Review

Uh.. ok, so this game is f***ed! They're smoking some freaky stuff at Konami, because Silent Hill is one bizarro game. Unfortunately, it's also really frustrating to play. It's got the eerie, scary, raise-the-hair-on-your-neck kind of atmosphere that you expect of a good horror game, but the mechanics are pretty busted.

I got fed up with the camera. Totally fed up with it. There are much better ways to maintain tension in a horror game than having the damn camera face straight into the character's face every time you enter a new room. In fact, I've yet to see a game that used "cinematic" cameras that didn't end up as frustrating as trying to tie your shoes with one hand. I don't care how "dramatic" it makes things. If I want a cinematic camera, I'll watch cinema. I want a camera that let's me play the damn game. And frankly, for a horror game, I think that 1st person perspectives are scarier. With 1st person, you don't have the sense of detachment that you get with a 3rd person view. Plus, your general situational awareness is lower with a 1st person view, which increases the tension level.

I also didn't care for the fact that I had to use the melee weapons so much (knife, crow bar, etc..). The fighting is really clunky to begin with, and the wonky camera made it that much worse because it was hard to get oriented correctly. I also personally didn't care for having to penny-pinch my ammo. Sure, I guess they were leveraging, the "oh, no, I've only got 3 bullets left" flavor of tension, but that just wore thin on me and became a chronic irritant. Maybe I shouldn't play horror games.

Here's a quick UI peeve: why do I have to manually pick up ammo boxes? What reason on God's green Earth would I ever have for NOT wanting to pick up any ammo box I find? If the player says 'yes' to a question 100% of the time, don't ask it.

Lastly, the story progression was really threadbare. Clearly, they wanted to keep you in the dark (literally and figuratively), and only dole out tiny crumbs of the big picture. Since I was already turned off by the gameplay, the measly scraps of plot I was getting weren't sufficient to keep me engaged. I've since read a good summary/analysis of the plot and it's incredibly interesting. It's a real shame that didn't come through better in the game.

I think I got through about 2/3 of the game before I quit. The gameplay was just preventing me from enjoying the horror elements. I'm not very inclined to give the sequel a try, either, since I think it's just more of the same. I'll just go read the walkthrough so I can unravel more of the story. Silent Hill is a really intriguing piece of fiction. It's too bad the game isn't a better vehicle for it.