Silent Hill (video game)

Silent Hill (サイレントヒル, Sairento Hiru) is a survival horror video game for the PlayStation developed by Team Silent, a Konami Computer Entertainment Tokyo group, and published by Konami. The first installment in the Silent Hill series, the game was released in North America in January 1999, and in Japan and Europe later that year. In 2001, the game was released for the Game Boy Advance as a visual novel game titled Silent Hill: Play Novel that was released only in Japan.

Plot
Harry Mason is driving to the titular town with his adopted daughter Cheryl for a vacation. At the town's edge, he swerves to avoid hitting a girl in the road, and as a result, he crashes and loses consciousness. Waking up in town, he realizes that Cheryl is missing and sets out to look for her. The town is deserted and foggy, with snow falling out of season, and he begins to experience bouts of unconsciousness and encounters with hostile creatures

Why It Rocks
NOTE: The article is based only on the PlayStation adaptation.
 * 1) One of the finest early survival horror experiences ever made.
 * 2) Many memorable moments including the opening, which greatly sets the tone. The foggy world itself isn't so bad since there's nothing to hurt you, but as you progress down the alleyway, things start to take a frightening turn; the fog turns darker and more harsh, the snow turns to rain, the walls become dingy and dirty and there's rusty fencing popping up all around you. Then you reach the end and see the corpse, and then the children come... and for bonus points, if you try to run back the way you came, it's inexplicably closed off now.
 * 3) The game makes very clever use of distance fog to give the game a more creepy claustrophobic feel because you can't see what's coming and comes up with an explanation within the lore as to why there's fog in the whole town. The fog would go on to become a staple of the series.
 * 4) Unlike most Horror game protagonists at the time who are soldiers, Harry Mason is an average everyday person, which helps in making him more relatable to the player.
 * 5) The game has a variety of mainly melee weapons and barely any firearms forcing the player to have to be up close a lot of times to enemies.
 * 6) The controls are intentionally made somewhat clunky to make the player feel helpless.
 * 7) Amazing graphics for its time.
 * 8) The graphics look amazing for their time and the constraints also enhances the experience since it makes the world look like a bad dream due to how illegible a lot of things are, making you have to use your imagination as to what the monsters look like.
 * 9) The game uses a radio to let the player know when enemies are close by adding another layer of eerie to the atmosphere.
 * 10) The soundtrack is composed of really bizarre surreal noises to increase the sense of insecurity on the player.
 * 11) Nightmarish creatures such as mutant dogs and the iconic nurses.
 * 12) Four (technically five) different endings are available, dependent on the player's previous actions:
 * 13) * Bad ending: The deity merges with Alessa and electrocutes Dahlia before attacking Harry. He defeats it, and Cheryl's voice thanks him for freeing her. Overcome by grief, Harry collapses, and the next scene is that of his corpse in his wrecked car.
 * 14) * Bad + ending: Concludes with Harry and Cybil fleeing instead after the deity's demise.
 * 15) * Good ending: Kaufmann, now feeling betrayed by Dahlia, demands that she restore the town to normal and uses aglaophotis to exorcise the deity out of Alessa. Harry defeats the deity, and Alessa gives him an infant, the reincarnation of herself and Cheryl. She then helps him escape from her nightmare realm.
 * 16) * Good + ending: Harry escapes with Cybil and the baby.
 * 17) It's notable how infrequently the game will try to jump scare you outright, rather the game works by playing you subtly with its startling imagery. When a jump scare finally comes, it's a complement to the already miserable nightmare you're trapped in and can feel like game "earned it", even having a sense of awesomeness to it thanks to the buildup. Still, the first time playing can be tense as you may be expecting to be startled suddenly but the game usually holds back and simply lets the visuals and strange sounds unsettle you.
 * 18) Clever and difficult puzzles that will test your wits and are cunning.
 * 19) Much like Resident Evil, the game has a bunch of unlockables to encourage replayability.
 * 20) *UFO (joke) ending: When Harry Mason uses the Channeling Stone, which is found in the convenience store, on top of the lighthouse, a group of UFOs are seen in the sky. As the UFOs land, the cutscene changes style to a roughly animated picture show. Harry, unfazed by this strange turn of events, asks the aliens if they have seen his daughter, but is shot down and brought into their UFO. The UFOs take off and the credits roll.
 * 21) *This ending also unlocks the Hyper Blaster. The Hyper Blaster requires no ammo, has auto aim, and has three different types of beam that vary depending on the player's rank at the end of the previous game:
 * 22) ** Red Beam (low - as powerful as the handgun)
 * 23) ** Yellow Beam (medium - as powerful as the shotgun)
 * 24) ** Green Beam (high - as powerful as the rifle)
 * 25) *If the player beats the game twice on a single save file: once with a Good/Good+ Ending and another time with a Bad/Bad+ Ending, the player unlocks the Katana. It inflicts a large amount of damage, several types of attacks are possible, and is fast and easy to use. It also propels Harry forward when he swings it, meaning that if the player holds in the attack button, Harry can move anywhere quite quickly just by swinging the katana, hitting anything in his path.
 * 26) *When the player beats the game once, they can find the gasoline tank in the Hell Gas Station on Bloch St. With the gasoline tank they can choose to obtain either the chainsaw or rock drill, as both require the gasoline to be used.
 * 27) **The rock drill is very powerful, but it is heavy, difficult to handle, and Harry can't move while using it.
 * 28) **The chainsaw is slightly less powerful than the rock drill and has different types of attacks, but is slow to recover and rather difficult to use. Unlike the rock drill, however, the chainsaw can be turned on and used to attack enemies while Harry Mason is moving, allowing him to deal damage by simply walking into enemies. It is modeled after the chainsaw found in The Evil Dead.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) The CGI cutscenes and the voice acting hasn't aged well. The latter especially since it fluctuates between good and mediocre and has a lot of unnaturally long and awkward pauses between almost every sentence.
 * 2) The final boss has only one attack, a blast of lightning, but it can one-shot you even at full health if you don't pause to heal mid-attack, and is hard to reliably dodge.
 * 3) The Resort Area is likely the hardest area in the game. The whole area is completely infested with Groaners, Air Screamers, and Rompers who will absolutely not stop chasing you, making actually taking your time to explore a risky prospect unless you want to use up a ton of bullets and health drinks. The first area's not so bad exploration-wise, consisting mainly of wide streets and just a few buildings, but it's dense with packs of monsters and small enough that running from one will drive you into several more. The second half is a series of narrow docks that are infested with Rompers and Air Screamers. The docks are so thin that you barely have space to maneuver around enemies, and the tank controls mean you'll likely end up running into invisible walls and left vulnerable to attack. Making it worse, it's very easy to miss the map at the beginning of the level, leaving you to run blind through one of the most labyrinthine parts of the game.
 * 4) *Furthermore, it's home to an important side-quest that's fairly easy to miss while you're running for your life and essential to getting the Good ending of the game and there's a point of no return on the bridge where it transitions into the Otherworld, making it impossible to go back and get anything you missed. The side-quest in question is the one you get if you save Michael Kaufmann whose in the Pool Hall.
 * 5) The Gameboy Advance version is terrible since it isn't like the PlayStation version at all, but rather a visual novel.

Tips

 * In dark environments, try to keep your flashlight off when enemies are nearby as they won't attack you unless you touch them or they see you.

Reception
Silent Hill received positive reviews from critics on its release and was commercially successful. It is considered a defining title in the survival horror genre, moving away from B movie horror elements, toward a psychological style of horror emphasizing atmosphere.

Video
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