Silent Hill 2

It's time for me to say goodbye to Horror games month with another retro review. Though I may not review horror games for a while, I'll still review them again but I wanted to leave the ones that affected me the most in this month and I know there have been a tad too many retro reviews on my end but it comes with a significant reason and the one that affected me the most is surely from the masterpiece Silent Hill 2. A disclaimer is that there might be excruciating details regarding all aspects of this game so you can find a conclusion in the end for those who have not played it. Otherwise, spoilers ahead.

Also developed by Team Silent, this game has as many flaws as one would expect. It has clunky controls and a combat system that feels off but no matter how many times I beat Silent Hill 2 I always felt lost and puzzled more and more. The narrative and the atmosphere is done so well that, just like the first game, one can ignore the awkward dialogue in many scenes. I am glad I played this installment as someone who is mature and is able to understand what is going on because Silent Hill 2 in my opinion will be brought as a great example in terms of telling a story without words through many aspects of it. We've only tipped the surface here and for the first time because I love the story so much, I will get into the inner details of it.

Silent Hill 2 really sets the atmosphere right for the town

Silent Hill 2 starts off with our protagonist James Sunderland who sets out to find his wife in the town of Silent Hill who died 3 years ago of an illness. The only thing James remembers is a letter he got from his wife, Mary who invited him to the hotel on the outskirts of Toluca Lake. If you have played the previous game, you'd have a basic idea that the town causes all those in it to lose their way and forget why they are there in the first place but that's not the case with this game. Team silent did an amazing job with how subtle and atmospheric every part is. Every scene and event felt essential despite me still being unable to remember all the puzzles or the areas but I know if I get back to it I will appreciate it even more. James finds different characters who are as lost as him and for some reason when he does, he seems to be always surrounded by fog. See, I may be stretching my explanation here but I am only emphasizing the amazing attention to detail in every part in Silent Hill 2. The animation even felt ahead of its time the way I saw it. 

What I loved the most about Silent Hill 2 is that it emphasizes on the atmosphere using all of the pillars of what makes a game. The sound and the surroundings all complement each other perfectly and even Jame's footsteps sound realistic in the sense they are hesitant. All those messages sent to the players are given to us through subtlety and that's the best thing a game developer can do in terms of a high quality experience. Like any survival horror, you can explore your surroundings and examine most if not all objects around the player and there seems to be a great attention to detail in the level design here. There were many long sequences that took its time in terms of transitioning from one area to another such as the entrance to the town and/or entering another level.

Jump down? WHY YES OF COURSE LETS JUMP INTO THE ABYSS

 Most of these sequences affected me in reflecting on myself and grasping how grand and how significant the emotions are in the character you are playing as even though it was really early in the game, you can already tell something is both off about the character you are playing and the whole town you are in. The deeper you get into the town the more sounds you hear, rustling in the woods, growling animals and the fog gets heavier. Looking at these detailed details is essential to creating a perfect atmosphere. That is the sole reason I freaked out when I saw the first enemy.

OH SHIT OH SHIT OH SHIT

After killing that disfigured blob of bloody walking flesh, we take our signature radio that seems to make noise when there are enemies nearby. James fights these creatures all over the town. Which gets us to the weakest part of the game. The combat feels outdated and clunky. It feels weak controlling James and even though we are presented with the same arsenal Harry had in the first game, the enemies feel different here and I love every type of them. This is the game that made us think that there is a meaning behind every design of every monster as some of them barely more when you look at them and attack you when you give them your back and some like to crawl under objects while others have... pyramids for heads and attack other monsters. Ammo is always limited and melee weapons aren't a favorable choice unless you can isolate them one by one and it is always a matter of fight or flight as there are much more labyrinths in terms of level design when we compare to previous games so most of the time it is a better choice to run than to confront every enemy you face. James' health is considered low and even though there are many health pickups, you might get killed easily if you aren't careful.

You better save your ammo for this guy

Puzzles in Silent Hill 2 are as ridiculous as they are can be quite challenging. Unlike the previous games where you couldn't skip all puzzles, the game not only gives you the difficulty option but also gives you a puzzle difficulty option which in my opinion was quite devastating since I spent a while before figuring things out on Hard mode in puzzles. I think the most ridiculous part was in the prison level where the player had to mix horseshoe with wax and burning the wax to open a sewer door instead of prying it open with a crowbar. One can also argue that some puzzles if not all also complemented to the story but I will get to that later.

