So the other day I texted my rock-loving friend with a link to "Promise", from the Silent Hill 2 soundtrack, and I went "Dude I kinda wanna know your take on this 'cause this franchise is full of bangers". And his reply was like "I totally dig this shit but I can't picture it in Silent Hill. Isn't that franchise like an atmospheric kind of thing that hipsters usually like?".

I get the feeling that there's a phenomenon happening with a lot of media where a particular work permeates into a community or even pop culture but very few people have actually experienced it first-hand, so an idea of what the work is supposed to be gains an entity of its own and suddenly people get surprised that Metal Gear Solid is a James Bond parody. I think this totally happened with Silent Hill, which often exists not as itself but as "The smart psychological alternative to survival horror in a world where Resident Evil was the reference".

I played Silent Hill for the first time around two years ago (that would be 2022), swapping the controller every 20 minutes with a friend nerd enough to have bought an original PSX copy of the game without me inflicting any kind of terrible torture upon him. And I would like to encourage people to dive into this game, experiencing it first-hand… because what we found was nothing as what we imagined. The truth is, even if its supreme art direction is what comes to mind when reading Silent HIll, there's no end to how dumb this game can get!

I say this in the least condescending way possible. Sometimes people seem to have forgotten that in this franchise you resolve puzzles in abandoned schools by plugging rubber balls into holes or throwing cans into ventilation ducts. Not to mention finding stupid hints at how to defeat a giant lizard in the conveniently only readable book of the whole building. At its core, the game doesn't draw away as far as I thought from other genre games of its time. Nonetheless, it's totally fearless when it comes to mixing arrythmic noises with rock ballads, or creating cutscenes around the weirdest dialogue and pauses you'll ever see in a mainstream videogame just because someone on the team liked David Lynch.

Silent Hill is so punk and imperfect and arbitrary and reckless and I LOVE IT! Maybe so much because the Internet had built such a restrictive idea of what this game was in my mind, and actually playing it felt like discovering some kind of huge secret that an evil corporation had been hiding in plain sight for decades. Face these classics with an open mind, because they are usually a lot more fun than what some of its most gatekeeping fanbase suggests.

Несмотря на возраст в четверть века, игра отлично выглядит, звучит, ощущается и проходится. Всё благодаря тому, что Team Silent делала инновационный проект на годы вперёд.

Первая часть вбирает в себя черты Alone in the Dark и Resident Evil, но не останавливается на этом. Помимо мрачной атмосферы, оккультной тематики, сейв-румов и решения головоломок, первая Silent Hill предлагает игрокам новые механики и развитие идей своих вдохновителей. Так, к примеру, обнаружение монстров происходит через радиоприёмник. Игроку даётся выбор: включать фонарик и привлекать к себе монстров или же блуждать с плохим освещением и быть менее заметным для них. Фиксированная камера стала более динамичной, что позволяет осмотреть помещение целиком, меняя ракурсы нажатием кнопки. Вместо изучения особняка нам предложили бродить по мрачному туманному городу, но элементы метроидвании никуда не делись, так что испытать удовлетворение от постепенного изучения и открытия всех помещений в таких локациях, как школа и больница, всё же выйдет.

Акира Ямаока проделал потрясающую работу со звуком. Даже зная, что в тёмном коридоре никого нет, слушая ужасающие звуки окружения, вы не будете чувствовать себя в безопасности.

Сюжет, пусть и не является откровением и не блистает выдающимися диалогами, всё же выглядит богаче, чем в первых играх серии Alone in the Dark и Resident Evil. А твисты ближе к финалу способны удивить и даже вызвать некоторое изумление от того, что на самом деле случилось.

За счёт удобных сохранений, чекпоинтов, навигации, геймплея, стиля и звукорежиссуры Silent Hill даже сейчас достойна вашего внимания. Крайне рекомендую всем любителям хорроров!

Gosto muito de Silent Hill 2 então esse é um jogo que eu tava pra jogar faz bastante tempo.
A combinação de um emulador muito mal configurado por minha parte e a decisão de encher o jogo de filtros pra tentar deixar ele o mais parecido possível com o original me fizeram ter uma experiência um pouco menos agradável do que eu esperava, visto que o jogo rodou muito mal em certas partes, mas isso é culpa minha mesmo.

Não tenho muito o que dizer sobre o jogo que já não tenha sido dito, um ótimo jogo de fato, mas honestamente a última parte dele me deixou tão frustrado a ponto de eu quase desistir, assistir uma gameplay do resto e considerar ele zerado. Felizmente (ou infelizmente) não fiz isso e sofri muito pra finalizar ele de verdade.

Joguei evitando ao máximo pesquisar ou ver qualquer coisa sobre ele, então eu não descobri que precisava fazer coisas específicas pra ter o final bom até ser tarde demais, o que não é algo que eu reclamaria normalmente, mas o fato de eu ter jogado uma versão mais difícil do jogo por me recusar a tomar spoilers foi bastante frustrante.

