I only had a Genesis at home well into the early 2000s, so a lot of my early experience with the 32-bit era was courtesy of the many afternoons spent on the PS1 at my cool uncle's place. We'd take turns watching each other play, and he let me play Resident Evil when I was 13 (as I recall, he was also the one who introduced me to Doom at the tender age of 9).
So it came as a surprise to me when I saw a copy of Silent Hill lying around at his place, recognized it ("hey, it's kinda like Resident Evil right?") and he flat-out refused to let 15-year-old me play it. A fact that, on finally getting around to playing it just now, I will be forever thankful for.
The RE series' brand of horror focuses on startling the player and grossing them out - much of its iconic feeling of tension and dread comes from the resource-management aspect of the mechanics. By contrast, Silent Hill's flavor of horror focuses on, well, horrifying the player. It's really telling that one of the first items you find is a radio that spits out white noise when an enemy is nearby, as if the game is telling you it doesn't need to resort to jumpscares to be scary. Indeed, the shock appearance of new enemies when going through old environs - a favorite technique from the Resi and Doom jumpscare toolboxes - is almost never utilized in this game! Nevertheless, it managed to evoke a primal feeling of unsettled dread in me as I played - it was not uncommon for me to spend what felt like hours in the nightmarish otherworld only to look at the time and see that 15 minutes had passed!
Resident Evil invites you to engage with it as a game once the initial horror aspect has worn off - it's all about knowing where the resources are, the optimum routes to get where you need, the mastery of movement, and the good judgment to put it all together. Silent Hill is comparatively clunky in all those respects, but as a 32-bit horror experience it really has no parallel.
Not to say that this wonderful first outing in the Silent Hill series is perfect - I think its chief weakness lies in its pacing. It feels rather unfinished, with plenty of sequences in the second half (especially the trip to the lighthouse and a nondescript second sewer level) somehow feeling both too skimpy and needlessly 'fillery' at the same time. And I spent an inordinate amount of time being lost - my first run was over 10 hours and my second (where I didn't do anything particularly different besides just knowing where to go) was 4, which equates to roughly 60% of my first run wandering aimlessly around.
I really do hope that in addition to the inevitable increase in production values, the later games in the series will manage to preserve the special brand of nightmare that this game hit on in its first try. If you'll excuse me, I'll go hug my daughter now.
(Endings unlocked: Bad, Good+)
So it came as a surprise to me when I saw a copy of Silent Hill lying around at his place, recognized it ("hey, it's kinda like Resident Evil right?") and he flat-out refused to let 15-year-old me play it. A fact that, on finally getting around to playing it just now, I will be forever thankful for.
The RE series' brand of horror focuses on startling the player and grossing them out - much of its iconic feeling of tension and dread comes from the resource-management aspect of the mechanics. By contrast, Silent Hill's flavor of horror focuses on, well, horrifying the player. It's really telling that one of the first items you find is a radio that spits out white noise when an enemy is nearby, as if the game is telling you it doesn't need to resort to jumpscares to be scary. Indeed, the shock appearance of new enemies when going through old environs - a favorite technique from the Resi and Doom jumpscare toolboxes - is almost never utilized in this game! Nevertheless, it managed to evoke a primal feeling of unsettled dread in me as I played - it was not uncommon for me to spend what felt like hours in the nightmarish otherworld only to look at the time and see that 15 minutes had passed!
Resident Evil invites you to engage with it as a game once the initial horror aspect has worn off - it's all about knowing where the resources are, the optimum routes to get where you need, the mastery of movement, and the good judgment to put it all together. Silent Hill is comparatively clunky in all those respects, but as a 32-bit horror experience it really has no parallel.
Not to say that this wonderful first outing in the Silent Hill series is perfect - I think its chief weakness lies in its pacing. It feels rather unfinished, with plenty of sequences in the second half (especially the trip to the lighthouse and a nondescript second sewer level) somehow feeling both too skimpy and needlessly 'fillery' at the same time. And I spent an inordinate amount of time being lost - my first run was over 10 hours and my second (where I didn't do anything particularly different besides just knowing where to go) was 4, which equates to roughly 60% of my first run wandering aimlessly around.
I really do hope that in addition to the inevitable increase in production values, the later games in the series will manage to preserve the special brand of nightmare that this game hit on in its first try. If you'll excuse me, I'll go hug my daughter now.
(Endings unlocked: Bad, Good+)
cowboyjosh
5 months ago