Silent Hill

by Konami

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00004LN2S
• Media: Video Game
• Release Date: February 24, 1999
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (34 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #42,299 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)

Product Description

GameSpot Review

In a recent interview with OPM, Silent Hill's creators remarked that one of their main goals with the game was to frighten people on an instinctive level, and that's something that, in my mind, they've clearly succeeded at doing. While similar horror titles, like Capcom's Resident Evil series, work well at making you jump in a "boo!" sort of way, Silent Hill establishes a very unsettling atmosphere that at once puts you off and creeps you out. Silent Hill accomplishes this through a host of wonderful little touches: a radio that emits static whenever monsters are near, a lead character that must catch his breath after running, the placement of wheelchairs and broken stretchers in abandoned stairwells, and so on. One of the most successfully unnerving elements is the game's lighting, which is almost always cast from a flashlight, whether you are in a dark alleyway, a fog-enshrouded back street, or a dank basement. The glare it gives off obscures almost as much as it illuminates, like a dying candle. It was that effect, much more than any fearsome creature, which made me leave a hall light on one night after playing it. That's not to say that the monster design is under par though. In fact, there was one species in particular - a shaggy man-thing that barks and sets after you on all fours - that sent a chill up the back of my neck every time I saw one. To back up a bit, Silent Hill begins with a car accident that separates the main character, Harry Mason, from his daughter. He wanders around looking for her in the off-season resort town that they had happened upon, encountering things and events that seem inspired at least in part by horror writers H.P. Lovecraft and Stephen King (anyone remember The Mist?). Figuring out what's actually going on in the burg is much more of a draw for the player than discovering where some little girl has made off to, but both quests lead you around the streets, houses, and major buildings of a fairly convincing 3D Midwestern town. Aside from a slightly grainy cast to Silent Hill's look, its graphics are pretty tight. The use of fog and darkness work so well to enhance the game's mood that you don't mind that they're obviously hiding pop-up (perhaps your suspension of disbelief is withheld so that you ignore it or something), and the lighting effects produced by the character's flashlight are often jaw-dropping. The sound effects are likewise very strong, with scary monster growls (as I've mentioned before), random clanks and crashes that force you to turn around and inspect a room you're sure is empty, and eerie piping that wafts in throughout. Imagine an instance in which all these elements are combined: You're in a dark courtyard, and snow is coming down. Your flashlight only illuminates a few feet ahead of you, but you know something's there with you because your radio is blaring static, and you've heard some indescribable something out there make a noise. You draw your gun and... wait, while the music builds. This sort of event makes for some very tense and very entertaining moments, and the game definitely repeats and serves them quite often. On the downside, Silent Hill's storyline doesn't deliver nearly the payoff promised throughout. You can beat the game without learning some of its most important plot points and, without a doubt, the first time you win you'll be left wondering what the hell happened and if that was really it. And it's not. There are four different endings within Silent Hill that are reached based on your performance during some key moments. Personally, I hate when developers try to extend the life of a game by making you play it through more than once. But at its base, Silent Hill still has a decent amount of play to it. A handful of well-designed puzzles keeps the game from being too short; it's just a shame you can't learn everything you want to know the first time through. Another gripe is that the game camera suffers from the same problem as many other third-person-game cameras: It always seems to fail you when you need it the most. It's the lack of a real climax that probably hurts the game the most, but the perspective can be vexing as well. In the end, though, Konami's first entry in the horror genre - while not quite up to the mark of Capcom's Resident Evil 2 - is a great beginning. Let's hope we've seen the start of a new franchise by the company, because this would be an excellent starting point.--Joe Fielder--Copyright © 1998 GameSpot Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of GameSpot is prohibited.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sanity is Overrated, December 14, 2001

By 

Warner Scroggins (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Silent Hill (Video Game)

No other brand of suvival horror will ever come close.

This game makes Resident Evil look like the 7th Heaven Christmas Special. RE relies on the "boo, something jumped out of nowhere" scare. It's not bad, but it's more James Cameron than Clive Barker.

Silent Hill's kind of horror is the kind that slithers slowly up your back and hisses in your ear as you gawk in horror at the twisted travesties that lie before you. You can't tear your eyes away, and the images follow you into your sleep. In terms of story and atmosphere, Silent Hill is heavily influenced by the filmmakers Clive Barker and, in my opinion, David Lynch. Rather than explaining the horror away with some tiresome nonsense about a corrupt corporation's biological creation, SH unashamedly dives full-bore into the realms of dark psychology, the occult, and the border between the most wretched of nightmares and Hell itself.