No geral um bom jogo, fico feliz de ter finalmente jogado mas tenho quase certeza de que não vou rejogar ou tentar pegar os outros finais. Minhas 5 horas de jogo foram o suficiente.

A breathtaking entry into the early survival horror canon that took inspiration from David Lynch movies and the individual eccentricities of the misfit developers who had been cobbled together from various teams and tasked with creating something that only they would be able to.

What we got was easily the scariest of them all: a masterful aesthetic curation that brought into gaming something unique that simply did not exist before, in gaming or any other medium, really, and spawned a franchise that, unfortunately, never seemed to really understand again just what made this initial title so brilliant. Given the expansive nature of the horror canon, to have created something that actually stands uniquely within it must be such a honor for everyone involved. Team Silent was really, really onto something here.

This title is a real testament to the majesty of gathering creative people and giving them the freedom to take a leap of faith. It is a shame that, in the era of focus groups and even more intricately honed metrics for development success, we don't really get to see titles like this very often. I'm begging all the publishers out there to try something similar. Instead of firing that creatively difficult employee who wants to make things that don't seem to promote reactions from anyone but the weirdos, perhaps giving them the opportunity to work in a way where they can fully embrace their more unique nature is how you're going to create something that actually leaves a lasting impact. Though it may not be what it used to be... long live SILENT HILL.

What an experience, in more ways than one...

The story was honestly great. First off, Harry Mason? Definitely a contender for best video game dad. No amount of man-made horrors beyond his comprehension will deter this man from finding his daughter. You can call it bad, but I think his voice acting just sells how much he doesn't care about anything other than his objective, despite how absolutely fucked up Silent Hill is. The rest of the cast felt kinda secondary. Apart from Dahlia, there's no else you can really care about, they're just there. Cybil? Didn't care. Lisa? Sad, but ultimately indifferent. Kaufmann? Lol

The other experience comes from the gameplay. This was my first "tank controls" type game, and it took some getting used to, but it wasn't so bad. Walking around the foggy town was just as interesting and unnerving as everyone else makes it out to be.
My god, the puzzles though. I applaud anyone who legitimately solved the school piano puzzle. And a special fuck you to the blood bag in the otherworld hospital blending in with the environment so well that it took me quite some time to find it.

The environment is great, the game's age and design give it such a vibe, there wasn't a single place where I didn't feel unsettled and alone.
Wandering around in the city, whether it was nighttime or foggy, hearing the radio static grow and shrink as I progressed to the next destination, it all made me uneasy all the time despite how easy it is to cheese some of the wandering enemies. I commend it for taking a technical difficulty and making it work so well

Honestly. don't let this game's age get to you. It's a beautiful experience beginning to end, with some weird voice acting in between (at least to me, the only other Konami game I played was MGS1 and that had some solid voice acting. They couldn't care to give this one some too?)

Silent Hill is definitely something else. Of course, we all know how much of a unique gem this series is among the rest of the videogame industry. But i would even go as far as to say that Silent Hill is pretty much unique in the entirety of the horror narrative, including cinema, literature, and other media. I would even suggest to those horror fans who are not into videogames that they should make an exception for the Silent Hill series, and if they can’t get to play it, at least they should watch a walkthrough, but they definitely have to experience this in some way.

It is a common thing, when citing games that are somehow considered pioneers in something, to cite them applying a criteria based on technical or gameplay-related aspects, such as “the first survival horror ever” or “the first game done entirely with 3D graphics” and such. I’d like to propose a different criteria, and actually ask about what are some of the first game to heavily borrow inspiration from Twin Peaks. And naturally i’m guessing Silent Hill would play a significant role there, probably not the first, but definitely one of the first to actually cause an impact. Of course, it’s very well known that Team Silent took inspiration from other media besides Twin Peaks (notably, the film Jacob’s Ladder, among others). To me it’s fascinating to think that despite being heavily influence by media coming from western culture, they somehow handled the strictly horror elements in a very japanese manner. That’s at least my impression. But what’s undeniable, is that they definitely wanted to go way deeper than the mere application of typical horror/action tropes. The ambition of Team Silent was more akin to cinema, even literature. And because of that ambition, Silent Hill represents an incredibly solid introduction to the whole saga.

I’m tempted to say that the only problems in SH are related to the gameplay. In this obvious and unavoidable comparison with Resident Evil, one can’t help to notice that Silent Hill’s camera might get confusing at times, that despite having many more movements and mechanics they still get to be pretty clunky at times, that weapons are not as pleasant as they could be, that the concept ends up forcing the look of the game to be quite repetitve at a certain point, that some maze-like areas are a bit frustrating, and that backtracking can get boresome. In more simple words, one can say that Silent Hill isn’t that fun to play as, obviously, Resident Evil is. But still i can’t help but feeling that such criticism wouldn’t be fair at all. Maybe the fact that the gameplay is quite uncomfortable is all part of the nightmare-like mood and the whole concept. Maybe the concept is actually reinforced by a gameplay that isn’t meant to be your average shooter fun, and maybe weapons are not all that fun to use because there shouldn’t actually be fun in killing things, and actually killing is form of survival that only should happen in pretty extreme situations. Probably this seemingly coherence between gameplay and story might be purely accidental, given that maybe developers weren’t purposefuly trying to make the movement kinda janky and the weapons quite tame. But in the end, one has to recognize that both aspects merge just fine, even if some parts are hard to get by, they have to be that way.

