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Silent Hill Thread: Let's Get Wet
Professor Snugglesworth
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
There are Violent and Disturbing images in this thread.
Some parts of this thread may be considered cruel and not safe for 56k.
If I consider the Final Fantasy series as the pinnacle of RPGs (and I do), then I hold the Silent Hill series with the same esteem regarding survival horror. Since the first entry, Silent Hill has delivered a level of terror, fear, and emotional depth that most horror games and movies failed to deliver. If Resident Evil uses physical, probable threats to deliver its scares, Silent Hill reaches out and places you in the center of your inner nightmares.
With the original game now available on PSN, and with Shattered Memories just over a month away, I feel it's time for a thread. Recount your favorite experiences in the past games, what you hope future entries will address, and maybe deliver a few humorous moments where you're playing in the dark and your cat just happened to jump in your bed during a convenient moment.
Fucking cat.
But first, a look back:
Silent Hill
Have you ever seen such aberrations? Ever even heard of such things? You and I both know creatures like that don't exist.
The Game: The one that started it all. Mild mannered single dad Harry Mason and his daughter Cheryl experience a sudden car crash while traveling to Silent Hill on vacation. After awakening in the town, Harry remains unhurt but finds that Cheryl is nowhere to be seen. Pushing through the eerily thick fog, Harry scours the seemingly abandoned town to find his daughter. But how deep into the nightmare is he willing to go?
Being a fresh new PS1 owner, FMVs were all the rage for me, especially after almost a year of envy as an exclusive N64 owner. When I saw magazine scans of Silent Hill's breathtaking CG, I was immediately intrigued. It wasn't too long until I snagged a demo disc from OPM, ready to see what Konami had cooked up after their incredible Metal Gear Solid game.
I was not prepared; As soon as you start the game, you realize that you've never played anything like it. Things start out incredibly quiet (too quiet), the music incredibly downplayed as mere ambiance. It isn't long until the sound starts to rise up in tension as the screen darkens from the sudden shift to night, and the horror begins to take you. When the game world turns to daylight again.....the nightmare continues.
This game still holds my personal distinction as the scariest entry in the series, in fact the scariest game of all time. In the early Resident Evil games, you were given a very limited supply of ammo, encouraging you to spend more time avoiding enemies than shooting them. Silent Hill took things further by giving you limited ammo, increasing the number of monstrosities looking to eat you, and make your character an easily fatigued, clumsy everyman who has to struggle just to make it to the end of the street. With the number of monsters, the obscuring vision (either by fog, rain, or pitch black night), the horrific imagery of a town transformed into a hell on earth, and the sudden surround sound of freakish noises, there isn't a single point in this game that players feel safe.
Did You Know? The game is loaded, and I mean LOADED with easter eggs. Some are obvious and easy to spot, others require an almost sequence-breaking amount of camera fiddling to spot them. Once there was a website that attempted to collect all of these in-jokes, but it's been lost to me. Until then, this video does a decent job of spotting at least half of these.
Videos of Interest:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tty7stwZBsY
Silent Hill 2
Is it dead? (poke) What the hell is it?
The Game:Taking place an undetermined time after the first game, Silent Hill 2 features a new, not-quite-mild-mannered protagonist named James Sunderland, who was given a letter from his dead wife Mary that she is waiting for him in their favorite vacation spot, Silent Hill. What awaits him is a tender reunion with his lost love. Oh wait, no....it's actually pain and suffering through a downward spiral of madness and hate.
The first PS2 game to wow me visually, and one that still holds up to this day, Silent Hill is regarded by most fans as the best game in the series. I'm not inclined to debate that, although I feel that its scare factor doesn't quite reach the original game's nonstop horror. Instead, SH2 takes a quieter, more disturbing approach to scare you, by putting you knee-deep into the inner torment that James and the other characters experience, with one of the best written plots ever seen in a videogame, full of still-discussed twists and theories. It also features the best set pieces in the series, from the vacant apartments, the graffiti-ridden streets and the underground prison. The monsters don't put up much of a fight as the creatures in the first game, but that looming fear still remains.
