Silent Hill
Oh, Harry Mason, you really are the archetype for the everyman in gaming. You suck with a handgun, you have to go into filthy dingy locales, and ultimately you fail to recognize when to run away from a scary as hell sort of place. The original Silent Hill follows Mr. Mason on his little quest to find his adopted girl, along the way he wrecks his car and ends up in Silent Hill. Now, Silent Hill isn't full of your standard little denizens. There aren't the quaint shops full of knick knacks and the local fairs. Silent Hill is a nasty ugly place that freaks normal people out. For good reason too. If you looked at a place like this, you aren't thinking warm and cozy. Here's a few screenshots for nostalgia's purposes.
Well, I think it's safe to say it isn't custard, marmalade, or corn syrup Harry.
Very few games will make you wish quiet was all you heard. Lots of ambient nastiness.
Wrong, a gun with no bullets is better than nothing. You're asking for monster rape.
Silent Hill received rave reviews for turning Resident Evil's concept on its ear and taking heavy inspiration from Jacob's Ladder. The next game in the series would turn out to be by and large the best to come.
Silent Hill 2
God, what a game. You never really feel like you're safe, and there's a dude in a pyramid mask that loves to rape other monsters right in front of you. I wish that was a typo, but you really can't mention Silent Hill 2 without paying some sort of nod to the main baddie, Pyramid Head. Silent Hill 2 upped the ante in many regards and made the series into a classic franchise. Now, this followed in Resident Evil 2's wake, which somehow dictated that a horror game's sequel needs to be awesome beyond a shadow of a doubt. Well, Konami delivered. You play as James Sutherland and you get beckoned to the eponymous town by your wife Mary. Full of psychosexual imagery and dread, this is the sort of game you want to play during the middle of the day with friends who can snuggle you when the bad men come. Here's a few screenshots to hopefully conjure up some wishes for the brown pants.
The graphical leaps for this game really took everything up a notch. The constant ambience too.
Ah, Pyramid Head, very few implacable men in gaming can claim to be more terrifying than a busful of clowns come midnight.
Remember what I said about psychosexual imagery? These nurses have the curves, but the bloody sacks are a little offputting. Unless you're into that.
Sadly, I'm sort of lame in the respect where I've never sat down and played the newer games in the series. I eschewed for Silent Hill 3 for the pure and simple reason that nightmarish hospitals sound awful to me. Silent Hill 4 and later entries were less critically renowned. Apparently the Western treatment of the franchise really rubbed critics and gamers alike the wrong way. However, the series as it stands with the first three represent a golden era in gaming to some. I remember switching off Silent Hill 2 in the middle of the day because I could hear shit scuffling against the ground. That isn't the sort of thing you really want to test though.
In the future expect a bit of an analysis over various other horror greats as well as some of my favorite classics.
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