Leaving that aside, and even if SH2 and SH3 are pretty much the stars of the show, one can’t deny how much of a game changer SH1 was. It caused a shift not just in Survival Horror, i also think it pretty much created a whole aesthetic that arguably trascended videogames.

It's genuinely incredible seeing the amount of influence this clearly had on horror games for years to come, but it's not hard to see why. This is absolutely packed full of raw atmosphere and dread, memorable imagery, and classic survival horror gameplay. It's also legitimately frightening at times, despite the hilariously awkward dialogue (another beloved hallmark of survival horror for me). It's impressively ambitious, with these huge wide-open sections that set it apart from the tightly controlled smaller environments in older resident evil games, for example. However that ambition did naturally lead to a few issues for me. While the player direction was generally surprisingly good, it's very difficult to tell which buildings you can and can't enter in the overworld, and what items you can and can't interact with in the environments, making it easy to miss important optional areas or just run straight into an unusable door while trying to run from enemies. The map system was extremely cool, with realistic maps that get annotated as you explore areas, but a little inconsistent; sometimes important items/interactables were highlighted on the map, and sometimes they weren't, especially in the later game, which made navigation a lot more difficult. The dynamic camera was another mixed bag; while it was often well used and allowed for larger and more complex areas, it was often frustrating during combat, leaving enemies offscreen or awkwardly pivoting at the wrong times. The final boss especially came down to just firing at what little of it was onscreen and hoping you got a hit in. Still, this is a remarkable achievement for early horror videogames, and more than good enough to get me to play the next few games in the series.

Amazing music, amazing artistic vision, insanely scary without relying on jumpscares, fun puzzles and still relatively fun gameplay. Going through this game is an insanely harrowing experience in the best way possible. I wanted to write something interesting but it's difficult to put into words how great it is. Because it becomes great through the sum of it's parts.

The only reason I don't give it 5 stars is because some puzzles (piano) are very difficult to figure out without a guide, New game + automatically forcing the difficulty up and hard not being fun for me and how the tank controls are outdated by now.

Top jogos do Ps1.
Apesar dos controles de tanque e os poligonos do Ps1 terem envelhecido como leite eu ainda recomendo demais esse jogo.
Mesmo sendo o primeiro ele não perde muito pras suas sequencias em nada que não seja culpa do tempo. A atmosfera, ambientação e conceitos que fizeram todos amarem a franquia já estavam todos ali (Btw a ideia da nevoa é genial pra resolver as limitações da epoca)

É pog podem jogar.

(Alessa My Beloved)

(Eu odeio a ultima area.)

No existe juego de terror post 1999 que no este de alguna manera inspirado en Silent Hill, así como este tomo elementos de Resident Evil, perfeccionó el aspecto del horror al punto de plantar la semilla de una formula del terror que nunca paró de dar frutos.

El juego en si es excelente, con una historia super criptica que te realmente te dan ganas de entender, multiples finales, multiples puzzles, y gráficamente es increíble lo que pudieron hacer con el hardware de la PlayStation 1. Realmente mientras mas investigues sobre el desarollo de Silent Hill 1 mas te vas a sorprender de la absoluta genialidad de los devs.

El gameplay, si bien nunca fue el fuerte de la franquicia, sufre por cuestiones técnicas de la misma consola, pero de ninguna manera hace que sea feo o aburrido de jugar.

Literal es como "El Padrino" de los juegos de terror, tenes que jugarlo amigo

Dios que divertido que es este juego. Los puzzles son un dolor de cabeza absoluto diseñados por satán, MUY troll y rebuscados pero me cague de risa, NUNCA tuve que usar tanto el cerebro en un juego. La atmósfera es excelente, la música es buenísima y los sonidos de todo me hicieron cagar encima varias veces. El gameplay es estresante, en parte por los controles y en parte por el diseño en general. Correr de noche por Silent Hill intentando averiguar a donde concha tengo que ir y evitando los pajaros fue sin duda una experiencia. Los cuartos que te cambian de piso como el baño o la ultima parte en el Hospital son fantásticos. El hospital es fantástico. Me diverti mucho jugando, de hecho me lo terminé en un día. Una pena que no pueda experimentarlo de nuevo (y además saqué el bad ending xd). Mañana arranco con el 2. La historia esta ok pero le falta un poco para terminar de entenderse bien y hay cosas que según Nano literalmente no están explicadas en este juego, pero me gustó igual.