Between the somehow hysterical shriek of James' kaput radio and his attempts to bludgeon, stomp and shotgun things than often cannot even be identified, Silent Hill 2 has a uniquely nightmarish feel.
But some of them don't look much like anything at all, which can be its own special kind of disturbing.
James has, well, Things coming after him - some of them look a little like inside-out dogs and some of them look a bit like wet mannequins with too many legs. The town's pervasive silence is broken only by James' echoing footfalls or the teeth-grating shriek of his malfunctioning pocket radio (which inexplicably blares warning static whenever some monstrosity approaches from the mist) before long, even the player's own sense of time and location begin to misfire, landing James in a bleak and nasty place where the town's dark past begins to bleed through into the canvas of the present.Īnd we do mean "bleed." They don't call it "survival horror" for nothing, and soon James has two choices: get busy killing or get busy dying. The fog-shrouded streets are alive and crawling with things that aren't, and shouldn't be. Silent Hill 2 requires serious exploration, and in fact one building is an entire three-story complex, with individual apartments to check out on each floor.
More-or-less complete town maps are available - no minimap though you must constantly pause and peruse the inventory screens to reorient yourself, but at least James makes handy marks to notate points of interest - and although many of the town's buildings are simply locked, many others are not. Roads are blocked, surreally shorn off, or in some cases disconnected from reality altogether. The town is deserted (save a scattered handful of troubled people James can encounter). And yet - torn, desperate and numb - he makes his way to Silent Hill anyway.īut something has gone eerily and horribly wrong in Silent Hill. The brief, intimate urgency of this reunion-summons would be the stuff of bittersweet love songs if it weren't for one near-unspeakable fact: Mary Sunderland has been dead for three years now, victim to an unspecified wasting affliction which James can only think of as "that damn disease." James is heartsick, and certainly confused, but not completely stupid at some level, he knows that to believe the letter is a sick folly, to answer it a form of madness. If you haven't yet played the console versions, here's the setup: Silent Hill 2 puts players in the shoes of James Sunderland, a 30-something man whose life is upended when he receives a letter from his wife Mary, urging him to meet her in the resort town Silent Hill - a place of many memories and emotions shared between the two. It was giving me all these really messed-up dreams." No, I couldn't hang with that game at all." We were a little shocked - enough, in fact, to sort of blurt: "What, are you kidding? You thought it sucked?" He looked at us, shook his head a little too slowly, and said (in surprisingly perfect and colloquial English): "No. We somehow got talking about the merits of Silent Hill 2. You just knew he was a jaded, hardcore gamer nerd, the kind of guy who'd sneer if he caught you playing a demo game on easy.
Silent Hill Anecdote #27: We were rummaging around a new and used games/comic shop in Tokyo last summer, one with lots of action figures on display, 'swimsuit' calendars and looping videos featuring the virtual cheesecake of Dead or Alive Volleyball, and a large and somehow arrogant-looking fellow working the counter.
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