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.

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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.

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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.