Few games are representative of the genre of horror as it is Silent Hill, from its exit to the market caused fear and possibly traumas to all those people who had the pleasure of having played it, and of course, it is a pleasure to have played Silent Hill despite the bad times and the moments of terror that we have spent playing. Possibly for many this was the first encounter with a game of terror, I remember at the time when I had my Playstation 1 era of the games that caused me the most fear.
That's why today a retro review of some of the best survival horror of the video game industry: Silent Hill.
In Silent Hill we are Harry Mason a father who travels with his "daughter" Cheryl, in a very dangerous road, when suddenly in the middle of the road we come across a kind of shadow with a humanoid shape that takes us by surprise, Harry tries to dodge but with such bad luck that the car where they traveled is overturned.
When we wake up we find ourselves in a town, a town set in the best horror films, but not a normal terror, a terror from which your blood will freeze. In the distance we see Cheryl move and get lost in the thick fog, so as good father Harry goes after his daughte , all the mystery of town and the disappearance of Cheryl has to do with a connection that she has with the people, connection that we will find out during the game.
But not only was the dark and gloomy atmosphere of this town, also in turn we find a large number of creatures of all types and forms, some more horrifying than others, that would make them tremble with fear even the bravest person if they ran into one of them.
From the beginning the game gives us to understand that it will play with our mental health, presenting us a world full of darkness, deformed creatures and a number of situations that escape common reality, making us feel that we are in a real hell and that to escape from that place will not be so easy.
The terror that has silent hill is not that we see in current games, here we do not see scares that only last a few seconds, in silent hill most of the time that we are playing we will find ourselves in situations of tension and even pure terror, something that few games can recreate and only rely on an easy type of terror, as are the jumpscare. Silent Hill is one of the precursors of the genre of survival horror a genre that today has been lost and very few games that really make you feel real fear when playing it, for many of the best horror games.
Graphically did not stand out much, in fact did not take full advantage of the power of the Playstation 1 compared to other games, besides that unlike many others, in silent hill we did not find pre-loaded background as was customary in many games of that generation, but the environment by which we moved were designed in 3D, so the ability to detail that could have been achieved with an environment with pre-loaded backgrounds are not given in a 3D environment, but silent hill knew how to fix that inconvenience.
the addition of the mist that we see in the whole town served to cover in a certain way the little detail in the scenarios designed in 3D and also thanks to that the fog gave him silent a level in the atmosphere more gloomy and dark, something that later became quite characteristic of the game itself, we find ourselves in a scenario that is covered by a thick fog, our field of vision is more limited therefore it generates a feeling of claustrophobia and terror because in many cases we do not see when an enemy appears to us, thanks to that it was possible to create an atmosphere totally of psychological terror.
Creating scary scenarios is not enough to generate an environment that makes you feel terror every time you take a walk in this town, the musicalization was of great importance for it game and the developers knew it, in such a way that they were in charge to compose a series of melodies of such form that along with the scenarios, it created a perfect atmosphere for absolute tension and psychological terror. In addition to having sound effects very well achieved that at times will make us hit a jump of the scare.
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One of the first things we notice when playing silent hill is its resemblance to Resident Evil in terms of gameplay, with a control over the character, which I must admit caused me enough despair in some moments, but with practice you get used to it, since in some cases (although this is a merely personal opinion), I felt control and movement too rigid and it was difficult for me to move Harry fluently, although as I said, then you get accustomed and improvements in mobility of the character.
The game presents a lot of enemies of all the most horrible possible forms from which we could escape (although in some cases it was quite complicated) or we could eliminate them, for this we had weapons melee and also firearms, with the detail that we had to use it wisely since they gave us little ammunition, as always the game puts everything against us, , since it was not enough to put us in terrifying scenarios, with all sorts of creatures coming out of the same hell, a soundtrack that froze the blood, as an addition gave us little ammunition for weapons, this game did know how to play with our nerves.
In Silent Hill we can also find a lot of puzzles of which many of them have a great level of difficulty, each of them are well mixed with the scenarios, demonstrating originality both in design and in the logical solution of these.
Today Silent Hill graphically is not so noticeable, in fact in his time did not revolutionize in the graphic aspect, what I knew to do silent hill was to present a world of total terror, with scenarios and atmosphere that fit perfectly with the type of game that is, a game that did know how to give the player a level of tension when playing, something that unfortunately in current games the touch of survival horror has been lost, giving us a kind of "terror" based on "screamers" and "jumpscare", being a type of easy terror that only causes "fear" a few seconds.
Is it advisable to play Silent Hill despite all the years that have happened? totally yes, if you can overcome the graphic aspect, although it is not excellent, it fulfills what it does not want to give: scares and to cause moments of high tension.