It's a testament to the incredible efforts of Konami's development team that rewatching videos of the original Silent Hill today can still give us the willies. From the eerie, organic musical score of Akira Yamaoka, to that all-invasive fog effect and grainy filter - which were applied due to the technical limitations of the PS1 but add to the sense of claustraphobia pervading the game - Silent Hill is a perfect harmony of brooding horror. While Resident Evil may have been mechanically better (which says a lot about Silent Hill's dreadfully clunky combat) and offered more carnal horror thrills, Silent Hill stuck to delivering spine-tingling dread; you felt genuinely uncomfortable as you wandered through the rotten, forlorn halls of a school building, or as you went deeper and deeper into that darkening alley in the legendary intro sequence, with the wheelchair... and the children... It's just too harrowing to recall... The gameplay may not have aged well, but Silent Hill's atmosphere endures to this day, and should forever be referred back to as a shining example of horror game design with limited technological resources. For the first time, gamers felt terrified on a deep, cinematic level, as the Silent Hill raised the bar for games' potential to mess with our emotions.
Gamer, Researcher of strange things.
I'm a writer-editor hybrid whose writings on video games, technology and movies can be found across the internet. I've even ventured into the realm of current affairs on occasion but, unable to face reality, have retreated into expatiating on things on screens instead.
