Silent Hill 2 Preview

Silent Hill is best known as the survival-horror title that scares even those accustomed to the shocks and gore of Resident Evil. Others have said that if the Resident Evil series were Night of the Living Dead, Silent Hill would be Hellraiser. The works the creators of the Silent Hill series have drawn inspiration from are readily apparent, revealed by locations such as Bachman Street (a pseudonym used by Stephen King) and Matheson Street (named after the author of Hell House.) As we return to Silent Hill, we get a chance to see what's changed, what's improved, and what's gotten worse since our last visit.

Silent Hill, the misty, mysterious town that was the setting for Harry Mason's strange search for his missing daughter, Cheryl, is also home to this new tale. The protagonist--a man named James--is beckoned to the sleepy town by a disturbing letter penned by his wife, who has been dead for three years. Unable to resist the temptation, he returns to Silent Hill in an attempt to make sense of this baffling occurrence, and he is instead entwined in a series of especially gruesome events. Apparently, like its predecessor, Silent Hill 2 places you in a world of dual existences, one being the normal town, clouded in fog and mystery, the other an alternate reality, black as night and inhabited by shockingly macabre creatures that would drive a normal man to the brink of insanity. In the first Silent Hill, players never truly learned the cause of all their hardships or the nature of what brought the otherworldly inhabitants into the world. Hopefully, the sequel will reveal a bit more.

Silent Hill 2 sticks to many of the conventions of the survival-horror genre, with mixed results. Once again, you are forced to use the cumbersome Resident Evil-style control scheme, where forward and backward are relative to the direction your character is facing and maneuvering is a plodding, deliberate affair. Management of your inventory and health are also relatively unchanged--once again, your health meter should be kept in the green instead of red, your guns need to be painstakingly reloaded, and your items may be combined. The various puzzles are introduced with attractive still images and explanatory text. Items removed from the still-image screens also fade from view in an attractive way. In a change from what we've seen before, however, many puzzles are directly interactive via an onscreen mouse cursor, which can be used to manipulate things, such as a sliding numerical lock on a box. It's a pleasant change to see puzzles that aren't merely fetch quests and allow for hands-on gameplay. The presentation throughout the demo was solid, with realistically illustrated parchment-colored maps and menu screens that were easy to navigate and intuitive to explore.

Like Harry Mason before him, James is outfitted for survival against the horrors of Silent Hill with little but a flashlight and some less-than-desirable weaponry. You won't find a grenade launcher or flamethrower here; instead, James wields a slow and cumbersome nail-driven plank of wood or a painfully ineffective handgun--with the requisite short supply of ammunition, of course. The coat-pocket flashlight returns with a dazzling effect once again, shedding real-time light upon the otherwise pitch-black halls of the game's environments. Glancing at the camera with the flashlight will allow you to see the quality of the lighting effects, including a smooth graduation of bright to dim, as well as a subtle refraction. Use of the flashlight can be dangerous, however, as it allows enemies to spot James and focus their attacks on him. A pocket radio also gives James a heads-up about nearby evil, as it crackles more intensely as creatures approach. The sound effect is far from soothing, however, and it serves to make an already scary experience downright terrifying.

One of the factors that contributes Silent Hill's thick mood is its use of dramatic camera angles and the resultant feeling of claustrophobia they add to the game's confined environments. While many areas lock you into a specific camera angle, some areas allow you to--by means of a shoulder button--recenter your point of view and return to a more comfortable over-the-shoulder perspective. The camera seems to purposely lag behind during refocusing, bobbing up and down with movement and often giving the impression of being the view from a creature's perspective, which it often enough is. The fear caused by the constraining camera adds infinitesimally to the ambience Silent Hill 2 strives for.

The demo we played places James in a hospital with some basic equipment and a map of the area. Overpowering the background audio track was a pounding, metallic resonation that gave us the impression that we were in an infernal factory of some sort. The constant clanging noise was unsettling to say the least, and it had a suitably distracting effect, not allowing us to calmly survey the surroundings and constantly forcing a subdued position. Walking into a side room--a four-foot by four-foot padded cell soaked in blood, for example--would contrastingly place you in complete silence, which means you'll once again be shocked by the racket as soon as you step out. The hospital was bereft of illumination, so you had to examine everything with only the dim output of your flashlight. Walking up several flights of stairs to get to other levels of the hospital was an uneventful, yet altogether frightening, experience. The demo wasn't entirely a visual tour, however, as several malicious creatures attacked James throughout his brief trek through the hospital. One of the creatures was absolutely sickening--it looked something like a bipedal once-human thing struggling to escape from a straitjacket, and it was covered in blood and wearing a leather thong. Approaching the creature slowly prompted it to spit a cloud of noxious fluid at James, which subsequently caused him to wince in pain and cover his eyes. Taking the creature down with repeated blows of the wooden plank, or with well-aimed bullets, caused the creature to scurry away at a blistering rate and hide in the darkness. Another creature that also appeared to be a once-human experiment had a pair of legs attached where a head and arms would normally be. These creatures were also, of course, filthy and covered in blood, and they were a pleasure to be shocked by and subsequently destroy. Killing them wasn't as fun as bringing them to the brink of death, however, as knocking them down would cause them to enter some form of excellently animated spastic convulsions. For generic game monsters, these were a definite treat.

James himself is a very impressive character model, with a detailed, realistic face and smooth transitional animations between walking, running, swinging a weapon, and drawing his gun. He is by no means intimidating or powerful looking, though, instead looking like just a regular guy stuck in a really scary world. Being able to relate to the main character was one of Silent Hill's strong points, and Silent Hill 2 is definitely going to re-create this. The feeling of "being" the main character is further enhanced by the force-feedback provided by the Dual Shock 2 controller. As James becomes more and more hurt, his heartbeat quickens and his pulse can be felt pounding in your hands. We weren't able to see any of the CG sequences in the demo, but from what we've seen in the trailers and demonstrations at the Tokyo Game Show and E3, the FMV sequences are going to be of the highest quality and remarkably story-driven.

We were very impressed with the playability of the Silent Hill 2 demo, and we're anticipating learning more about this game as it approaches its release. While we may not admit to being entirely frightened by what we've seen so far, we're looking forward to being pleasantly shocked in the near future.