Silent Hill

With Silent Hill 6's big reveal only hours away at E3, I thought it would be nice to do a blog about the Silent Hill series, having a brief look at the games and how they redefined Survival Horror.

In 1999, Capcom's "Resident Evil" was pretty much dominating the survival horror genre in video games and with Resident Evil 3: Nemisis just around the corner, Konami wanted to try and create their own survival horror game.
They came up with a game that was completely different to Resident Evil and other previous survival horror games. Previous games had an emphasis on fighting and shooting monsters with the occasional "jump scare" tactic to frighten the player, Silent Hill decided to take the atmospheric route and have a psychological scare.

So in 1999, Konami delivered Silent Hill.



Silent Hill followed the story of Harry Mason. He travels to Silent Hill with his daughter Cheryl for a holiday. While driving at night on the outskirts of town, a police officer roars past on a motorbike, shortly after, Harry sees the motorbike discarded on the side of the road with the police officer no where in sight. As he looks back to the road, a figure of a girl steps out in front of the car, Harry tries to avoid the girl and crashes into a gully.

Awaking from the crash, he sees fog is all around him, he turns to check of Cheryl is ok, but she is nowhere to be seen. Panicking, Harry leaves the car and heads to a deserted town in the distance.

This is where you take control, following what looks like Cheryl into town and down an alley. Once in the alley, the true feeling of Silent Hill's horror sets in. A dead dog lying in a pool of it's own blood, darkness quickly growing and an ominous siren lowly wailing in the distance all add up to a feel of unease and confusion.

Further down the alley, a loud squeaking can be heard, a broken wheelchair lies on it's side with one wheel slowly spinning, next to that, a hospital gurney with a covered body lying on it. The concrete fades away to reveal wire mesh on the walls and floor, and a dead body strung up with barbed wire hangs in front of Harry's lighter, the only source of light he has. And after that, there is nowhere else to go. Turning around reveals 4 monsters coming towards Harry, completely defenseless, Harry succumbs to their attacks and passes out....

Playing this for the first time scared the hell out of me! Thankfully Harry wakes up in a cafe and then the game really begins. But that opening section really defined what survival horror really could be! The atmosphere and uncertainty of what was happening made the game a terrifying experience. The fog severely hindering the players view also added to suspense and unease as you couldn't see any monsters coming, but you knew they were around due to the radio emitting static whenever they are near.

Silent Hill offered less emphasis on combat and more on story and atmosphere, it created a truly terrifying experience and once it finished, it left us begging for more!