Silent Hill 2 & 3

Silent Hill is an awkward series to begin a stint at game reviewing for its sheer depth. I’ve found it difficult to come up with a particularly long list of things I like or dislike about it because it almost all seems to run together, necessitating what I guess is a more holistic approach… or a shorter than normal review. This is one of the many ways I think these two games diverge with traditional gaming, and in a typically good way. For example in Bioshock I find myself critiquing each new element in the game as soon as it was introduced, going ‘ooh, I like this’ or ‘ooh, I don’t like that’. The mental list I’ve been assembling in that game is already quite long and I’ll be lucky to actually remember most of it by the time I finish. What I’ve learned by heart is that even something interesting can detract from the quality of a game if it spoils the immersion, items of which Bioshock has plenty, to say nothing of the more ludicrous and flow-breaking elements (which are obviously worse). I am very pleased to say that neither Silent Hill 2 nor 3 have much of either, which apart from the compelling and original stories has to be one of my absolute favorite things about them. Immersion is virtually never sacrificed. I may have stopped and wondered more than once how on earth little Heather could be carrying around that 12th century mace tucked in her pocket, or how she could possibly even know how to operate that submachine gun, but this never actually troubled me too much ingame, and was only ever really a thorn in my side when I was feeling frustrated with the combat and needed something extra to justify a good rant.

I was introduced to the survival horror genre with Echo Night: Beyond, a brilliantly innovative ghost-story set in a haunted moonbase, where the contrast between the sterile/artificial and the spectral, coupled with sense of isolation and helplessness created a feeling of immersion that was almost too thick… before it got totally predictable. I was ultimately disappointed, but I finished having tasted of the adrenalin provided by just the right does of fear, and I wanted more. Silent Hill the movie was my first proper introduction to the franchise, and it still rates as one of the best movies I’ve ever seen, right up there with Bladerunner (The Director’s Cut) and Princess Mononoke (in English). What I liked most about it at first was that it seemed to be very consistent with the games, which I had yet only studied a little bit, and maybe watched a few youtube clips. I’ve since come to realize my mistake; Silent Hill the movie only really succeeds in capturing the atmosphere of the games. The story is not only divergent from canon but delivered in a decidedly different and shallower way. Silent Hill 2 in particular is likewise far more pedestrian than the movie (and to a disappointingly large degree more than the third installment as well); you encounter NPCs, for example, who have little or no relevance to the main character James, except perhaps that they help him develop. These are people who have their own reasons for what they do and why they’re around; we’re left in the dark about Angela’s fate at the end of Silent Hill 2, but if that’s a loose end one must remember that real life is full of loose ends, and this isn’t Angela’s story. It isn’t Eddie’s story either. It’s James’ story, in which those others just happen to be.

Another important difference between the movie and the games is the role played by the monsters and environments, and how these relate to the characters. Every incarnation of the hill is famous for its grotesque monster inhabitants. But the monsters in Silent Hill 2 and 3 have a bit more to do besides being grotesque. In both games they are each a manifestation of what is most likely troubling the main character, or on occasion an NPC. This is upfront enough to be obvious, yet abstract enough to be delightful, and even compelling. Heather in Silent Hill 3 is confused and afraid, particularly concerning something in her distant past she may have forgotten. Part of her is curious, yet another is just as insistent she’d be better off not knowing. This uncertainty and dread manifest in the very surreal, awkward, and a terrifying shapes of “her” monsters. James of Silent Hill 2 meanwhile is wrapped in what would seem to be tortuously superfluous guilt (repressed memories involved here too), while even his sanity and masculinity is called into serious question. Almost every monster he encounters, and particularly the infamous Red Pyramid, seems to be trying to remind him of something very poignant about himself he would rather not think about.

In essence Silent Hill game characters are fighting (or more likely fleeing) their inner demons. How frightening these are to the player is much less important than the feelings they evoke in the character, which ultimately affects the player in a much more subtle way. Silent Hill the movie merely borrows monsters from the games arbitrarily and seems to imply they are simply avatars of the tainted town itself. They seem to act in concert, like creatures connected to a hivemind, where as in the games they are almost all clearly mindless automatons driven by very base instincts, which makes it frightening how articulate some of them can be. Likewise, in the Silent Hill games, the different paralleled realities associated with the town often manifest themselves differently for different people, for the same reason as do the monsters, something not explored in the movie.

Now I should talk a little about gameplay, but as it’s all been done before I won’t linger. As many have noted the controls can be frustrating because virtually all the camera angles are fixed, and when they change it is usually unexpected. This wouldn’t be a problem if the controls weren’t affected, but they are, meaning you have to change what you’re doing on the gamepad or keyboard if you don’t want to end up totally backtracking, usually right back towards the monster you were fleeing from. Note however that this is much worse an issue on Silent Hill 2 than 3, the latter being more finely polished and less cinematic. The reason for the fixed camera is to create a dramatic cinematic effect, which it succeeds to do surprisingly well, especially in Silent Hill 2. This is one of the many reasons I don’t like to think of these games as RPGs as opposed to very interactive stories. You will sometimes even be confronted with shots that reveal virtually nothing of what the character can actually see, with maybe a monster or two blubbering just off-screen. This makes it a good idea to finger the ready button now and then, which will make the main character turn to directly face any enemy in front of her, and level a gun if she has one. Little pretense is made for role-playing in a style of play like this, but as with the NPCs this never detracts from the quality of the game. Again, one must remember this is the character’s story, not anyone else’s and not the player’s.

Of course the controls fail in other ways too, particularly in Silent Hill 3 where the auto-aimer is very dodgy, to the point where when the story cinematics stopped working on my used PS2 copy I honestly couldn’t bring myself to finish the game. There are these disgusting humanoids that crawl along the floor and sometimes attack Heather in groups large enough to make running away very difficult. I wanted to use the katana she found to deal with them, but I was surprised to learn it was impossible; she would only attack targets at chest level. It was the same with the submachinegun; she would shoot right over them. That was it for me; combat and locomotion as tedious as found in a Silent Hill game simply isn’t worth it minus the story. This is something many outsiders to the series could perhaps fail to grasp, assuming it’s the monster-bashing that keeps people playing, when in reality it’s almost always better to run or sneak by, and save ammo and health for when you can’t. It’s also why I don’t feel too tempted to play the games a second time (though I am now working on finishing Silent Hill 3 properly, on my pc).

One of the very best things I can say about the atmosphere of the games is how well their scores fit. They are easily the best I have ever encountered in any game, creatively written and masterfully performed, each song timed perfectly to sync with events ingame. Anyone who has watched Silent Hill the movie has already experienced a decent cross-section of songs from Silent Hill 2 and 3, from which most of the movie soundtrack was taken.

In conclusion, these are the ideal games if you’re someone like me who prefers to spend time on a game as opposed to killing it. I would consider playing them as nearly a wholesome and life-fulfilling experience as reading a good novel, and never made me regret that I could be doing something else. I try to only play games like this, but rarely am I ever this satisfied. I look forward to trying the original game, as well as the last sequel made by the Silent Hill team: Silent Hill 4: The Room.