Did You Know? Pyramid Head's infamous introduction, seen below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6LLidwpvf4
was inspired by Dennis Hopper's similar introduction in Blue Velvet:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUPzRfxG9Kc
Videos of Interest:
From the Art of Silent Hill 2 DVD, these two abstract and all-around fucked up videos serve as a tech demo of sorts, showcasing the kind of aesthetics the artists of Team Silent were looking for. It's worth noting that the freakish, female-looking creature was going to be a boss character along with Pyramid Head.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqwlX8WGSFM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssr2KPrMDsY
Silent Hill 3
Monsters? They looked like monsters to you...?
The Game: Young teenager Heather was just wrapping up her day in a local shopping mall (which, notably, is far and away from the town of Silent Hill), when an old detective approaches her, claiming to have some important details about her birth. After successfully giving him the slip, Heather finds her path outside the mall blocked, forcing her to find another exit inside. What she doesn't know is that she has been summoned by the town, and it's not going to let her go.
Featuring even better visuals than the 2nd game, Silent Hill 3 feels closer to the original game in terms of horror (and for good reason, as you'll discover later on), bringing back more aggressive monsters along with some really funky organic graphic effects. Main character Heather is also a breath of fresh air, neither bland like Harry nor emotionally distant like James. On the outset, she appears like your average teenager, even going so far as to crack a few jokes during her descent into madness, but a deep, dark secret lurks within those blond curls. If Silent Hill 3 were the end of a trilogy, it would have been a perfect way to wrap up the series.
Did You Know? Having a Silent Hill 2 save file in the same memory card as Silent Hill 3 opens up some additional messages and cutscenes that bridge the two games together.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIPGW09zjbc
Videos of Interest:
Why does Europe get all the good SH stuff? With their copy of the game came a freaky bonus video of Silent Hill's cuddly mascot, Robbie the Rabbit.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdaSeHaWHrs
How to run Silent Hill 3 in Widescreen and Custom Resolutions on your PC
The PC port of Silent Hill 2 is pretty, certainly a step up from the PS2 version, but it only features a set amount of resolutions and a very annoying delay when viewing the map or looking at puzzles. The PC version of Silent Hill 3 improves on these faults in every single way, and with little to no effort, you can customize the resolution to however you want, as well as hack the game to run at a widescreen ratio. The results are quite gorgeous.
Here's the instructions in how to achieve this, taken from the Widescreen Gaming forum.
Silent Hill 4: The Room
I'm always watching you. I'm ALWAYS watching you.
The Game: Having even less of a connection to the town than SH3's Heather, Henry Townsend was enjoying the simple life in his apartment room only to wake up one day and find his apartment door completely sealed and barricaded, and all communications with the outside world severed. After five days of confinement (and somehow not losing his marbles in the process), a large hole opens up in Henry's bathroom, offering him a way out....but not a way to freedom.
Lots of people consider SH4 the black sheep of the series, featuring a tedious "hub-world" in the form of Henry's room, requiring repeat visits back and forth to gather the necessary items to proceed. It also features an annoying new enemy in the form of unkillable ghosts, who cause damage just by being close to the player. Despite these issues, I still hold this game in high regard. It still manages to evoke the same feel and dread of the previous Silent Hills, and the plot is the most intriguing of the four, with loads of cool details and creepy secrets as Henry's apartment grows closer and closer to the "other side". It also features some of my favorite music in the series, including Wounded Warsong:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXhoD9MUDts
If Gans skipped ahead and made this the adaption for the next Silent Hill movie, I would be overjoyed. Everyone knows about SH2's twist by now, anyway.
Did You Know? Walter Sullivan was mentioned in Silent Hill 2, under one of the text documents.
James' father is also the landlord of Henry's apartment.
Videos of Interest:
Robbie is Watching You
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BPLmr2VSY0
Silent Hill: The Movie
Look at me, I'm burning.
The [strike]Game[/strike] Movie: Directed by Christopher Gans, Silent Hill's live adaption retells the first game's story, replacing Harry with Rose, a [strike]single[/strike] mother searching for her missing daughter [strike]Cheryl[/strike] Shannon in the town of Silent Hill. Bad things happen. Lots of bad things.
Despite taking an unfortunately different direction in the second half (involving extremely cliched elements not present in the original game), this movie is an excellent adaption of the game. The director is clearly a huge fan of the series, and he went to great lengths to stick to the source material, even going so far as to have Akira Yamaoka resample most of his songs for the movie. The costume design and CG effects are gorgeous, no doubt freaking out a large number of film-goers who have never heard of the series before (my Mom still has nightmares over the demon babies). The dialogue is a bit on the cheesy side, but the good news is that there isn't too much of it (again, he stuck close to the source material). As one of the very few videogame movies to get it right, it gets a big recommendation from me.
