From Resident Evil spawns the first true survival horror series
User Rating: 8.5 | Silent Hill PS
Some may argue that Silent Hill is worse than Resident Evil, others argue that it is scarier and more engaging. In terms of survival and horror this game is a hair ahead of the Resident Evil series, and one of the best of its genre. The first Silent Hill is a good start to the series. Like RE, space is limited, ammo is limited, and you are moving around a city to locate keys and items to progress. There are a few major differences, mainly the camera angle follows, enemies seem to come fewer but more deadly, and ammo is much more limited. I thought RE limited ammo and challenged you, but this game you must actually learn to save ammo or you will be screwed where in RE you can actually have sufficient ammo to kill almost every enemy on normal, this game you don't get so lucky on normal difficulty or higher. Normal on this game is like hard on RE. Another difference being the pacing of this game is a little slower, and relies on the plot and psychological scares, the story slowly builds up as you progress and your character dives deeper into despair and madness. This game is all about survival and atmosphere when you break it apart, where RE is mainly about balancing survival, horror, atmosphere, and combat. The combat system of this game isn't quite as fun as RE, guns feel underpowered and melee weapons are far from being useful, but what it lacks in combat and convenience it makes up in difficulty and survival factor. One of the few issues I had with this game is the fact that the radio would sound every time an enemy would get close, which gets somewhat annoying and ruins the surprise. Another good thing about this game are the puzzles, which are more than just simplistic chores like the later Resident Evil games tended to be. Some puzzles are difficult to solve and need thinking or searching. You can alternate the game endings by a few events that you can control as well as unlock a few extra items like a chainsaw or katana.
Graphics are just as good as Resident Evil and make the game more scary. This game seems a bit more gory than Resident Evil and haunting.
The sound is good and creepy as well as the superb soundtrack, but the voice acting is not much better than the first Resident Evil.
Overall, the replay value is alright, there aren't really extra modes and unlockables content is pretty minimum. You can try to get the different endings to unlock more items, or you can try for the ultimate challenge which is to beat the game on hard mode with only 2 saves, have gotten all endings, use one continue, beat the game under 1:30, and collect 150/204 items, and get around 100 kills by fighting and shooting. This is really the only replay this game has, unlike the RE games which offer extra modes and story modes.
So this game is a good introduction to the series, but still leaves some to be desired. Silent Hill 2 is much stronger and fixes what this game lacks. It still is much more of a challenge and haunting than most other survival horror games of the time.
