Silent Hill

I've played so many Resident Evil games over the course of my logging, but never delved into its biggest competitor in the survival horror genre- the Silent Hill series. The first game, Silent Hill came out in 1999, three years after the original Resident Evil, so at that point RE was nearly three games deep- remember what I said in my Dragon Warrior II post about missing those quick sequels? Anyway most of the reviews I had read claimed Silent Hill goes for a more creepy overall vibe rather than the more 'visceral' scares of Resident Evil, and I suppose I agree. Silent Hill offers up an overall much more creepy environment, and does so in a very clever way- to mask the PlayStation's hardware limitations, your field of view is only a few yards, so for most of the game you're either almost completely surrounded by darkness or a blizzard. You really never know what will pop up right in front of you until you're standing next to it. For the most part the game plays pretty similar to its survival horror counterparts- you run around exploring for whatever pieces of equipment and keys can open the next door while trying to find your mysteriously disappearing daughter. There's a bit more plot here than in the Resident Evil series as you try to stop a town from being taken over by some ultimate evil, but the voice work is laughably bad and time and time again made me appreciate the fact that video game voices are done by professionals these days. Silent Hill also has no inventory management, allowing you to carry everything you find. This easiness is offset by the much more difficult riddles and puzzles. A typical Resident Evil puzzle is hardly a puzzle at all and usually more of a fetch quest, but Silent Hill has some interesting puzzles that take a bit of time to solve- usually involving deciphering some vague poetry passage. Still though, there's only a few of these in the game and for the most part you're looking for 'Storeroom Key' or 'Red Plate" or shit like that. This is something I find fun, and I would like to attempt some sort of modern day version of these survival horror games that have little emphasis on action. Supposedly Resident Evil: Revelations is exactly that, but I wouldn't expect a post on that for a long time.