The definitive horror experience.
All four Silent Hill games by Team Silent provided me with enough horrific entertainment to enjoy all of them. But Silent Hill 2 is the fan's favourite. It's also one of the few paraded around for the idea that video games can be deep, but just how good is Silent Hill 2 actually?
It starts with an incredible mood setter: the protagonist James Sunderland is in a dank public restroom, checking his reflection in a dirty mirror, and without fuss the player is unceremoniously given the reins to do as he pleases. Apparently his dead wife wrote him a letter telling him to come to Silent Hill (totally believable), so it's your job to requite and unite the separated spouses. And so you step out and onto a road overlooking Toluca Lake, with the town presumably beyond the fog. Into the fog you must go, and it isn't too long before the unsettling atmosphere Silent Hill is so effective at producing starts getting to you: walking through the initial forest, the sounds of something shuffling around can be heard, but whatever it is cannot be seen. You pray to God that the developers wouldn't code a monster several minutes into the game, but that's just it. You're already hoping. Silent Hill is getting to you.
There's a lot of walking around in Silent Hill 2, but occasionally you meet one of the small cast of melancholy characters peppered throughout the game. The first of these is Angela, an innocent looking girl who almost nonchalantly warns of the hellish dangers beyond the mist. Then there's Laura, a young child who's a complete brat; Eddie who looks like he stumbled into the horror game by accident, and then Maria, the only one who strangely makes sense in this god forsaken town. All of these characters act rather unrealistically to the situations at hand, but it adds to the surreal factor of the game, accidentally making it better for it. Unfortunately, most of the voice acting in Silent Hill 2 is atrocious. Enough to completely kill the mood at times.
In typical survival-horror fashion, Silent Hill sends you around locations looking for items to get you to the next location, with monsters to defeat or avoid and little resources in the way of defeating them. It means zig-zagging you around and making you solve obtuse puzzles to advance, while creepy creatures are breathing down your neck. In Resident Evil and most other adventure games, you have to consciously disregard the absurdity of some of the obstacles in your way. In Silent Hill, while the developers have taken some measure as to not get too arbitrary, the game's setting provides enough leeway to make it seem perfectly natural given the circumstances. One particular puzzle requires you to find the plaques of three fairytale princesses to arrange and set on a music box. Since the game's world seems to have a mind all of its own, finding these items in seemingly random locations just makes it all the more eerie.
It's what Silent Hill does best: tone, atmosphere, and dread. Despite a really nonsensical story and characterization, the projection of James' psyche into the art direction and level design is phenomenal, and is probably why the game is still venerated after all these years. There's a particular level three quarters of the way through the game where you just keep going further and further down underground in an almost perfect allegory for the descent into a personal hell. The minute-to-minute gameplay itself is less hectic than other Silent Hill games (much less other survival-horrors), but it adds to the ability to absorb the town and its inhabitants.
Is it as thematically deep as the fans have been saying it is though? Honestly, I couldn't find it. Yeah sure, it revels in heavy issues such as death, grief, sexual abuse, and negligence, but they are at most lightly touched upon, and at the least only mentioned nominally. There really is nothing to take away from Silent Hill 2 apart from saying 'Well, that kinda sucks'. Still, it's more than any most games care to provide, and it's about the journey and experience of these themes rather than any meaningful insights the game tries to procure.
There's incentive to play the game after it's completed, with multiple difficulties for both combat and puzzles, several endings and unlockable items. And because you were a scaredy cat, you can try find some easter eggs littered throughout the game.
If you are a fan of survival horror, you've probably already played this game. Play it again. If you've missed the survival horror boat and looking to discover the once prolific genre, Silent Hill 2 could be a great starting point. It's a cult classic and one of the best games of the sixth generation.