Leave it to Konami to put out another killer game soundtrack. We'd expect no less from the great folks who brought us Castlevania and Metal Gear. Silent Hill's soundtrack alone is enough to gray the hairs on your head. It's eerie, experimental, and deliciously twisted. Just LET me find the soundtrack on CD...

Two gripes: bad voice acting and lame, poorly-translated dialogue. In this case, all is forgiven, as Silent Hill is still scarier and darker than any survival horror game out there. (...)

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Scariest game ever, August 4, 2001

By 

Travis (Honokaa, HI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Silent Hill (Video Game)

This game, no matter what anyone says, is the scariest game ever. People complain that it doesn't have the 'surprise' factor that Resident Evil had. But that isn't scary, it just gives you a little shock that's over in two seconds. Silent Hill has constant, disturbing images and sounds that unceaselessly barrage your senses. A little girl crying in the distance, creaking doors, panting doctors and moaning nurses, all with their skin ripped off. A terrifying soundtrack that seems to rise in volume as the world around you melts into a bloody hell. Bloody bodies hang on the wall, giggling demon-children, invisible enemies you could have sworn were there a second ago. All combined to scare the living day lights out of you. The game adds more disturbing images by lowering the visibility. You stumble through the dark as SOMETHING creeps toward you, your radio blares white noise as you run down a hallway with only a small flashlight to light your way, and the ever constant fog that blocks your view, even though you know something is nearby. To complete the detail of the game, strange symbols appear, and disturbingly psychotic poems are found on gory desks, things out of Lewis Carrol. Throughout the whole game, day and night interchange as you go through Hell and Silent Hill. Until the sun stops rising, and you must complete the game with only your flashlight to save you. The game, in short, is fantastic, and has great replay value due to secrets and hidden weapons.

12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars THE scariest video game ever created!!, May 18, 2005

By 

Joy (Fairfax, VA USA) - See all my reviews

= Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Silent Hill (Video Game)

Back in 2002, I had never really played any kind of survival horror game ever in my life. A friend of mine came over to my house and brought Silent Hill and the Playstation. I was just watching and I really liked how it had snow falling out in the town in the summer nonetheless, it looked like a really scary game. Then, months later, I borrowed this game from my friend and played from the beginning and didn't get really far because I really didn't know what to do. Finally, one night, when my friend was back over at my house, I was playing and he was sitting there watching and we were playing with surround sound, the lights off and no one else was in the house. From the very beginning alley, I was very scared! So I get to the school, Midwich Elementary School, and everything looks normal. My friend who was watching kept telling me that once I go through the Clock Tower, I will be back at Midwich Elementary and that it will be the same school but at the same time, it wouldn't be the same school and at that point, I was really starting to freak out. I had no idea what horrors were waiting for me!

I go through the Clock Tower and I hear these really creepy sirens, I'm to the point where I want to turn the game off but my friend was with me and kept telling me to move on. So I start to go into the school and once I'm in, I'm freaking out! All the floors were replaced by metal grates with nothing below them, the walls were like chained fences, everything covered in blood, pure horror and terror!! I was really scared by the visuals and the music. Something really creepy in the Alternate school is when you go into one of the bathroom's on the first floor, you end up on the second floor, creepy!!! Just everything that I saw and heard in every room and corridor scared me to death!!

I turned the game off after I was done in the school and couldn't sleep with the light off!! I did eventually play through the whole game and beat it but I have never been so scared playing a video game in my entire life!!! The really scary music and sound effects play a big part. But what's really scary isn't just the atmosphere, the music or visuals. It freaks me out thinking about why the town of Silent Hill is deserted and how Samael came along. If I think about this stuff before I go to sleep, a lot of times, I can't sleep. The Alternate Hospital, Alchemilla Hospital is another really scary place in the game that really scared me too but not as bad as the school. To be honest, when I first was going through the Alternate school, the way it looked, that's what I thought hell would look like, it was so scary. To this day, it scares me! Sometimes even with the light on, it's scary!! Even though the graphics aren't the best, this Silent Hill game scares me more than Silent Hill's 2, 3 or 4 and they have better graphics!!! I would not recommend this game to anyone who scares easily!