Silent Hill is the equivalent of the Exorcist(1973), nothing else.

User Rating: 6 | Silent Hill PS
By snes_vs_ps1 | Review Date:
What does that mean?It means it's the scariest game or one of the scariest games of all time.It has only 1 purpose:to scare the hell out of you that's why it was created.It represents psychological terror at it's peak!Konami entered the survival horror scene in the most brutal way, they hoped this way maybe they can dethrone "the King" which was Resident Evil made by Capcom.For many they've pretty much succeded but for me...no, they haven't.People get fooled by their primal instincts, by fear, they like to be scared a lot & that's why they rate Silent Hill with 9.0 or higher, this fear makes them blind & ultimately they don't need anything else.I'm a person that was not "hypnotised" by this game so i was able to see it's true potential.It's a great game indeed but for example, if you remove it's haunting soundtrack & replace it with something normal & also remove the lighting effects, the fog especially it becomes just a fairly good game, worth somewhere around 6.5-7.0.The graphics are absolutely horrible.This game was made in 1999 but it looks like it was made in 1996!Or maybe it was made specially this way just to amplify the creepy atmosphere that it creates.The gameplay is very poor, similar with the gameplay of Alone in the Dark 4 or even worse.& above all the game is very short.My completion time was less than 5 hours so i was more dissapointed than pleased.& i was asked to play it again, but on the next difficulty...this is a trademark of Konami.I have in mind the examples of Turtle Ninja 4 & Contra 3 from SNES where you get the true ending only if you finish on hard but here the difficulty does not influence the ending at all.
The story is about Harry Mason that was in vacation with his daughter Cheryl & they have a car accident & Harry wakes up from the accident & finds himself in a ghost town.He begins desperately to search for her.The weather was very strange, it was summer but it was snowing or something like that & there is a thick permanent fog everywhere.This is the most frightening aspect of the game:this thick grey claustrofobic fog accompanied by the horror soundtrack.This game has probably the greatest horror soundtrack ever made for any source of entertainment it's truly bone chilling.I think it would have been even more scary without any monsters at all & no guns no shooting-just running around only with a steel pipe in your hands & hoping that something would show up from the fog...whack the weasel lol...the fear of the unknown is the greatest of them all.The fear of lonelines, solitude.Some of the later monsters even made me laugh, as they were looking like monkeys & jumping around in the streets:)So, the only humans that you will meet are a nurse named Lisa, a doctor named Kaufmann, a little girl named Alessa, a cop woman Cybil(when you meet her at the restaurant it begins a music a la Twin Peaks) & an old woman, Dahlia Gillespie.Man, it freaks me out only when i pronounce her name.So, you begin the game, then head to the Midwich Elementary School, then Alchemilla Hospital, Antique Shop, Sewers, to a Lighthouse, Amusement Park etc.There is a duality like in Super Mario World or Zelda-A Link to the Past:Light World-Dark World but the difference here is that there is no Light World.It's Dark World & Darker World.In the Dark one there are the awful graphics & in the darker one awful graphics+rust...everywhere it's a complete nightmare!I don't remember if i've seen in my life a more horrible game than this one.
This town, Silent Hill is beeing devoured by darkness & the mark of Samael is getting shape-if it is completed all is lost & everything goes forever into the abyss...these are the words of Dahlia Gillespie.I know from the movie Halloween II that there was the word Samhain on a wall & Dr. Loomis explained it, said it was an evil celtic God, something like that.I think that Samael is a referrance to Samhain.Harry meets this woman Dahlia at the Balkan Church(where a very haunting theme begins:( where she explains to him what's hapening & offers him the Flauros, a piramid thingy that is supposed to protect him from the evil forces.But later in the game it is revealed that this thingy has a different purpose & that Harry was manipulated.All this stuff happened to the town because it's citizens where believing in occult stuff & gibberish like that.All the game is full of 100% tension, suspense & horror, it never lets you down but it also gets annoying as you are "condemned" to open hundreds of doors, locked or unlocked most of them unlocked unfortunately.The most frightening moments of the game are when you hear sirens in the distance combined with the weird camera angles & the sudden noises that your pocket radio makes when monsters are near you...it makes you white!There are so many other things to tell but i don't want to spoil, it must remai intact as it is the scariest game ever made or almost the scariest.It has multiple endings & a total of only 5 boss battles.
So:horrible graphics, poor gameplay, disturbing atmosphere, ugly enemies, bad endings, "rusty" places, eerie soundtrack...to hell with this game!Back to the abyss where it belongs:)

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