Did You Know? In the opening scene of the movie, Cheryl's name can be seen as graffiti.
Also, it has been recently announced that Roger Avery and Samuel Adida have been signed up for the sequel, and that filming will begin next year. Can't wait!
Silent Hill Origins
They're all crazy.
The Game: Late night trucker Travis stops his big rig after almost hitting a passerby, and after exiting his vehicle spots a house enveloped in flames. Hearing the screams of someone trapped inside, he bursts into the house only to find a barely living, heavily burned child. After escaping the house with the girl, Travis instantly finds himself in the town of Silent Hill, fresh into the nightmarish curse that will keep it festering for years to come.
A prequel developed by NA developer Climax, Origins gets credit for adapting the SH feel and aesthetics, but also loses points for sticking too close to the formula without trying out anything new. The only difference here is the combat, which features breakable weapons and QTEs. Neither were well received by fans. It's still worth playing, especially in a dark room or outside at the dead of night, but it could have been so much more than just "Silent Hill's Greatest Hits".
Did You Know? Travis makes an appearance in Silent Hill: Homecoming.
Videos of Interest:
Beta footage of the game, back when it had a RE4 style camera. It's a good thing they nixed this, along with the crappy monster designs.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnoUnG2SC8o
Silent Hill Homecoming
Alright, you cuff him, I'll read him his rights.
The Game: After coming home from an unnamed war, Alex finds his hometown of Shephard's Glen oddly vacant and overrun with monsters. He also learns that his little brother Josh is missing. Eventually he learns that the answers can be found in Silent Hill, which at this point is publicly known as a place you do not want to step foot in.
The first major console sequel since SH4, Homecoming has left fans divided. Some hate it, some praise it as a better game than SH4. I myself am split down the middle, acknowledging the great visual effects (especially the transitions between "normal" Silent Hill and the "other side" and more coherent dialog, but the story does not hold a candle to any of the previous games, featuring a twist you can spot from orbit. The game's combat, which works just fine, also takes away much of the fear and tension when you're character is perfectly capable of dispatching monsters, and at some points of the game you're actually required to kill all the enemies to advance. The game's heavy gore and final setting are also too noisy and lack the subtle horror of the series, feeling more like "Saw: The Game" (which ironically is being released soon by Konami). It isn't bad, but it's not among my favorite titles in the series.
Did You Know? Mary's maiden name (from SH2) is Shepard. A connection?
Also, taking into account its similar sounds and grunts, the game's final boss is apparently the same species as the unseen jailed monsters from SH2.
Silent Hill: Shattered Memories
I want you to know, this will be different. We take this at your pace. We go back to the start.
Release Date: November 3, 2009
The Game: More than just a mere remake, Shattered Memories takes the familiar story of Harry and his missing daughter and transforms it into a psychological deconstruction of the first game's events. Did Harry just imagine the events of Silent Hill, or is his trip to the psyche ward an illusion in itself?
Despite being developed by Climax (Origins), I've got high hopes for this game. It seems to feature everything I've ever wanted in a horror game. Unfortunately, it's release has been pushed back from Halloween, but I'll still be eagerly anticipating this game.
Did You Know? The concept of a psyche patient retelling his events of Silent Hill have been rumored as a Silent Hill game since the launch of Silent Hill 3. Was this an unused concept by Konami, or did Climax get its idea from the persistent online rumor?
Videos of Interest:
Gamerscon 2009 trailer (warning, potential spoiler near the end of the vid).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7D30ebrwVXQ
Some parts of this thread may be considered cruel and not safe for 56k.
If I consider the Final Fantasy series as the pinnacle of RPGs (and I do), then I hold the Silent Hill series with the same esteem regarding survival horror. Since the first entry, Silent Hill has delivered a level of terror, fear, and emotional depth that most horror games and movies failed to deliver. If Resident Evil uses physical, probable threats to deliver its scares, Silent Hill reaches out and places you in the center of your inner nightmares.
With the original game now available on PSN, and with Shattered Memories just over a month away, I feel it's time for a thread. Recount your favorite experiences in the past games, what you hope future entries will address, and maybe deliver a few humorous moments where you're playing in the dark and your cat just happened to jump in your bed during a convenient moment.
