Product Description
-------------------
In Silent Hill, you assume the role of widower Harry Mason, who
is trying to get away from the pain of his wife's loss by taking
his daughter on a road trip. After a car accident on the
outskirts of the resort town of Silent Hill, you regain
consciousness to find that your daughter, who was previously
a in the backseat, has left--or has been taken--from the
scene. To find her, you must go into town and unlock the secrets
that linger seven years after a tragic fire red the town.
The game features formidable monsters, perplexing puzzles, a
realistic 3-D town, and, most of all, an acute sense of
foreboding caused by Silent Hill's creative lighting and sound
effects. The makers have included four different endings, based
on performance throughout the game, so think, be quick on your
feet, and hope for the best of all possible outcomes.
.com
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A downright creepy "survival horror" title, Silent Hill succeeds
where most Resident Evil-inspired titles suck: keeping you hooked
and instilling you with fear throughout the game. Players are
cast as Harry Mason in his desperate search for his daughter, who
mysteriously disappeared after their car ced into a gully
outside of a desolate resort town.
The 3-D environments in Silent Hill are bathed in fog or
darkness, making its dismal setting all the more eerie; this also
allows for some spectacular lighting effects when using a
flashlight in the dark. Granted, there are some pretty coarse
graphics being obscured here, but it's a fair trade-off,
considering the game's short load times.
Silent Hill is played from a third-person perspective, viewed
from both fixed and moving camera angles. As with similar games,
the viewpoint can be awkward at times, especially during combat,
which here is so clunky that you should try to avoid it whenever
possible--something you should do anyway, as this isn't Tomb
Raider.
Rather than resort to cheap e tactics, Silent Hill features
a gameplay twist that works very well with its limited visibility
environments. Harry carries a radio with him that crackles with
static whenever the game's nasties are near, and continues until
they're no longer in the vicinity or have been killed off.
(Enemies may require further whacking when they're down, as they
like to play dead.) Additionally, the supported Dual-Shock
controller pulsates in a heartbeatlike fashion whenever you're
moderately or seriously injured. --Joe Hon
Pros:
* Suspenseful story with -chilling gameplay
* Short load times
* Excellent lighting and fog effects
* Five possible endings add replay value Cons:* Coarse graphics
* Clunky combat
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Review
------
In a recent interview with OPM, Silent Hill's creators remarked
that one of their main goals with the game was to frighten people
on an instinctive level, and that's something that, in my mind,
they've clearly succeeded at doing. While similar horror titles,
like Capcom's Resident Evil series, work well at making you jump
in a "boo!" sort of way, Silent Hill establishes a very
unsettling atmosphere that at once puts you off and creeps you
out.
Silent Hill accomplishes this through a host of wonderful little
touches: a radio that emits static whenever monsters are near, a
lead character that must catch his breath after running, the
placement of wheelchairs and broken stretchers in abandoned
stairwells, and so on. One of the most successfully unnerving
elements is the game's lighting, which is almost always cast from
a flashlight, whether you are in a dark alleyway, a
fog-enshrouded back street, or a dank basement. The glare it
gives off obscures almost as much as it illuminates, like a dying
candle. It was that effect, much more than any fearsome creature,
which made me leave a hall light on one night after playing it.
That's not to say that the monster design is under par though. In
fact, there was one species in particular - a shaggy man-thing
that barks and sets after you on all fours - that sent a chill up
the back of my neck every time I saw one.
To back up a bit, Silent Hill begins with a car accident that
separates the main character, Harry Mason, from his daughter. He
wanders around looking for her in the off-season resort town that
they had happened upon, encountering things and events that seem
inspired at least in part by horror writers H.P. Lovecraft and
Stephen King (anyone remember The Mist?). Figuring out what's
actually going on in the burg is much more of a draw for the
player than discovering where some little girl has made off to,
but both quests lead you around the streets, houses, and major
buildings of a fairly convincing 3D Midwestern town. Aside from a
slightly grainy cast to Silent Hill's look, its graphics are
pretty tight. The use of fog and darkness work so well to enhance
the game's mood that you don't mind that they're obviously hiding
pop-up (perhaps your suspension of disbelief is withheld so that
you ignore it or something), and the lighting effects produced by
the character's flashlight are often jaw-dropping. The sound
effects are likewise very strong, with y monster growls (as
I've mentioned before), random clanks and ces that force you
to turn around and inspect a room you're sure is empty, and eerie
piping that wafts in throughout. Imagine an instance in which all
these elements are combined: You're in a dark courtyard, and snow
is coming down. Your flashlight only illuminates a few feet ahead
of you, but you know something's there with you because your
radio is blaring static, and you've heard some indescribable
something out there make a noise. You draw your and... wait,
while the music builds. This sort of event makes for some very
tense and very entertaining moments, and the game definitely
repeats and serves them quite often.
On the downside, Silent Hill's storyline doesn't deliver nearly
the payoff promised throughout. You can beat the game without
learning some of its most important plot points and, without a
doubt, the first time you win you'll be left wondering what the
hell happened and if that was really it. And it's not. There are
four different endings within Silent Hill that are reached based
on your performance during some key moments. Personally, I hate
when developers try to extend the life of a game by making you
play it through more than once. But at its base, Silent Hill
still has a decent a of play to it. A handful of
well-designed puzzles keeps the game from being too short; it's
just a shame you can't learn everything you want to know the
first time through. Another gripe is that the game camera suffers
from the same problem as many other third-person-game cameras: It
always seems to fail you when you need it the most. It's the lack
of a real climax that probably hurts the game the most, but the
perspective can be vexing as well.
In the end, though, Konami's first entry in the horror genre -
while not quite up to the mark of Capcom's Resident Evil 2 - is a
great beginning. Let's hope we've seen the start of a new
franchise by the company, because this would be an excellent
starting point. --Joe Fielder
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