Silent Hill Review (PS1) [Retro Review]
| After discovering there is a Silent Hill movie coming out in 2006, and owning all of the games, I decided to play through all of them back to back. This was the
first step in my long jouney through hell. Let's get one thing straight: this is by far the most terrifying fucking game ever created. I started playing around 5 pm, and by dusk I was ready to shit my pants. Everytime the phone rang, or my cat scratched at my door, I wanted to run out of the house and get to a well lit and populated area and curl into a ball and wait for daybreak. This game gets on your nerves, under your skin, and in your head. It uses what you don't see to make you terrified, which is the mark of a true masterpiece. This is no mere Resident Evil clone, this is really the stuff nightmares are made of. You play Harry Mason, a regular guy going on vacation with your daughter. As you drive to your destination, a cop passes you on a motorcycle, then a little girl appears in the road and causes you to swerve off the road. You wake up in your wrecked Jeep, and your daughter Cheryl is missing. You search an alley, and as it gets inexplicitly dark out, your attacked by strange, vaugely huminoid creatures (who I've loving named "retards"). You wake up in a cafe, either saved by the cop you saw on the road, or realizing you've hallucinated the whole thing. You take off onto the fog-infested streets of Silent Hill looking for your daughter. The world is fully 3D, with a few set camera angles that add to the tension and atmosphere. Think Hellrasier. The game alternates between different versions of the resort town Silent Hill, each one darker and more surreal than the last. You'll find yourself with a pocket flashlight providing the only illumination, allowing you to see about five feet in front of you. The evironments are horrifying: lots of blood stained walls, occult imagary, and a whole lot of "what the fuck is that?". You go through an elementary school, a hospital, an amusment park, sewers, "nowhere", and the town itself. Each of these have muliple alternate versions triggered by events you perform, and they get creepier and creepier as you progress. There are also a few locations that aren't essential to completing the game, but exploring these can affect what ending you get (there are four in total), adding to what is already a large replay value. You're armed with a pistol and a weed knife at the start of the game. Along the journey, you'll also pick up a shotgun, rifle, lead pipe, axe, hammer, rock drill, and other various melee weapons. Melee weapons are often your best bet when taking out foes, because Harry has never fired a weapon before the start of the game and is a horrible shot. The enemies in the game are things straight out of Lovecraft. You don't know exactly what the hell they are, you just know you better run. Fast. There are multiple puzzles in the game which are some of the most ingenious ever made. A few of them are rather difficult and require creative thinking. If you don't have patience and some degree of puzzle-solving skill, you may get stuck. But the completion of them really is a reward on it's on. There are also alot of key puzzles, requiring full and detailed exploration of the maps. These elements push Silent Hill more towards the realm of an adventure game than a shooter, like that other crappy horror series everybody loves. I beat this game in a little under five hours (full stats below), but this wasn't my first experience with it. It was the first time I completed it beggining to end, however. When the game first came out, my friend had it and I'd smoke pot and watch him play and try to give him a hand with the puzzles, but a barely ever really played the game itself until last night. The fact that I would just sit there and watch someone play goes to show something: this game is very much like a movie, almost as entertaining to watch as it is to play. I really can't find any flaws in this game. It set out to do one thing: scare the living piss out of me. And it did that and more. This game gets my highest score. Score: 666 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ GAME RESULTS Mode- Normal Game Clear- 1 Ending- Bad Saves- 40 Continues- 5 Total Time- 4h 58m 15s Walking Distance- 4.780 kms Running Distance- 16.107 kms Items- 151/204 Defeated Enemy by Fighting- 103 Defeated Enemy by Shooting- 35 Shooting Style Short Range Shots- 0.36 Middle Range Shots- 0.33 Long Range Shots- 0.06 No Aiming Shots- 0.25 RANK 3/7 stars |
Fuck yes.
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