Fucking cat.
But first, a look back:
Silent Hill
Have you ever seen such aberrations? Ever even heard of such things? You and I both know creatures like that don't exist.
The Game: The one that started it all. Mild mannered single dad Harry Mason and his daughter Cheryl experience a sudden car crash while traveling to Silent Hill on vacation. After awakening in the town, Harry remains unhurt but finds that Cheryl is nowhere to be seen. Pushing through the eerily thick fog, Harry scours the seemingly abandoned town to find his daughter. But how deep into the nightmare is he willing to go?
Being a fresh new PS1 owner, FMVs were all the rage for me, especially after almost a year of envy as an exclusive N64 owner. When I saw magazine scans of Silent Hill's breathtaking CG, I was immediately intrigued. It wasn't too long until I snagged a demo disc from OPM, ready to see what Konami had cooked up after their incredible Metal Gear Solid game.
I was not prepared; As soon as you start the game, you realize that you've never played anything like it. Things start out incredibly quiet (too quiet), the music incredibly downplayed as mere ambiance. It isn't long until the sound starts to rise up in tension as the screen darkens from the sudden shift to night, and the horror begins to take you. When the game world turns to daylight again.....the nightmare continues.
This game still holds my personal distinction as the scariest entry in the series, in fact the scariest game of all time. In the early Resident Evil games, you were given a very limited supply of ammo, encouraging you to spend more time avoiding enemies than shooting them. Silent Hill took things further by giving you limited ammo, increasing the number of monstrosities looking to eat you, and make your character an easily fatigued, clumsy everyman who has to struggle just to make it to the end of the street. With the number of monsters, the obscuring vision (either by fog, rain, or pitch black night), the horrific imagery of a town transformed into a hell on earth, and the sudden surround sound of freakish noises, there isn't a single point in this game that players feel safe.
Did You Know? The game is loaded, and I mean LOADED with easter eggs. Some are obvious and easy to spot, others require an almost sequence-breaking amount of camera fiddling to spot them. Once there was a website that attempted to collect all of these in-jokes, but it's been lost to me. Until then, this video does a decent job of spotting at least half of these.
Videos of Interest:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tty7stwZBsY
Silent Hill 2
Is it dead? (poke) What the hell is it?
The Game:Taking place an undetermined time after the first game, Silent Hill 2 features a new, not-quite-mild-mannered protagonist named James Sunderland, who was given a letter from his dead wife Mary that she is waiting for him in their favorite vacation spot, Silent Hill. What awaits him is a tender reunion with his lost love. Oh wait, no....it's actually pain and suffering through a downward spiral of madness and hate.
The first PS2 game to wow me visually, and one that still holds up to this day, Silent Hill is regarded by most fans as the best game in the series. I'm not inclined to debate that, although I feel that its scare factor doesn't quite reach the original game's nonstop horror. Instead, SH2 takes a quieter, more disturbing approach to scare you, by putting you knee-deep into the inner torment that James and the other characters experience, with one of the best written plots ever seen in a videogame, full of still-discussed twists and theories. It also features the best set pieces in the series, from the vacant apartments, the graffiti-ridden streets and the underground prison. The monsters don't put up much of a fight as the creatures in the first game, but that looming fear still remains.
Did You Know? Pyramid Head's infamous introduction, seen below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6LLidwpvf4
was inspired by Dennis Hopper's similar introduction in Blue Velvet:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUPzRfxG9Kc
Videos of Interest:
From the Art of Silent Hill 2 DVD, these two abstract and all-around fucked up videos serve as a tech demo of sorts, showcasing the kind of aesthetics the artists of Team Silent were looking for. It's worth noting that the freakish, female-looking creature was going to be a boss character along with Pyramid Head.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqwlX8WGSFM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssr2KPrMDsY
Silent Hill 3
Monsters? They looked like monsters to you...?
The Game: Young teenager Heather was just wrapping up her day in a local shopping mall (which, notably, is far and away from the town of Silent Hill), when an old detective approaches her, claiming to have some important details about her birth. After successfully giving him the slip, Heather finds her path outside the mall blocked, forcing her to find another exit inside. What she doesn't know is that she has been summoned by the town, and it's not going to let her go.
