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Lots of walking around in dense atmosphere

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: February 22, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I realize mine is not a popular opinion, but I think the Silent Hill series is the weakest of the more popular survival horror games. I love all the Fatal Frame games, and most of the Clocktower and Resident Evil games, but something about Silent Hill, to me, was a promise unkept. It was rich in atmosphere and very little else. Quite a bit of pounding these mutant creatures to a pulp with a plank too. Sure, there are clues and inventory and you need to work out a story, but it all seemed so secondary to the "chilly atmosphere" generated, which eventually wore off. In my opinion it lacks substance.

Great job, Konami

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: December 07, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Its been 6 years since I played SH1, so when I played SH2 thoroughly it certainly gave me chills all over my body again. That's pretty rare these days. I enjoyed playing this game. The graphics are a whole lot better than the first SH game. Everything else was the same. I do have two complaints. One; to me the game felt kinda short, Two; Konami should have added a choice of choosing Widescreen or Standard screen(like RE4). I had to modified my Widescreen TV to get the images just right or the pictures would look distorted. Besides that, I like everything about this game.

THE BEST SILENT HILL EVER !!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: March 23, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This is the best Silent Hill, as to yet. I have played them ALL, the first one with "bad" graphics (I personally think they should remake the game with better graphics, so people can enjoy it more), The third one with the girl and the ROOM. But Silent Hill 2 just has the right amount of horror and twist and images and puzzles, that makes it the BEST (for me) of the series !!!

If you like Silent Hill 1, you will love Silent Hill 2. "Excellent Game" "Must Buy"

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: February 12, 2007
Author: Amazon User

"If you haven't played SH1 does not matter, they are different stories."

I begin playing survival horror games like 4 months ago, because my cousins let them to me. They gave me Resident Evil 1 and 2 and Silent Hill 1. I began playing Resident Evil beacause i think it was better, but rapidly it began borring me, so I began playing SH1. Since the first time I played it I didn't stop. It was the best survival horror I ever played. It scared me on some times. But I finish it, I was so happy and I replayed it like 2 more times.

After finish it I bought Silent Hill 2, it was fantastic, the improvement on sound and graphics were so cool. I love it since the first time. I already finish it, so I am expecting to buy Silent Hill 3.

This is an awesome game, and this is a really, a really must buy survival horror game. Excellent!!!

maybe i'm just not cut out for this type of game...

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 12
Date: February 02, 2007
Author: Amazon User

i had to make sure i was reviewing the right silent hill because i can't believe how much people like this game. i did like the first silent hill on playstation, years ago. then i tried silent hill 3 for PC and the camera system was so awful i just couldn't stand it. so i gave this one a try and it's just... boring! you walk around, see some monsters, kill them.. blah.. shooting them isn't very fun. gee, if i want to kill monsters, why wouldn't i just go play doom 3? it's dark. it's scary. it uses guns in a far better manner. so that means the only reason to play silent hill is to learn the story? then why not just go read a good book or watch a movie? or maybe walking around a town is fun.. but hey, i can put on my sneakers and walk around town!

Hauntingly detailed, mentally unsettling, but just a bit too short...

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 9 / 9
Date: September 22, 2006
Author: Amazon User

My initial fears that this was just an overhyped Resident Evil clone were quickly put to rest - although the two games share a genre and pieces of a control scheme, their personalities couldn't be further apart. Where the first three Resident Evils focused on the cheesier, blood-n-guts style with a hint of puzzle solving in the name of variety, Silent Hill 2 concentrates much more on the unknown, the unexplained and the psychologically disturbing. Where Resident Evil 2 is horror in the vein of Dawn of the Dead, Silent Hill 2 is more along the lines of The Ring or The Shining.

It's that establishment of potential horror, not the actual moments of battle where the monster lies revealed, that are most successful in Silent Hill and, honestly, in most of the better films within the genre. To say that this game is lacking in real scary moments would be both unfair and untrue... I jumped more times than I'm comfortable to admit while playing through this one in the dark... but it properly uses such moments as an accent, rather than a crutch. It's been said that the most horrific monster in the world can never be captured on film, because it resides within the collective imaginations of the audience. Hollywood can never frighten you as badly as you can frighten yourself. It's this kind of mentality that I see reflected in Silent Hill 2 from the very get-go. Sure, they do eventually show you the monsters, and they're significantly horrific on their own, but they're all little more than pawns in this scheme, even the bosses. They're just around to nudge your mind in the right direction, so that the little shadows you'll catch darting around at the edge of your field of vision can be more effective and more relative to the story.

