#103
To continue the trend of remembering back when Konami was a beloved game developer and not the butt of every pachinko machine joke, let's go back to 1999, when Konami decided they wanted in on all of that survival horror money Capcom was making with Resident Evil. I was never a fan of RE, I don't find zombies interesting and especially in today's market, I feel they are a bit overused. The original RE1 was goofy fun, but hardly a game I felt I needed in my gaming collection, or one I wanted to bother playing through its sequels. Silent Hill looked more pedestrian by comparison to the gory head shots and B-Movie antics of RE, but I kind of liked the slower pace and heavier focus on narrative and puzzles. It took me years to get around to playing the first game, and I was honestly surprised. I really felt starting with the later entries would have made this game feel lackluster in comparison, but instead I simply could see how well it was actually designed.
The original Silent Hill is the story of Harry Mason, a widower whose only family is his adopted daughter Cheryl. One night, while driving through the back woods in good old Lovecraft country New England with his daughter. He sees a teenage girl on the road and swerves to avoid her, only to crash the car and be knocked unconscious. When he wakes up, he finds his daughter Cheryl is missing and that he is in the mysterious town of Silent Hill, a former vacation spot with a darker history than most places. The town is deserted and filled with a mysterious fog, and strange creatures out for his blood within it. He desperately searches the town for his missing daughter who continues to leave clues for him to follow. Clues to a girl named Alessa and a strange cult that rules the town from the shadows waiting for the day their dark god will be reborn anew. The town is mostly abandoned except for a police woman named Cybil who followed Harry into the town after discovering his wrecked car. A strange religious woman who keeps pushing Harry to find the demon who is turning the town into a nightmare. Dr. Kaufman, the head of the town hospital who is worried about the sorry state of the town. Finally there is Lisa, a nurse trapped in the nightmare world version of the hospital. Harry must explore the haunted town and uncover its mysteries in order to save his daughter and finally wake from the nightmare once and for all.
Silent Hill was born in the intervening time between Resident Evil's release in 96 and the SH's eventual release in 99. Konami saw the huge success of Capcom's juggernaut franchise and wanted in on that action, so they built a team to try and make it happen. Unfortunately, all of their A-teams were busy working on other projects so Team Silent ended up being filled with all the employees who simply kept failing within the company or were kicked out of other teams for poor performance. The Konami heads wanted them to make a Resident Evil clone, which is why the game is very close to design to Capcom's franchise, but as time went on, the exec became more and more convinced the title wasn't going to live up to RE and soon stopped controlling the project, finally letting the team do whatever they wanted since Konami assumed the game would flop regardless. This move of giving the team more creative control allowed them to steer the title into a different direction from a RE clone and instead they decided to make an Western Style horror game based off of works like Stephen King, Twin Peaks, and David Lynch films. This Japanese take on foreign style of horror ended up creating a really unique experience, and I feel that's a large part of why the Team Silent entries are often cited as the most successful entries because the Japanese sensibilities adds a lot of restraint to Western Horrors more over the top nature.
While Silent Hill 2 gets most of the series glory, I feel SH1 is still the most well known. I'm sure with the exception of a few details, most people could probably recount the plot summary I gave. Harry's story is the most well known of the all the protagonist simply because the game has been around forever and simply because the game has had the most lip service of any entry in the franchise. Even the lukewarm film is nothing but an adaption of this game's plot. For me, I love the fact that Silent Hill took a lot of the elements I hated from Resident Evil and worked them in a way that actually made sense. Combat is a chore in this game thanks to cumbersome tank controls and slow ass animations, but unlike RE1, it makes sense here cause Harry isn't some special forces agent, he's a 9 to 5 stiff who has never held a gun in his life. The puzzles in RE1 always felt incredibly obtuse and have long been a bit o a joke among RE fans for their impracticality. In SH1 though, they exist as games by a malevolent force screwing with you and serve to raise the tension of the narrative. It doesn't change the fact that SH1 can be a pain in the ass to play, but here it feels a bit more immersive in its cumbersome nature whereas in RE1, I always felt these aspects destroyed immersion when Chris Redfield, who is built like a brick house, is struggling to fight off a single zombie. Whereas Harry, who has only ever seen a gym when he passes it every morning to get his coffee reacts pretty well to some average person using a heavy metal pipe to swipe away monstrous ash children who keep swarming him. I still hate the nature of the control scheme cause I've always hated tank controls, but here it works.
