The birth of psychological horror in gaming.

If Resident Evil is an sci-fi action horror with zombies and monsters, then Silent Hill is an psychological horror arthouse drama with cults and demons. Another thing, this is in fact my favorite PS1 game.

The level design and music are the best of the series and the story is amazing aswell since it offers some great mysteries and the arguably most tragic character in gaming.

It's worth mentioning that this is also the scariest Silent Hill game and thus the scariest game ever made. It for sure has the scariest monsters in the franchise. The puzzles are also well thought out but not overly complicated. The boss fights are fine aswell. Better as in SH2 but not than SH3.

The characters are also alright with Alessa being the most interesting in it. There isn't much else to say other that it gets overshadowed way to much by it's successor.

10/10 nightmares become reality.

Check my review for the movie on Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/xgmanx/film/silent-hill/

Maybe not a perfect 5/5 but given, you know, EVERYTHING that's going on here both technically and structurally (whether for it's time or not) it just feels wrong not to give it that. This is like everything I could ask for in a narrative video game. Further proof that nothing matches the original PlayStation's aesthetics. I always kind of push survival horror to the side despite the fact I'm always playing near perfect games from that genre. Haven't played something that's crawled under my skin this well in a long while, if ever. Hope to get the good ending (the one time I don't fully explore an area in this game upon immediately entering it and it SCREWS me) and try out those sequels (legally, but also I'm not paying like $100+ each for them) someday in the future.

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?)