In terms of atmosphere, there's very little that this game does wrong. It's learned all the right lessons from the progression and evolution of cinematic horror and applied them to the incomparably personal experience of a quality video game. It's established a unique style, a great cluster of settings, and a wonderful premise (the lead character, James, receives a letter from his wife three years after her death, pleading with him to visit the town of Silent Hill) but the actual follow-through of the story and the accompanying character interactions are lacking. This reminds me of Eternal Darkness in a way, in that a lot of the strange occurrences and developments seem completely random and are never connected to the story itself. Almost universally, the cast is detached from reality, lacking in personality and in emotion, which works within the confines of the plot but results in the player never being fully drawn into the game's world.

I came away from this game feeling as though I'd read a short story that had been padded out and enlongated thanks to the inclusion of a dozen different unrelated asides. It's a fifty page story stretched over the course of a three hundred page novel. You'll meet five non-playable centric characters around the city, but only two of them have a real bearing on the plot, which is itself little more than a series of vague insinuations. It's a real shame, too, because all of the pieces have been set in the right place to accommodate for a much more striking, intriguing tale.

Controlling James as he explores the city is fairly easy, if not entirely ideal. Several elements of the Resident Evil control scheme have surfaced with Silent Hill 2's configuration, most notably the "boat steering" movement controls. If you didn't like standing in one place, pivoting and then running directly forward or backward in Capcom's zombie-fest, you aren't going to like it here. Personally, I've grown used to it and the steering doesn't seem to get in my way any more, but I can certainly see why some players would have developed a bitter hatred for it. One thing that differs from Resident Evil's traditional setup, however, is a fully polygonal environment and a free-roaming camera. What that means is less cheap scares and monsters hiding in plain sight, and a much more interactive experience.

I'll come right out and admit to savoring every last bit of the visual direction and graphical representations of Silent Hill 2. If there's one area that this game absolutely nails, it's this: everything from the character designs to the environments to the simple, yet undeniably successful, film grain texture that overlays every moment of gameplay... it's all an unbridled success. This is among the most thought-out, fully realized visual productions I've ever seen in a game, and even the hardware limitations of the original Xbox are addressed in a concise, effective manner that works within the confines of the big picture. The dreamlike state of your visit to the town explains away the boundaries around the playable area... you don't run into an invisible wall, there are just mysterious tarps or bottomless pits sealing off certain parts of town. You'll accept it at face value because, hey, you just fired three rounds into a set of animated mannequin legs.

Another noteworthy visual innovation is the complete lack of any kind of heads-up display or on-screen indicator. With the multitude of potential actions and inventory items that seem to have completely overtaken the industry, it's a nice change of pace to see a game with just a character and an environment on the screen at any given time. It not only keeps the playing field open for some of the more subtle effects, but also makes the experience even more akin to that of watching a movie.

The appearance of the monsters remains among the most successfully frightening I've ever seen. It's easy to throw sharp teeth, bumpy skin and red eyes onto something, call it an enemy and commence with the cheap scares. What's not so easy is introducing a baddie that's horrifying if just because you have no idea what in the living hell it really is. The bad guys of SH2 are, obviously, the latter. They don't always look so much like they're attacking you out of anger, so much as they're lashing out because they're constantly in pain and see anything that moves as a possible cause. I almost felt pity for these things, their existence is so pitiful, so filled with tragedy.

I can't rightfully discuss the visuals of this game without giving some love to the incredible lighting effects, either. I'd truthfully rank this game ahead of the original Splinter Cell in that category, and Sam Fisher's first romp was released almost specifically to show off everything the Xbox could do in that respect. In Silent Hill 2, you travel the entire city with just a flashlight, which (needless to say) is handled magnificently. Everywhere you go, that single light source is playing with your surroundings to cast all sorts of bizarre, frightening, downright malicious shadows throughout the room

I adored the majority of my experience with Silent Hill 2. The story, while thin at times, is generally workable and never really insultingly self-indulgent. The length of the game bothered me a bit, as the main game map is quite elaborate and seemed to have a lot of unrealized potential, but that goes back to the weakness of the basic plot and the lack of any major side stories of consequence. If you've got a weekend to kill and want to be emotionally shaken, this is exactly the game for you. It features one of the best all-around identities in the history of the industry, takes dozens of hints from the lessons learned by its predecessors in film, and is truly horrifying on several levels. If the story had been a little thicker and the cast had been fleshed out a little further, this would've been close to perfect.

Review for those like me...

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: September 20, 2006
Author: Amazon User

...a light gamer, a newbie to "survival horror". I don't play much, and I think I have about 8 PS2 games. I mostly play sports and classic arcade games, but after I saw Silent Hill the film (a frustrating experience, but I'm not reviewing that right now), I was nonetheless intrigued enough by some of the concepts in the film to dive into the games the film was based on. I started off with Silent Hill 2, because it was the best reviewed, and the least expensive on ebay. Since finishing this game, I've also finished Silent Hill 4 and started on 3, and I'm waiting for find a good deal for the first PSX version. A quick summary--you're Frank Sunderland, widower of three years, and you've recieved a letter from your deceased wife. The letter brings you to Silent Hill, a town that you quickly find out is haunted, or worse, a portal to the netherworld.

