, making everything seem somewhat amiss.

There are few games that I can say are as successful as Silent Hill in their goals. Silent Hill is one of the only games that scared me to the point at which I was genuinely afraid to progress, and in feel it is reminiscent of some of the scariest psychological horror movies ever made: it will definitely develop a rapport with fans of Kubrik's ''The Shining.'' Graphically, this could appear to be the most real-looking game on the PlayStation.

I can't recommend this game more highly. Of many titles that have come and gone on the PSX, Silent Hill ranks at the top for me. It's cinematic and horrifying, both enjoyable and repulsive. It's a shame that Resident Evil, a great game in its own right, catches all the attention, because Silent Hill effortlessly defeats it in every way possible.

10 / 10
The best survival horror game on the PSX, bar none.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 10/28/02, Updated 10/28/02