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Silent Hill 2 (2001)
Survival Horror At Its Finest
My fond memories of Silent Hill 2 are often accompanied by a strangely mesmeric fascination with the depiction of Japanese horror and the unique way they convey it to the audience. While western horror mainly consists of running around with a chainsaw and slicing hordes of baddies, Japanese horror tends to be less direct about it - Its subtle, claustrophobic, and mostly psychological.
The most remarkable thing about the Silent Hill series and SH2, in particular, is that it managed to pull off what was once considered to be impossible to achieve in video game format - a truly chilling and yet strangely compelling survival horror experience, unburdened by the usual design flaws that characterized earlier games in the genre, such as Alone In The Dark and Resident Evil. Not only that, but Silent Hill 2 had such resounding success that(in my opinion) no one has ever been able to replicate it to the same degree. Moreover, the astonishingly pathetic attempts to bring the franchise to the big screen only cemented the notion that the Silent Hill games are nothing short of peerless in both storytelling and atmosphere.
It's a strange thing to say considering that a large portion of the game consists of running in fairly empty streets, often needing to resort to a pretty awkward combat system and the unwieldy nature of the in-game camera which somehow always finds the least comfortable position to be stuck in, especially when my character needs to get away from the horrors in a hurry - meaning pretty much all the bloody time. With that said, however, the sharp difficulty curve along with the crappy combat system and "unhinged" camera only serve to increase tension and feelings of discomfort whenever your lumbering hero is tasked with killing another monster. Couple that with the haunting atmosphere and you got yourself a pants-wetting experience that will linger in your mind and taint your dreams for a long time.
And then there's the story.
I won't spoil anything, but my advice for first-time gamers is to pay close attention to everything that transpires at any point in the game in order to properly understand the plot. Read all the documents and listen carefully to what the characters have to say, or rather what they don't say. Silent Hill 2's story is mostly told through metaphors and is one of its greatest strengths. Its ability to tell a rich, compelling, and thought provoking story without explicitly telling the player anything, is what separates a truly great writer from merely a good one. If any game is qualified to be called "art", it's definitely this one.
I don't mean that in a pretentious "art critic" kind of way, either. The story really isn't as impenetrable as some people would have you believe and neither is it very open for interpretation. It's merely subtly woven into the game in various places and only the keen eyed individuals will be able to piece all the clues together and trust me, It's a task well worth attempting as this is a story you do not wanna miss out on.