Featuring even better visuals than the 2nd game, Silent Hill 3 feels closer to the original game in terms of horror (and for good reason, as you'll discover later on), bringing back more aggressive monsters along with some really funky organic graphic effects. Main character Heather is also a breath of fresh air, neither bland like Harry nor emotionally distant like James. On the outset, she appears like your average teenager, even going so far as to crack a few jokes during her descent into madness, but a deep, dark secret lurks within those blond curls. If Silent Hill 3 were the end of a trilogy, it would have been a perfect way to wrap up the series.
Did You Know? Having a Silent Hill 2 save file in the same memory card as Silent Hill 3 opens up some additional messages and cutscenes that bridge the two games together.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIPGW09zjbc
Videos of Interest:
Why does Europe get all the good SH stuff? With their copy of the game came a freaky bonus video of Silent Hill's cuddly mascot, Robbie the Rabbit.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdaSeHaWHrs
How to run Silent Hill 3 in Widescreen and Custom Resolutions on your PC
The PC port of Silent Hill 2 is pretty, certainly a step up from the PS2 version, but it only features a set amount of resolutions and a very annoying delay when viewing the map or looking at puzzles. The PC version of Silent Hill 3 improves on these faults in every single way, and with little to no effort, you can customize the resolution to however you want, as well as hack the game to run at a widescreen ratio. The results are quite gorgeous.
Here's the instructions in how to achieve this, taken from the Widescreen Gaming forum.
http://wsgfmedia.com/uploads/paddywak/files/sh3FOV.rar
This FOV tool can be used to set the FOV for the game in widescreen.
To get the game going in widescreen ....
Run the game once in a 4x3 resolution ... and set up all the details/quality that you want.
Note : The Rendering Resolution ... set in the game options menu is not the resolution that the game will run at but the size of the textures that the game will use.
Exit the game... edit the disp.ini in the SILENT HILL 3 folder.
Set the Size to 1920x1080 ..... or your desired widescreen resolution.
Warning: If you go back into the Options menu in the game after you have set this resolution... the game will revert back to default resolutions.
Now run the FOV tool... Set it to ...
Width Field of View (FOV): 0.91
Height Field of View (FOV): 1.1
Leave it running and start the game.
Silent Hill 4: The Room
I'm always watching you. I'm ALWAYS watching you.
The Game: Having even less of a connection to the town than SH3's Heather, Henry Townsend was enjoying the simple life in his apartment room only to wake up one day and find his apartment door completely sealed and barricaded, and all communications with the outside world severed. After five days of confinement (and somehow not losing his marbles in the process), a large hole opens up in Henry's bathroom, offering him a way out....but not a way to freedom.
Lots of people consider SH4 the black sheep of the series, featuring a tedious "hub-world" in the form of Henry's room, requiring repeat visits back and forth to gather the necessary items to proceed. It also features an annoying new enemy in the form of unkillable ghosts, who cause damage just by being close to the player. Despite these issues, I still hold this game in high regard. It still manages to evoke the same feel and dread of the previous Silent Hills, and the plot is the most intriguing of the four, with loads of cool details and creepy secrets as Henry's apartment grows closer and closer to the "other side". It also features some of my favorite music in the series, including Wounded Warsong:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXhoD9MUDts
If Gans skipped ahead and made this the adaption for the next Silent Hill movie, I would be overjoyed. Everyone knows about SH2's twist by now, anyway.
Did You Know? Walter Sullivan was mentioned in Silent Hill 2, under one of the text documents.
James' father is also the landlord of Henry's apartment.
Videos of Interest:
Robbie is Watching You
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BPLmr2VSY0
Silent Hill: The Movie
Look at me, I'm burning.
The [strike]Game[/strike] Movie: Directed by Christopher Gans, Silent Hill's live adaption retells the first game's story, replacing Harry with Rose, a [strike]single[/strike] mother searching for her missing daughter [strike]Cheryl[/strike] Shannon in the town of Silent Hill. Bad things happen. Lots of bad things.
Despite taking an unfortunately different direction in the second half (involving extremely cliched elements not present in the original game), this movie is an excellent adaption of the game. The director is clearly a huge fan of the series, and he went to great lengths to stick to the source material, even going so far as to have Akira Yamaoka resample most of his songs for the movie. The costume design and CG effects are gorgeous, no doubt freaking out a large number of film-goers who have never heard of the series before (my Mom still has nightmares over the demon babies). The dialogue is a bit on the cheesy side, but the good news is that there isn't too much of it (again, he stuck close to the source material). As one of the very few videogame movies to get it right, it gets a big recommendation from me.