Yet, I feel what works the best for me is Silent Hill's nature as a more of a psychological horror piece with some Lovecraftian undertones. Though I prefer how SH2 showcases the fact that Silent Hill was a smurfed up place long before the events of Silent Hill, I like the idea of an evil location that just attracts dark forces to it. Silent Hill's horror works better for me because it's not so much "jump scare" focus, rather its designed to make you feel uncomfortable and oppressed. The Dark World scenarios are not any more dangerous than the fog world places, but they do feel more claustrophobic and unsettling. To me, that's the best horror can do for me. I have a surprisingly high tolerance for horror I've learned, so for me, the best kind of horror is the type I still dwell on long after the credits roll or the book is finished. That's what Silent Hill does better than other horror games I've played. It stays with me and I think is because the game's have always tried to focus on more fundamental human fears and needs. Harry's journey as a parent trying to find his lost daughter is unsettling for anyone who has had to look after a child. The game feeds on the fear of being lost, and some of the game's camera work is designed to illicit the feeling of being watched. The opening section of the game where Harry is exploring the back alleys' has this awesome camera work that gives the impression someone is watching him from above on the rooftops, and it helps just add to the creepy factor of the game.
I also feel the fugly low polygon graphics of the PS1 only help to add to the eeriness of game. It's interesting how the PS2 entries and Origins play around with filters to give the setting a more aged film grade look as though they were trying to recapture that dirty look from the PS1 era. It works too cause watching videos of the more recent entries, the cleaner graphics detract from the experience despite technically looking better. Course nothing gets the atmosphere spot on like Akira Yamaoka's creepy industrial inspired soundtrack. It leans much heavier on the eerie factor than later entries that incorporate a bit more rock and jazz used for character moments, but the soundtrack is completely unsettling. To give an example, the final boss theme uses the sound of a dentist drill to create the effect of Harry's radio going completely crazy while fighting a dark god. Hell SH honestly has some good audio design in general as Yamaoka effectively uses both his unsettling score with bouts of silence to really unnerve the player. You never known which is worse, wandering the halls of the Nightmare World listening to score that can best be described as listening to an untuned piano being violated by steel pipes, only to walk into a room that takes the form of a classroom with no one in there but a single desk in the center of the room and in complete silence outside of Harry's footsteps and grunts. I feel where Silent Hill has always excelled is in its superb execution of atmosphere.
30597-silent-hill-playstation-screenshot-some-puzzles-will-require.jpg11053908.0001.001-00000010.jpgThe other element I really did enjoy about SH1 and this became more apparent as I got further along in SH3, was how much I enjoyed exploring the town. In fact, it's rather surprising how big the town was in the original compared to later installments. It has a lot of literal broken bridges to limit where you can go, but it was really interesting to explore the town, especially since doing so was the only way to get the Good+ ending and to finally figure out what was going on with Kaufman. I feel that's what is so amazing about this game is how it turns its weaknesses into strengths, the most famous of course being the fog element the series is known for was the design team trying to compensate for the PS1's terrible draw distance, but even how effective the cast is used to to cover the game's lonely and claustrophobic gameplay. I really liked the game's side characters. While most of them wear their motives on their sleeves, it was still interesting to discover what Kaufman's role was in the story, to run into Cybil and ultimately save her from the town's influence, to Lisa, dear god Lisa is one of the most tragic figures in this game behind Alessa herself. Despite the small cast, you do find yourself a bit endeared to them on some level, likely because the lonely atmosphere of the game always makes it a bit welcoming to encounter another person and not some weird flesh creature trying to tear you a new asshole. It made the story beats impactful and made their final conclusions all the more cathartic.
Overall, I was pleasantly surprised by the original Silent Hill. While it won't surpass its superior sequel for me, it ended up being a pretty fun game that hit all the beats I wanted. While it may be the clunkiest entry just due to technology limitations and the teams own inexperience, I still feel the core of the game is fairly strong and still worth playing through.