Latetly, I´m not into the mood of playing videogames that much, still, I felt a weird urge to play the first Silent Hill again, which is weird because I wasn´t in the mood but I decided to give it a chance. In the game, Cheryll is called by Silent Hill and the same way I felt like Silent Hill was calling me once again.
Silent Hill is about Harry Mason trying to find his daughter through the town, they actually go because of vacations but Harry suffers a car accident, Cheryll (his daughter) goes missing and obviously we´ll go after her, the thing is, Silent Hill lacks people, there is barely anyone and the town is actually infected by monsters so things won´t be that easy.
Silent Hill is a psychological horror game, all of the horrible things we see in the town is because they are being projected from someone else, we experience the personal hell of that person and all of their traumas, every monster has a meaning of whoever is happening through someone else´s mind, one of the best thing about Silent Hill is the atmosphere, it´s really suffocating, even when you are surrounded by other characters you are not able to feel safe, there´s always something going on. The soundtrack of the game really is something else, it's mostly ambient music and it helps to the atmosphere a lot.
I love this game but I can´t deny it aged poorly through the time, the gameplay feels chuncky and even if you are used to tank controls it can get specially tricky, I really don´t care about this because that´s how the game actually should feel, you are Harry Mason, not a police officer or someone with special training, you are just a normal person trying to find his daughter, I really like that they help you to feel so small agains´t everything, so obviously Harry Mason won´t be the fastest person when using a gun or even using melee weapons, I can´t forget how many times I got hit because the characters is kind of slow, agaIn, I can understand all of this because I´m used to, but imagine trying to make someone else play this game, it wouldn´t be easy for them.
It´s true Silent Hill is a PS1 game so it won´t look that good, but damn, I forgot how ugly it can look, I don´t pay attention to it that much and I get used to it pretty fast because I actually like playing old games but you know, it´s just hard to recommend a game like this to someone, it doesn´t look good objectively speaking. Silent Hill 2 remake? I think this one needs a remake ASAP.
When playing this game again, I noticed a few things, one thing is that Silent Hill is a pretty easy game, I don´t know if it´s because I´m pretty used to this kind of game already, but trust me I had no problems through the game, I feel like Silent Hill rewards you way too much for exploring the town, you can find all sort of items if you actually take your time and explore everything and that´s what I actually did, not gonna lie, I even got 200 munnition ammo, which is hilarious, I was basically invincible, there were even times when I said ¨let´s waste some ammo because I have so much and I think this game doesn´t register more than 200 ammo¨
I´m not just talking about gameplay, I´m talking about puzzles too, as a challenge, I decided to solve every puzzle of the game without looking some kind of guide through the internet and I actually managed that, I was seriously impressed at how easy puzzles are in this game, I remembered harder. The most difficult puzzle is about a piano and I´ll admit it took me some time (1 hour) but I did it, the answer wasn´t that hard, after that, the game is pretty easy when puzzles are involved.
Despite its looks, Silent Hill manages to be a terryfing experience, there were times when I got really nervous and it´s something I loved, it doesn´t need jumpscares or things like that, it manages to scare you thanks to its atmosphere and details, I had a lovely time playing Silent Hill again, it helped me to love it even more. When I first played the game many years ago, I liked it, but not as much as Silent Hill 2 or Silent Hil 3 but nowadays I feel like they are very close in terms of quality, it really is a strong game even by today standars.
I´d like to play the game again in the highest difficulty, to see if there is a hige difference, but all of this I´m saying are minor things, like, this game is great and I think everybody should play it at least once, if you are tolerant to retro games that is.
All of the screenshots were taken by me