Did You Know? In the opening scene of the movie, Cheryl's name can be seen as graffiti.
Also, it has been recently announced that Roger Avery and Samuel Adida have been signed up for the sequel, and that filming will begin next year. Can't wait!
Silent Hill Origins
They're all crazy.
The Game: Late night trucker Travis stops his big rig after almost hitting a passerby, and after exiting his vehicle spots a house enveloped in flames. Hearing the screams of someone trapped inside, he bursts into the house only to find a barely living, heavily burned child. After escaping the house with the girl, Travis instantly finds himself in the town of Silent Hill, fresh into the nightmarish curse that will keep it festering for years to come.
A prequel developed by NA developer Climax, Origins gets credit for adapting the SH feel and aesthetics, but also loses points for sticking too close to the formula without trying out anything new. The only difference here is the combat, which features breakable weapons and QTEs. Neither were well received by fans. It's still worth playing, especially in a dark room or outside at the dead of night, but it could have been so much more than just "Silent Hill's Greatest Hits".
Did You Know? Travis makes an appearance in Silent Hill: Homecoming.
Videos of Interest:
Beta footage of the game, back when it had a RE4 style camera. It's a good thing they nixed this, along with the crappy monster designs.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnoUnG2SC8o
Silent Hill Homecoming
Alright, you cuff him, I'll read him his rights.
The Game: After coming home from an unnamed war, Alex finds his hometown of Shephard's Glen oddly vacant and overrun with monsters. He also learns that his little brother Josh is missing. Eventually he learns that the answers can be found in Silent Hill, which at this point is publicly known as a place you do not want to step foot in.
The first major console sequel since SH4, Homecoming has left fans divided. Some hate it, some praise it as a better game than SH4. I myself am split down the middle, acknowledging the great visual effects (especially the transitions between "normal" Silent Hill and the "other side" and more coherent dialog, but the story does not hold a candle to any of the previous games, featuring a twist you can spot from orbit. The game's combat, which works just fine, also takes away much of the fear and tension when you're character is perfectly capable of dispatching monsters, and at some points of the game you're actually required to kill all the enemies to advance. The game's heavy gore and final setting are also too noisy and lack the subtle horror of the series, feeling more like "Saw: The Game" (which ironically is being released soon by Konami). It isn't bad, but it's not among my favorite titles in the series.
Did You Know? Mary's maiden name (from SH2) is Shepard. A connection?
Also, taking into account its similar sounds and grunts, the game's final boss is apparently the same species as the unseen jailed monsters from SH2.
Silent Hill: Shattered Memories
I want you to know, this will be different. We take this at your pace. We go back to the start.
Release Date: November 3, 2009
The Game: More than just a mere remake, Shattered Memories takes the familiar story of Harry and his missing daughter and transforms it into a psychological deconstruction of the first game's events. Did Harry just imagine the events of Silent Hill, or is his trip to the psyche ward an illusion in itself?
Despite being developed by Climax (Origins), I've got high hopes for this game. It seems to feature everything I've ever wanted in a horror game. Unfortunately, it's release has been pushed back from Halloween, but I'll still be eagerly anticipating this game.
Did You Know? The concept of a psyche patient retelling his events of Silent Hill have been rumored as a Silent Hill game since the launch of Silent Hill 3. Was this an unused concept by Konami, or did Climax get its idea from the persistent online rumor?
Videos of Interest:
Gamerscon 2009 trailer (warning, potential spoiler near the end of the vid).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7D30ebrwVXQ
Professor Snugglesworth on
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Posts
Thank you for making this, the last SH thread was pretty much me and everyone else taking the Shattered Memories thread way off-topic. I recently played through all of the games and by far the scariest thing in the series was running through the town in SH1 at night. Fucking scary as hell.
Also SH4 is trash and I hate it. I got 9 stars and all the endings so I feel my opinion is accurate. The game is half good, half crap, and you can pinpoint exactly when the game starts sucking. However, I am going to play devil's advocate here and defend one thing about the game. The ghosts are not that bad. Yes they're unkillable, that's true. However none of the normal ghosts are any kind of threat. The special ones are, but you get enough swords for all of them. The only one that's a problem is the one in the subway because I swear to god she's glitched and won't stay down for a stabbing. Other than that just run away from them and the only damage you'll ever take is proximity damage. Now the enemies that pop out of the wall on the escalator, that I can't defend. Those guys are fuckers and I hate them. Even with the God Axe they suck.
