Not since playing the ‘Dead Space’ remake has a game made my hands sweaty from the unbridled tension of being chased by some grotesque monstrosity
As someone who grew up in the PlayStation era, I’ve always been familiar with Silent Hill. I recall friends and family playing the first game in the series, which came out in 1999, and talking about how scary it was.
Being a young and impressionable kid at that time, I believed them and thought that if they already found it scary, it must be even scarier for me. Since then, I’ve mostly steered clear from the series as a whole, only ever touching Silent Hill: Origins on the PSP, which I didn’t enjoy.
So when I was assigned to play Silent Hill 2, the remake of the PS2 classic, I was both excited and nervous: it would be my entry to a series that for most of my gaming career I thought was too scary for me to play.
But, of course, I’m now in my late 20s and what I find scary has since changed. In fact, I don’t find many games that scary anymore, being of the firm belief that games are only truly scary when you feel helpless against your environment or enemies.
Horror games can make you feel helpless in different ways. Some limit the resources you find to heighten the feeling that you’re always in danger, while others impair your vision to hide whatever horrors await you in the next corner.
Silent Hill 2 does both these in spades. It’s admittedly one of the most unsettling and stress-inducing games I’ve played in recent memory. And, having evaded the series for so long, I went into this one completely blind, unaware of the horrors that awaited me. But what an experience it has been so far.
No amount of words could probably capture the intense panic I felt when a Lying Figure, a creature that resembles a mental patient in a straitjacket, crept up on me upon first arriving in the series’ namesake town.
You see, like other survival-horror games, you don’t have a heads-up display or a minimap in Silent Hill 2. To navigate, you’ll have to pull up the map you pick-up at the very start of the game and find your way on your own. Doing so, however, doesn’t pause the game, which means an enemy can just sneak up from behind you at any time.
And that’s exactly what happened. Luckily, these creatures make a faint sound when they approach, and I heard it just in time to exit the map screen and hit the run button.
Run, I did, with nothing on me but that map, a wooden board, and my wits. I could have used that wooden board as a blunt weapon, but at that moment, my fight-or-flight response kicked in, and I chose flight.
I wasn’t even able to look at the map long enough to know where I needed to go. I just kept running until I knew I was not being chased anymore.
It didn’t help that the fog was so thick I couldn’t see if I was running straight toward another creature. So just a few beats after I started running, I decided to try to enter one of the buildings in the town. After making a couple of turns, to my immense relief, I found an open building – a rundown bar. I felt somewhat safe there, despite how foreboding it looked from both the inside and outside.
At that moment, it came to me that this is how Silent Hill delivers its scares – by keeping you on your toes all the time. It uses the ever-present fog and the dim lighting to hide threats from you, so you’re forced to rely on sound to know whether you’re in danger or not. On the PS5, for example, radio static plays whenever enemies get near you, immediately letting you know it’s time to act.
When enemies do get near you, odds are it’s better to run than to fight. You’re always better off saving the precious health drinks and ammo you scrounge for situations where a fight is unavoidable. From what I’ve heard, the boss fights in this remake can be tough, so I definitely want to tackle them with ample resources at my disposal.
Right now, I’m just in the early hours of the game – just after first meeting Pyramid Head in the apartments – but, boy, am I intrigued at its more psychological approach to horror. Not since playing the Dead Space remake has a game made my hands sweaty from the unbridled tension of being chased by some grotesque monstrosity.
So if you’re feeling brave or just want a good scare this Halloween season, check the game out. Those uninitiated to the series like me would surely find it an engaging experience. – Rappler.com
