Genre: Action, Adventure
Perspective: 3rd-person, Behind view
Visual: Cinematic camera
Gameplay: Puzzle-solving, Survival Horror
Setting: Contemporary, North America
Narrative: Horror
Published by: Konami (America)
Developed by: Team Silent
Released: 1999
Platform: PlayStation (PSX, PS1)
Yes, this game is certainly akin to RE, most it resembles its first part by its mystery and frightening suspense. But here you explore the whole city of Silent Hill. The appearance in the game is from a third party, but unlike RE, the camera is very mobile and resembles Tomb Raider. At first we are shown a cinematic, although it is not completely understandable, in which you and your little daughter are going along the night road cheerfully, but in the end you get into an accident. This is facilitated by a strange female figure that appeared on your way. The main character woke up in his broken car. Around is light, but there is nothing but fog, and the place occupied by a little girl is empty. What do you have to do, except how to find your missing child.
The game is truly awesome! That is, it has many abominable creatures, blood, corpses and other nightmares. What gives this game fear? In RE2, 3 everything is clear: unhealthy scientists, infectious viruses, hence - zombies and other mutants. In a word, the work of human hands. And in SH obviously was not without the intervention of dark forces. The city in which you will wander, according to one of the characters, "swallowed up the darkness". This is felt from the first minutes of the game. The city is not damaged, there are no broken shops and places of accidents, burning buildings and ... people. There is no one except you, deserted misty streets, slowly flying snow and horrible finds. A little later, the company will make you various running, jumping, creeping and flying frenzies, I'm not afraid of this word, hell! By the way, at the beginning of the game you will follow in the curve lane for the image of your daughter, in which you will find such wonderful things as a pool of bloody mush, smeared on the wall, incomprehensible from where the bent wheelchair and the medical cot with the decomposing corpse come from. And a few seconds later, your hero is just shredded small disgusting creatures with knives ... An encouraging beginning, and, most importantly, this can not be avoided. But something I was carried away with the description of the passage.
In general, the colors in the game are not too bright, but this only makes it more appropriate to the genre, perfectly conveying the atmosphere of sad autumn and oppressive suspense. The creators used several curious innovations. For example, throughout the game around you, there will repeatedly be an impenetrable night, the advent of which is absolutely unnatural. And only a small flashlight on your chest will help you not to fall in this nightmare from the clutches of the creatures of darkness. At the beginning of the adventure, you pick up a broken radio, which will alert you when the enemy approaches and hissing. And even the world around us will be repeatedly subjected to terrible changes. Ordinary houses and streets turn into rusty debris, rotting corpses appear in the rooms, chains hang down from the ceiling, and everywhere unknown pentagrams appear that belong to a non-positive being.
When you enter into confrontation with the enemy, then be sure that the blood (both yours and the enemy) will certainly fly and even remain on the floor, asphalt, etc. And, despite the automatic aiming at the nearest enemy, there is a chance of your miss. Arsenal of weapons in the game is not rich, although it contains besides firearms such interesting things as armature, chainsaw, etc. But do not think that from this you will be bored. Not at all. All this will recede before the most interesting and terrible adventures. Your hard way will often be blocked by hard puzzles, whose solutions often need to be sought elsewhere in the game world, and not in the same room.
To give these tasks a special piquancy, all the clues will be written exclusively with spreading blood.
The game will meet a few normal people (although are they all normal !?), with which you will repeatedly be lively to talk, and in well-voiced dialogues (at least in my Russian version, the translation and voice acting were great). From your behavior in some situations will depend on further events and four types of game endings. After that, you will certainly want to play again because of some features of passing the game on a new one.
The inventory of your hero is not limited, i.e. Do not have to spread extra items. Three levels of difficulty in the game are significantly different from each other. Playing on the "easy" is pretty easy, the "average" is quite decent, but on the "difficult" it's even too difficult.
Of course, the game has small flaws. Among them, for example, include the short-handed hands of the main character and his stupid manner of running. But this if you want to find faults.
You will constantly come across the traces of your disappeared daughter. And it will awaken in your brain a feeling of experience for her. After all, you, an adult muzhik with arms, are terrible and not easy, but what then is the lonely seven-year-old girl in this endless nightmare. You will find out the mystery of the accursed town, go through all the nightmares and ... no, rather you will die somewhere in the dark canalization from the claws of the next fetus of the game developers fantasy.
Well, the result. Silent Hill - this is really an interesting and terrible game, a worthy representative of the genre Survival Horror. If you really love horror games with riddles and mysteries, then the feeling that arises when from somewhere in a dense fog or impenetrable darkness the sounds of flapping wings approach you, the stomping of someone's rotting paws, moaning or incomprehensible muttering, you should like!