P.S., Snugglesworth you should change the italics under the picture of the door to "It was always you that I despised." It works in that it connects to the game and also reflects popular opinion of SH4!
SH4 had some hideously bad design choices, but it is the only piece of media, and the only game, to give me horrible nightmares every goddamned time I play it.
Seriously I know as soon as I hear that off-note plucked-strings intro that I just cashed in my ticket for a night of claustrophobic terrors where my mattress grows feet and tries to eat me, among other things.
It's a shame it did that one thing so well and got bogged down almost everywhere else.
After beating Silent Hill 1, I immediately bought my PS2 and Silent Hill 2 (this was within a few months of Silent Hill 3's release, which I was also looking forward too and bought on release day).
I played those three a lot, achieving all endings and such (still haven't gotten around to doing a 10-star run on any of them, though). Now I also own SH4, 0rigins, and Homecoming, but I've barely gotten around to playing 0rigins, only got about 70% of the way through SH4 and never beat it, and only recently got around to playing Homecoming (which I did beat and get all endings in a matter of a few days).
Homecoming was interesting. It wasn't quite as different as I feared it would be, but there were still some decidedly non-SH parts to it, and I think they borrowed too heavily from the movie's visual design. Also, I think the various plot twists I suspected when investigating Alex's house would have been better than the actual plot we got. I did like the weapons having alternate uses out of combat, but they didn't need to be QTEs and probably didn't need to be as common as they were.
Also, it handled endings better than 0rigins and 3 (both of which only had 3 endings, and forced you to get the good ending the first time) and 4 (which left out the joke ending), though you shouldn't have been able to get the joke ending on your first playthrough (or at least not as easily as it was available). I like having multiple endings available to me the first time and not having a definitive ending for the games in this series (unfortunately game references in later games have pretty much confirmed the endings of almost every game), as well as fun things to shoot for on replays like joke endings and toy laser guns.
SH4 is pretty much the perfect example of a game that had some great ideas, but just really couldn't deliver on them. Nearly anything in the room when it starts going to hell was just amazingly creepy and worked so well. You keep telling yourself to stop, but you just have to look through the peephole while it's bleeding. And god help you if you picked up the doll. Unfortunately the game suffers from horrible fetch quest puzzles, backtracking the entire game, escorting, beep beep I'm a wheelchair, and burping nurses. I also thought Walter was a great idea to use as a villain and I thought he was a very interesting character, but the way he affected the gameplay just ended up pissing me off.
Thank you sir for sharing my favorite moment in SH1. The part where you step out the backyard of the vacant house, the sky suddenly turns dark, that chilling music is playing
, and you have to hoof it for at least five minutes while avoiding monsters remains my favorite SH moment of all time.
Starts at 8:15
Man, I would, but the thing is I really really love that quote from the game.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfa3EBvjbA0
It's my most quoted line from the series.
I recently tried SH2 on the PC (for the Maria sidequest, which is mostly "eh"). The game does look great on higher resolutions and it also has controller support, but the one nagging draw is the wait time when bringing up the map and inventory screens. It takes an extra couple of seconds than it would on the console versions.
Not sure if this applies to SH3, which I'd like to try soon.
I'd say a horror game that managed to scare the pants out of you should be considered (mostly) a success.
By the way, there's a Silent Hill Haunted Maze coming soon.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbpZCju_RGk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKPOGJvhAII
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SBY_fUpmnQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_e8abf_Tds&feature=PlayList&p=4EB4A77674EB65D1&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyoGrx4-nDA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pti8n8YGl3k
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dq_nqVQ8tSg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZmMD84XpCs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NS8K3Pifjkw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMvOkUMPZ0g
My favourite is probably 3, then 2. 4 is okay.
Silent Hill 3 has the unique distinction of a poppy guitar-rock song that causes a Pavlovian response of mortal terror.
That's some kind of accomplishment, right there.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7PYaZVl8KQ
I had no idea about this, because I only ever lost that boss fight by being stabbed. I had no idea he had a grab move along with......a tongue.
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Also my favorite song is by far
Music Box.
It's the art for the official ost cover btw.
I'm glad you asked.
