An incredibly scary game, regardless of age, and a very intriguing storyline
I won't go into describing the story. It's very hard to follow, and after playing the first time through I thought "What the hell just happened?" I really wanted to know. There are 5 different endings, so you have the option to play it through a couple of times more to figure out what's going on, though I didn't. I just looked it up online. To get the entire picture, you're probably going to have to play through the series, and put the pieces together in your head. The game itself is a puzzle. One you really, really want to solve. The story is a huge plus to these games.
The atmosphere is very creepy. The sound really adds a lot to it. You hear something in another room like a piano being played aggressively and horribly, or a strange groan, or glass breaking in the room next door. Everything is dark except for the area illuminated by your flashlight, and you really don't want to go into that next room. The monsters are strange masses of blood and flesh, and when you see them chasing you, you just want to get the hell out of there. You'll know if a monster is nearby, though, because your radio emits static. But even if you know there are no monsters nearby, you feel like something is going to just pop out and scare the sh*t out of you anyways. To get the full experience, play in a dark room in the middle of the night with the sound turned up very high. You'll feel unnerved the entire time.
The downside to this game for me was the combat. It is somewhat hard to control your character, but you manage to get the hang of it after 20 minutes or so. The combat is a little odd, though. Your character is pretty bad at hitting his target with a firearm, and the locking system is annoying with the melee combat. Since the monsters are so damn creepy you just want them to DIE and stop following you, so I always ended up using the combat instead of just running (which is also an option). It's not very fun, butt gets the job done.
Back to the good stuff about this game, though. The puzzles are very challenging, and you'll feel very accomplished if you can get through them without a guide. They keep your brain busy, and I love games with good puzzles. You really have to use your head. The same goes with the story line. It's a puzzle in itself. It makes you want to explore the town, finding different documents or evidence portraying what happened in Silent Hill. That's another great thing I love about this game; revealing the story myself. The game doesn't really hand the story over to you on a silver platter, you have to decipher it yourself, and a lot of that has to do with exploring and putting together the pieces of the puzzle.
Get this game, unless you're stupid. Then you probably won't enjoy it. It presses on your intellect, and is scary as hell.