Even after almost eleven years, Silent Hill is a very impressive and enjoyable horror game.
In the game you play as Harry Mason as he is driving to Silent Hill (which is a tourist town) with his daughter Cheryl to go on a vacation. As he is driving, a person runs on to the road, and he tries to avoid hitting that person, while crashing the car. After being knocked out Harry wakes up and notice that his daughter is gone and it is snowing and foggy. He then enters Silent Hill to find his daughter, and thus starts the game into the horror and mysteries of SH that awaits.
So throughout the game you will be going through two "worlds" which are the foggy world where the whole town is cover with fog and snow, and the Otherworld where the place turns into a rusty hellish type area. You will be meeting a few characters which are pretty interesting, but what is really impressive is the story. It feels like a mystery, it is usually clever, and actually gets somewhat depressing near the end too.
In the game you will be going around in dark places where even with a flashlight you can only see a few feet in front of you while monsters are lurking around. Luckily you will have a radio which will set off when an enemy is nearby. You will get weapons to fight these monsters. There are melee weapons which range from being strong but slow to fast but weak, and guns which you get your good old pistol, shotgun, and a couple others. The combat is somewhat clunky, but simple, so it fine for the most part. It also makes you feel like you are trying to survive, and not like a one man army, which is good for a survival horror.
There are items like health stuff and ammo that you can find throughout the game, through there not that many of them, so use your items wisely, otherwise you could end up nearly dying while being chase by an enemy or something like that. There are also some puzzles which you need to solve to continue forward, but a lot of them are interesting.
Since this is a PS1 game, the graphics are not going to be pretty by today standards; however what is still really top notch is the atmosphere. It just gives that creepy and mysterious feeling, and it does it very well. It might not be the scariest game, and it probably won't make you jump a lot, but it will most likely creep you out with its mood and weirdness. The music is pretty good and feels unique, as the soundtrack is mostly noises yet really helps set the mood of the game. The voice acting is decent through a little cheesy, but they are fine. Sound effects are good, through some sounds silly.
There is actually some replay value in this game. There are five endings you can get, and you can get unlockables like new weapons, so there enough reason to go through this game more than once.
Overall Silent Hill is awesome even almost eleven years after it came out. It has a great story, amazing atmosphere, great use of noise type music, and the gameplay overall does a great job of being a survival horror. Easily my favorite horror game so far and I will be trying out the other SH games (enjoying Origins so far). So if you looking for a good old school survival horror then you should definitely try this game out.