DAY 31 / GAME 31 Silent Hill

DAY 31 / GAME 31

Silent Hill

           
             I'm not sure when I first really got into horror games.  I'm one of those kids who used to love renting old horror flicks with my brother when we were young and I guess that love kind of transferred over to video games as they became more and more available.  I remember Alien 3 for the Genesis was pretty scary.  There was also The Immortal, which was horrifying and Splatterhouse, Darkseed, Doom, Heretic..  But the horror genre never really took off I think until the PS1 came out and with it games like ClockTower, Resident Evil, Alone in the Dark and of course; Silent Hill.

             Silent Hill was yet another great PS1 game that my brother bought.  I have no idea where he had heard of it, but it was a great call on his part.  This was one of those games that I never actually played much of myself, but instead sat and watched the majority of it while my brother played it.  There were a few games I had enjoyed like this and I kinda miss it.  I really love the idea of cooperatively trudging through a game together with someone.  It gives you the opportunity to sit back and enjoy some elements of the game that you may otherwise miss because of where your focus lies.  Notable games for me include Bioshock with my old friend Jesse, RE: Code Veronica with my old roomate in college, and Final Fantasy 7 with my brother.

              Silent Hill is amazing right from the get-go.  The first bit where you loose your daughter in the foggy town is absolutely terrifying, especially the first time around.  You follow her into an alley, the camera starts to skew, you start to see very out of place items like hospital gurneys in the alley as the sky darkens and you have to continue by the light of your zippo.  Somewhere an air-raid siren starts up as you start to realise everything around you has changed, bodies are tangled up in the chainlink fence and little demons start to back you into a corner.  Then you wake up in a diner and it's like something from Twin Peaks.  (Which had heavy influence in the game.)

              Silent Hill 1 wasn't my favorite title in the series, but it's special because of what it started.  Silent Hill is an amazing horror game series, the second and third were incredible.  The series itself was definitely a big influence on modern horror film makers as well as game designers.  This first title was also nice because it had it's quirks while still trying to gain footing.  It featured an oddball pre-rendered cinematic at the ending that had some of the town's characters (some of whom met their fate through the game) all dancing and apparently creating a tribute of Twin Peaks.  It had multiple endings, including a UFO ending which I have never seen and some obscure unlockables.  And it had some of the best b-movie voice acting you could ask for.  On top of it all, Akira Yamaoka created an amazing soundtrack for this game.  Not the best of the bunch, but you can see where his footing for the next games.  The series has some incredible music in it that really stands on it's own.  They even used all the existing score for the live action movie.

               Silent Hill:  Shattered Memories is supposed to be a remake of this game.  And although in and of itself it was amazing, I still would really love to see this game remade shot-for-shot on a newer system.  I'm sure it would do quite well.