Horror isn't exactly my thing. Surviving is something I'll do if I have to but otherwise isn't really my thing either. Survival horror as a genre then isn't what I'd call 'my cup of tea'. However, this isn't a list of games that are my cup of tea, it's a list of 1001 games I ought to have played before I can no longer drink tea, and my eyes continue to be opened with survival horror Silent Hill.
You are Harry Mason, a skinny dude with no useful skills relating to surviving or dealing with horror, save for empathy and devotion to finding a missing child. A noble cause for a normal man, but unfortunately for Harry it's all going to take place in the supernatural fog-covered titular Silent Hill, a town empty of people, but full of horror.
How's this one going to pan out...?
Fun Times
Like Resident Evil before it, I know of the Silent Hill series as games that don't interest me in the slightest when it comes to playing but do interest me a little when it comes to seeing them being played, or at least finding out what the fuss is about.
I have seen playthroughs of Silent Hill, and a few of its sequels, in the past, but can't for the life of me remember any details, so I'm heading into this PlayStation title blind, as is often the case.
After some posh intro videos, we crash our car and find ourselves in Silent Hill. It is, as Harry says, awfully quiet, and we're on the lookout for our cars' passenger, a young girl called Cheryl, who I assume to be Harry's daughter, otherwise, he's got some explaining to do.
With a subtle transition, we're into the thick of it, and the thick of the fog. Silent Hill, the place and the game, are grand 3D spaces without loading times, for the most part, and one of the ways to pull off such a feat on PlayStation hardware was to drown the place in fog. Any other genre would naturally suffer under such limitations, but here, in an instant, this place feels spooky, grim, and somewhere I want to spend as little time as possible in.
At the same time, though, it feels oddly welcoming. It's quiet to the point of peaceful. Eerily peaceful, but there's nobody to disturb the peace. I'm not selling it, am I? The point is, I want to push forward and peer through the fog.
If that is Cheryl, she doesn't want to respond to our shouts (Harry must really have some explaining to do...) and so we run out into the fog to follow her, ending up in an alleyway. The camera swoops left and right, with a purpose that is part 'make it look good, like a movie', and part 'make sure players can actually see something'. It's a little fiddly to get the hang of it, as I found myself overcorrecting my movement to compensate, but it does look good.
It's in this alleyway that I found out that tank controls were still in effect. Forward on the stick is forward to the character, not to the camera. It's still a hurdle to me, but I soon found somewhere to investigate.
Aaaaand that's where the horror starts to show itself. I think that might have been a dog. I also think we should walk past it - against all sense, to be honest - and see what other horrors we can find.
More sweeping camerawork make it known that Silent Hill is a three-dimensional space, unlike Resident Evil's 'models on a background' thing, and while I'm still running into walls - running is a separate button, by the way - it still feels like it's more manageable than Resident Evil. I don't think I've gotten used to this kind of movement, more that here it feels easier to get to head around.
And then the darkness hits, and the horror ramps up...
... but what is real? Where am I? A short and to-the-point cutscene lets us know we're not quite alone, but we might as well be. I don't know what's going on, but I am invested. I want to see more of this place.
And just like that, we've got a gun, we've got a plan, and we've got a little cafe to raid for supplies. Like others of the genre, our inventories hold all manner of health items and weapons, and switching between them on the fly will probably be a pain in the arse, if on-the-fly is even possible, but - once we find the map - there is a dedicated map button to hopefully not get us too lost.
Oh, it's all kicking off. Skinny pterodactyl things are smashing through the windows and attacking us. That's not normal. We better find Cheryl quickly. The only place we know of was in the alleyway, so we'll have to explore it once more.
After a few fleshy dogs, we find some scraps of paper pointing us towards the next step of our objective, some breadcrumbs to follow on our pursuit. The school on the other side of town. I know we gasp for breath while we sprint, but we do at least appear to have infinite sprinting, so off we go.
Well, that's a problem, but at least Harry is on top of his map making skills. Giant red X marks the earthquake damage. Not to worry. Plenty of alternative routes.
You know, I think I've missed something...
Final Word
It is at this point that I saw a fitting end to the session but would like to have played to the point of finding some frustrations other than getting lost and it having tank controls - because no game is faultless, surely.
I snuck a look at a playthrough on YouTube and it turns out I missed a key in a doghouse which leads to a house which leads to another key I think and at that point, I stopped again because I have been sucked into this world and am rather enjoying it.
With Resident Evil, especially Resident Evil 2, you had to hit the ground running, else you were eaten by zombies. While that's fine, it's a bit tricky on newcomers. Silent Hill's pacey opening allows players to get used to the setting, the movement, and the way things work, before throwing you against one enemy, then a few more - though you can avoid them and run away.
Alright, I have no idea how you're supposed to find a doghouse with a key in it on your travels through the fog, but I'll hold my hands up and say that I didn't fully investigate the roads - my first thought was 'one of these must be open', and not 'huh, dead end, look around before moving on'.
So I've seen very little of Silent Hill, and haven't been spooked at all by it. It's said to be the kind of spooky that the zombies in Resident Evil go for in order to get spooked themselves, but I'll take that with a grain of salt until I see it myself, and I think I probably will.
It feels atmospheric, it's welcoming to new players, it looks bleak, but not in a bad way at all, and I look forward to spending more time in Silent Hill - until, you know, I learn why nobody wants to be in Silent Hill...
Fun Facts
According to Wikipedia, there are some fascinating development stories for this game, including one young member of the team creating a demo movie and holding the knowledge of how to do so hostage until his skills were recognised and his job role improved. He got his wish and would go on to become the character designer.
Silent Hill, developed by Konami Computer Entertainment Tokyo, first released in 1999.
Version played: PlayStation, 1999, via emulation.