I'm someone who has always been interested in the SIlent Hill series, but for whatever reasons never actually purchased or barely played any of the games. I played the original SH demo way back before it even came out and remember being balls scared.
I recently downloaded Silent Hill on PSN, and I can say that as a first time player completely new to the series, it blows me away.
I could never get scared in any original Resident Evil game with their dated graphics, but Silent Hill actually has me anxious as I play because of the atmosphere alone. I'm playing scared and loving it. The controls and gameplay took a bit of getting used to as they are "looser" than say RE controls, but now I'm quite proficient with the iron bar and I'm enjoying exploration an absolute tonne.
I'm partway through the Alternate School and I can't wait to see what's next in this town. And I can't wait to play through all the games in the series!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1__Wn7ehRE
That song made this scene especially awesome. Of course I could say that with pretty much any SH scene.
As for SH1, the beauty is that the old graphics give the game an abstract, distorted look which only heightens the experience. It's like an old looking horror movie like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (the good one).
Edit: Slightly beaten. A word of advice for the monsters you face outside in the streets.
Run Away.
Run Away Run Away Run Away Run Away Run Away Run Away
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It's... different.
edit: I really hope that they put silent hill 1 back to the PAL PSN though.
That's good for me at any rate, because I really wasn't a fan of SH3's music. I thought it was the worst of the series. It just didn't work for me. The only ones I enjoyed were the intro song and "End of Small Sanctuary". Don't even get me started on the credits song. Holy crap does that song suck balls.
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What is this craziness.
I love 3's ost alot. About the same as 2.
4 I didn't really feel that it's as solid as 2 or 3. Haven't heard 1 yet.
:^: :^: :^:
Downloading now!
Favourite creepy moments:
Fuck.
Shit.
BALLS SHIT FUCK GET OUT OF MY HAIR LEAVE ME ALONE
Man, Silent Hill lost me a lot of nights sleep.
I know all about what happens though, I've read quite a few good plot synopses and analyses.
Hopes very high for Shattered Memories.
Then Silent Hill 4 killed my love of the series and for some reason now I just can't play Siren/SH games alone anymore and noone has the stomach to play them with me.
It goes something like "get up, make coffee, remember dead wife, do laundry to forget..."
Really? Man, that's even more unsettling.
I should get back into these, methinks
A highly-anticipated new game sounds like a great way to introduce PS2 games on the PSN to me, at any rate.
"Jaaaaaaaaaaames Sunderland! You're our next contestant!"
I read it on a FAQ ages ago, even if you turn your TV up to blast volume the words are so hushed you'll probably never make them out.
I love Yahtzee's description of your first encounter with Pyramid Head:
I love those moments. And therefore I shall list the best one. Silent Hill 3's scene:
It wasn't supposed to stop there...
Nope, not gonna happen.
And you're probably overestimating the anticipation level for it.
I'm more interested if they would do a remake, like what Sony is doing with god of war.
Also, apparently we get a SH2 film? Looks to be a sequel to the first rather then following the plot of SH2.
http://kotaku.com/5360270/silent-hill-2-movie-official
Haven't seen the first one, but apparently it's pretty good?
edit: oh wait, didn't see it mentioned under the silent hill movie spoiler in OP.
Sorry!
People have been telling you lies. I'm sure it will be in no way related to the game and yet feature even MORE pyramid head than the first movie did.
Also, 4 may be shit but the soundtrack for it and 3 are my favorites.
Steam
And that one scene where PH rips out someone's skin was awesome.
3's soundtrack is my favorite as well. Prefer 2 over 4 though.
SIRENT HIRR! NOBOODA! NICHE DIE EE DAYOOOOOOOO!!:evil:
SH3 UFO Ending+ song
Handmade Jewelry by me on EtsyGames for sale
Me on Twitch!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDBX4tKDoCw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUDcSeUvkOw
"I'm not dead"
"What are you then?"
"I'm alive!"
"Then what are you doing here?"
This dude does miss the flayed dog scene, which was a direct inspiration for the dog enemies in SH1.
Also for the first Silent Hill, Stephen King's The Mist was a big influence.
The Mist
I think I'm going to replay the first Silent Hill soon. Been meaning to for some time.
Silent Hill 4 is probably the only one of the first four I didn't bother to play through more than once. The whole babysitting + being chased part of the second half of the game ruined the experience for me.
Although, like the movie it sounds like it gets less apealing as it goes on. Still tempted though.