Silent Hill 2

Developer: Konami
Publisher: Konami
Released (UK): Nov '01
Released (US): Sept '01

May contain spoilers. After being told so many people that Silent Hill 4 was garbage I decided to see how the game compared to previous instalments. Many people said Silent Hill 3 was the best of the bunch so I set off to buy that but I couldn't find it anywhere. Amazon didn't have it, neither did Game or Gamestation. I tried HMV but they didn't have it either but they did have Silent Hill 2. I was going to try them all anyway so I bought it and took it home to play that night.

In this game you play as James Sunderland who you find staring at himself in mirror of a public restroom. He looks stressed and once you lead him out of there you find out why.

You hear a lady's voice narrate a letter whilst James looks out over a lake. The letter asks James to meet the letter writer at their 'Special Place' in a town called Silent Hill where she says they had visited before.

James admits that this letter was written by his wife, Mary but he also says that Mary died two years ago from a disease. Creepy, huh? James doesn't know which special place she means "This whole town was our special place". We have to actually make our way to Silent Hill first so let's get a map and hop to it.

This games major flaw is the amount of travelling you have to do and it isn't always obvious where you're supposed to go. At first you're just following a trail but once you reach the town you're entering a maze. Some roads are blocked and you'll start getting restless trying to find to an unblocked route. A blood trail and the steps of a shadowed figure lead you on for a bit longer but then you're on your own.

At this point you have a weapon (wooden plank) and a Radio that doesn't seem to work. Where do you go from her though? The idea is to go to Rosewater Park but when you follow the road there, it's blocked. I walked around for ages until I came across a Caravan with a message inside "I'll wait at Bar Neely’s" - a clue at last, 20-30 minutes in. Once at Bar Neely’s we find ourselves on a roll and eventually we're at Woodside Apartments.

The game finally gets going now and the spookiness creeps in. The music in the Apartments is the main addition to the atmosphere (Akira Yamaoka is a genius) but the lack of light is also a factor.

The Apartment building is one of many areas you come across. Once out of the building you reach the Park, Brookhaven Hospital, the Historical Society and Prison then finally the Lakeview Hotel.

All of them have their moments: The hospital has the gloomy atmosphere. The Prison has noises coming from empty prisons and the labyrinth. Your weapons are taken away from you for part of the Hotel level and then the Apartments have Pyramid Head (below).

Named by most Silent Hill fans, favourite Survival Horror baddy of all time, Pyramid Head is a monster created by the Town to taunt James throughout his mission to find his dead wife. The first time you see Pyramid Head, he's standing behind a fence in the corridor of the Apartment building. He's bright red and definitely unmissable - I remember feeling quite excited when I saw him. The game was finally beginning to get good.

Other monsters of the series have become pretty standard within the series. The Lying Figure (aka Patient Demon, Straightjacket) we see again in Origins and the movie. The Nurses are also a fan favourite and they've featured in every Silent Hill game (though they look rather different in Silent Hill 1). Other monsters include the Creeper, Abstract Daddy, and the Mannequin, who despite having very feminine features (long slender legs) have a masculine scream, they also look very good against the dark environment giving a more freaky appearance. There's also the Mandarin, a big thing that clings to the grate ceilings with their feet, but why they're here is beyond me. You only come across 'em once and they're of no danger to you.

Is James the only person in this town? No, he's not. He comes across several people in Silent Hill, all of which have their own reasons for being there.

Angela Orosco is the first you come across, in the cemetery during you trek towards the town. She says she's looking for her mother but as the game progresses you find out little more disturbing things about this woman (who looks older than her 19 years). Then you meet the bratty little Laura briefly after she steps on your hand. Eddie Dumbrowski is rather complicated because he doesn't tell you why he's there directly - you have to follow the various clues the developers scatter throughout the game (notably his conversation with Laura at the Bowling Alley. Then you have Maria. Ah! Maria - the guys all love her. James meets her in the park and confuses her with his wife and she does look a lot like her except for a couple of things. She's dressed more provocatively and is very flirtatious.

Like Pyramid Head she is also a creation of the town and is there to torment James as much as possible. However, James doesn't see this because he's attracted to her (she looks like his wife) and likes having her around.

There are several endings in the game and if you have the Directors Cut/Greatest Hits version, there's even more:

1. Leave
2. In Water
3. Maria
4. UFO
5. Re-birth
6. Dog

There are several things you have to do or avoid in order to get these individual endings such as listening to conversations in full, being nicer to Maria and collecting items. Leave is the generic ending however and if you just play the game oblivious to all of the extras, you will get this.

Due to all these endings there is a lot of replay value for this game. On top of this you have a seperate choice of difficulty setting for the puzzles as well as the gameplay which also changes your experience. The hard riddle settings will really get your brain working because they can become quite hard (especially the coin puzzle - watch out for it).

Overall the game is good, not brilliant but good. The game didn't have the same amount of tension that Silent Hill 4 had despite Pyramid Head's wandering around. The monsters didn't appeal to me as much, though the Mannequins were the highlight of the bunch - they weren't around for much of the game.

The storyline was compelling, a letter from a dead person is quite thrilling don't you think? I didn't like the supporting cast very much - Laura is everything I hate in a kid and Angela Orosco was the most boring person I had ever come across, ungrateful too.

Akira Yamaoka did a very good job with the music he's become very well known for and really created the tension the game probably wouldn't have had without it.

After playing the game I still wasn't inclined to believe that Silent Hill 4 was the poorest Silent Hill game but it was still an enjoyable experience.

8/10

However, during playing this game I managed to get my hands on Silent Hill 3 from a Marketplace seller on Amazon.co.uk.

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