Well, this "game" is certainly a mindbender. So many of the reviews comment on the strengths of the game, but I will reinforce some of those from my own "newbie" perspective: The atmosphere is suffocating. The fog, the use of darkness, the use of radio static to beckon a nearby threat, is near flawless and the ideal in horror, in any medium. This is an interactive Horror Thriller, and not the slasher or post-modern "Scream" type either. This puts you there, on the streets of this hellish town, where either the fog or the darkness denies you the eyesight to see what's ten feet in front of you until some freaky thing, trying to break out of its own flesh, is there on top of you. This is not really a game of "jump scares", it's a game of a ever-heightening tension, until you run into a disturbing entity or location (such as Pyramid Head or the extremely unnerving prison) that you never wish to see again. Inoccuous sequences, such as descending a long dark stairwell with a tiny flashlight as pounding sounds, like the machines of hell churning, throb your speakers, are more intense than a barrage of zombies in a Doom type of game. Comparing the monsters in this to what I saw in SH4 and what I'm seeing in SH3, there's no comparison. The aforementioned "Big Boss" Pyramid Head is an icon unto itself, and the nurses and straightjacket zombies are freakier than 90% of the things seen in good horror films. This "film", seems to be heavily influenced by Asian horror, Lovecraft, HR Giger, and Tool--both the music and the videos. Throw those things in a blender, and you get the Silent Hill mythos...

As for the story, look, the story's solid, but this game was released back in mid-2001. If you're just playing it now...it might actually feel cliched, because the "twist(s)" have been done before, in recent horror/thriller films--you may see connections to The Others, Identity, and the Machinist, but keep in mind, this came first. Because of that, I was actually a bit disappointed with the story, thinking, "Come on, I could see that coming a mile away!", but it's my fault, for playing it now, and not when it was first released. The music is also very effective, at times intense to match the action, at other times, soft and melodic in a minor key, to reflect the tragedy behind the tale.

When you finish the game, its the overall atmosphere that you will remember the most, and the fun--if we call it that--from being scared by what's implied in the distance but we can't see it before it's too late. I watch a good amount of horror films, but 99% of them are [...], reliant on pop-up boos to get a rise out of the audience. This...this sticks with you.

Video Games have grown up. And they are scary.

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: June 20, 2006
Author: Amazon User

To keep this review rather simpleton, this game is eerie, spooky, morbid and malevolent. With that said it should also be noted that this game is very fun and dare I say intelligent. There are many different puzzles that need to be solved in order to advance to other levels. Now the story line to this game is great too. A man receives a letter from his wife, several years after she has died. The letter leads him to Silent Hill, where he meets a dead ringer of his departed wife.

The graphics are good, the music is wonderful, the video is great and the game play is good. I must confess I am of the Atari generation, so it took me a bit to get use to the controls on this game. However, after some practice I adjusted well. A final note to parents, THIS GAME IS FOR ADULTS ONLY!!!!! SOME OF THE THINGS THAT HAPPEN IN THIS GAME FREAKED ME OUT!!! THEREFORE, IT MIGHT SCARE THE OATMEAL OUT OF YOUR LITTLE JIMMY OR DEBBIE!!!! Many times people don't read disclaimers and end up blaming video game companies to stop production on a game, because it is damaging their children. This would all be avoided if people/parents review the product before they buy it. Would you eat something if you didn't know what was in it?

I'm off the soap box, this is a great game.

A playable movie, but what else?

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 3
Date: May 22, 2006
Author: Amazon User

What I got out of this game is that it concentrates mostly on story, and the storyline is great. What you have to do is run around collecting keys and other items to enter new areas to unlock more of the story (videos). That's about it....most of the time you are running around this huge town of silent hill searching, searching, searching, solving riddles, etc........So, I dunno, I'd rather just watch all of the videos and save myself running around town for hours and getting scared. The game has great graphics.

One of the Freakiest Games EVER

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: May 06, 2006
Author: Amazon User

What can I say about this game? It is just incredible. The graphics are incredibly rich and detailed (especially once you beat the game and can turn the "sound effect" off), but what really makes this game is its story. Your character goes by the name of James Sunderland, a rather simple, lonely man who's wife passed away 3 years ago. However, you get a letter from her, saying she is waiting in Silent Hill, in your "special place". I love how deep the storyline goes, and how emotional it is at times. The game does an excellent job of conveying emotion, and this game is at many times a rather depressing experience.

If you can bear the 10 minute fog jog at the beginning of the game, you will be thrown into an absoloutely surreal and terrifying world. Environments like an apartment building, a hospital, a jail, and even a labyrinth, combined with disturbing, well timed sound effects create a very haunting auroa in these claustrophobic environments. This game also features alternate endings (5, to be specific that change depending on decisions you make in the game) and little bonuses for completing the game. A MUST for any lover of the survival-horror genre.

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