Mr Fear's Games You Can't Play Alone #2: SILENT HILL 2

Hollywood struggles with the great horror sequel. Just because something scared us the first time around doesn't mean it'll have the same effect when repeated. In fact, once we're familiar with the formula there really is no fooling us. We're wise to the scares. Lucklily the same cannot (always) be said for video games. As we ascertained with my last article, a scary game can be followed up by an even more nail-biting sequel. You can, it seems, fool a gamer as many times as you like if you play your cards right. When it comes to 'Top-Places-We'd-Not-Like-To-Be' in the world of video games, no place quite stands out like the fog-ridden hellhole that is Silent Hill. The very name has become, since its introduction in the Playstation original of the same name, synonomous with interactive psychological terror. It was, for many of us kids of the Nineties, the original 'Game You Couldn't Play Alone.' It more than earned itself an article all to itself... or, rather, it would have if we hadn't got Silent Hill 2. Because, contrary to the Hollywood curse, you could throw gamers back into pretty much the same grisly predicament and scare them worse than before. Hurrah. The protagonist this time around is James Sunderland: a widower who one day recieves a mysterious letter from his, yes, deceased wife. It bids him to head to Silent Hill where, in the same manner as the first horrifying installment, the fog-ridden ghost town starts to make physical the grief and suffering in poor James's twisted little mind. Among such joy of joys were such series classics as the lumbering executioner 'Pyramid Head' and the fiendishly repulsive/foxy 'Bubblehead Nurses'. As with any great psychological head-trips, the ultimate goal was to restore some sort of inner-peace to our frankly disturbed hero-- even if it meant shooting the odd blood-soaked apparition between the eyes (if it had any). But don't be fooled when I suggest a veritable blood bath of weapons play would be involved. Unlike in, for example, Resident Evil, having a gun was little comfort. Why? Because Silent Hill relied less upon the jump of adrenaline one gets from a sudden shock (we all remember those dogs jumping through the mansion windows) and more on that consistent sense of dread (which I held in such high regard when I was last talking about Project Zero II: Crimson Butterfly). It was therefore a shame, for some players, that the first game in the series (in spite being greatly nerve-wracking and incredibly good fun to play) featured a notably anticlimactic ending and a disjointed, confusing narrative. Alas, Silent Hill 2 was able to pick up the pieces by starting with a fresh cast and, therefore a fresh start for potential series newcomers. Both they and series fans were not to be disappointed. Credited with some of the most shocking moments in video game history, the gamer is made to feel utterly trapped in some Jungian nightmare, despite the fact that, for s survival horror game, he is armed with a rather generous amount of ammunition. Sure, the creatures were slower and easier to kill than the worst of Resident Evil's offerings, but they were just so out-and-out horrific that it didn't matter. They scared the bejeezus out of us whether they were reaching out of a shadow towards us or lurching aimlessly at the other end of the street. 'Killing' them just didn't give us the same smug sense of self satisfaction as blowing the head off a Raccoon City 'Licker'. I mean, were the nightmares of Silent Hill really creatures of flesh and bone at all? Think more of Hellraiser's insidious cenobites and less of Evil Dead's Ash with his 'boom-stick'. These things were designed to represent the subconscious made manifest and it's no wonder ol' Pyramid Head and co are so notorious for getting our pulses racing. More so, however, is the actual setting itself: for unlike many horror survival games one couldn't help but feel the macabre secrets of Silent Hill were anything but finite so long as the town itself continued to exist... it is, and always has been, the major antagonist of the entire series. As much the cinematic piece (if not a lot more so) as its movie spin-off, Silent Hill 2 was blessed with a suitably macabre soundtrack: scarce and simple (if present at all) when establishing environment then sharp and thoroughly un-nerving when the crazy **** starts to go down. Heck, the music could do a fine job of getting any lone player worked up all on its own, even when most of the time it was merely teasing danger rather than literally expressing it. Ultimately, however, it is those aforementioned shocking moments that makes the second Silent Hill the most memorable one. Some favourites that fans will recall include (WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD); the appearance of the abstract multi-limbed 'Mannequins' in the dark Hotel and Apartment corridors (you didn't know the damn things were even there until they started moving), the now famous Pyramid Head rape scene and the final encounter with nothing less than Sunderland's dead wife splayed between the metal frame of a 'hospital bed'... damn frightening stuff, even by the series's rather high standard (SPOILERS END). Though, to its credit, the entire 'Silent Hill' series deserves an esteemed mention, 'Silent Hill 2' acts as the perfect representative: a descent into Hell which gave gamers a taste of how truly nasty the new generation of developers were willing to go. Its beautiful savagery may well have acted as an inspiration and kick-off to the next generation of survival horror... including certain titles which I'll highlight in later articles. Are you a Silent Hill fan? Was the second your favourite? Please use the comments section below to give us your all-time Silent Hill Greatest Moments, we'll be happy to hear them.