This is a perfect image to summarize the puzzles in Silent Hill

I was glad to have heard haunting tracks from Akira Yamaoka but I was even petrified after finding out how good the sound design was. The monster sounds as well as simple sound effects were realistic and believable from footsteps to Pyramid Head's sword getting dragged on the ground from afar will send shivers down my spine every time I hear it from afar. It's easy to disconnect ourselves from what the player represents when there aren't good aesthetics like these but it's really difficult to detach ourselves from simple elements like fog and darkness or light. That is the second element that provided the best experience in terms of engagement in Silent Hill 2. The animations and character designs felt believable. What's best is that even though you feel you are safe after trudging through a nightmarish level of total darkness and outside in the morning fog, you still feel that unsettling air about you and all that couldn't have happened without the sound design

I feel I have spoken enough in terms of what the game represents in terms of survival horror but now it is time for an in depth look at the characters. There were multiple endings to Silent Hill 2 and though few have seen only one I believe that to fully understand the whole story one must experience all of them. Even after finishing all of these endings I still felt as lost as I was when I first started the game because most of the experience is open to interpretation that is hidden behind heavy subtle character designs and animations, monster designs, level designs and general aesthetics.

James:

The way the game reveals itself is that instead of James being a victim of Silent Hill, he was engulfed in his own nightmare, descending into the abyss of him coming to terms of him putting his wife down after her suffering through her own illness. There couldn't be a more perfect way to describe the agony he went through. This is his own hell, the town was a byproduct of his own regret and suffering to the point of him forgetting that it was him who put Mary down. After visiting the last level, the hotel where they both stayed in, he sees a video tape containing a footage of Mary being happy with him 3 years ago. When he realizes he was the sole reason for his wife's death, the whole level descends into madness. 

Poor james

It was haunting to see effeminate monsters and mannequin like creatures in rooms with Mary's costume. It was also interesting to see how James reacts in the three endings as if they were all different ways to express part of his character where in one ending he is overwhelmed by regret he decides to commit suicide or another ending where he is given a chance to speak to Mary again and asks her for forgiveness, admitting to her and himself that it was him who put her down. There are much more details one can find but simply thinking about this over the top off my head is overwhelming to say the least in terms of what James went through. It's nice to think though despite it being a horror way it is optimistic in the sense that it encourages people to move on instead of being stuck on the past and that is what James did, he was beating himself up over what he did.

Well, that is a total mindfuck

Maria:

Shortly after entering Silent Hill, James meets Maria who strangely resembles his wife and is a more outgoing person than his wife. One can't help but think something is off with her since she has Mary's memories as well as her refusing to be her in other occasions. What makes things worse is that she dies on different occasions only to come back like nothing happened. If that doesn't prove that James is going through a nightmare, I don't know what is. Among the many characters James meet, I believe maria to be a monster just like the others for many reasons but I'll stick to her basically being the final boss and her strangling him with her "tentacle" in the fight. I also deduced that because unlike other characters who are living in their own hells just as James is, she seems to be so convenient for James that one can't help but think she is a byproduct of James' sexual frustration while Mary was sick.

Don't let Mary-- uh Maria fool you she is dead. She will be back

Angela:

Angela may be my most favorite character after James and her story depresses me till this day. Abused by her father and the way I saw it was that she basically took revenge on him by killing him and burning her house down with him. It sounds ridiculous to the point where she forgot it and could not live with that pain. She wanted to forget it and this town was her solace. The first conversation with James she has, it almost feels they were both at a loss and talking to themselves. Come to think of it, there is always fog and death around Angela. In the first scene she was at a graveyard. An eerie sense of disturbance. James receives a knife from her the second time he meets her and the player gets the suicide ending if he examines it a lot. The third time he meets her, James sees newspapers of a house burnt down and a creature overwhelming Angela. After killing the creature, Angela kicks the creature only to realize that it was a human and expresses anger towards James. It's one of the many events that imply that what James sees is not what the other characters see. Every character is living in their own hell. Shortly before James confronts Maria in the hotel about his issues, he comes across Angela one last time where she is ascending an endless set of stairs on fire. Angela asks for her knife back but James refuses only for her to mock him that he might be saving it for himself. I felt empty being unable to save that character and it was a heartbreaking moment for me.

Eddie:

If Angela wasn't enough proof that everyone saw things differently in Silent Hill, Eddie clarifies it. Eddie has been on a killing spree since James first meets him and he kept on denying it and claiming that they were bullying him. It eventually turns out or at least the way I saw it was Eddie saw the monsters as normal humans that were abusing him. Living in his own hell, he was forced to live with the pain and suffering of abuse and the regret of killing them. Eventually, James killed him in self defense which makes him another victim of the town.

It looks like you are crazy, sir

Laura:

Laura's place in the story feels very off to me. More off than Maria because there is no evidence to point out where she came from and what is the reason behind her being with James in the story. I do know that every time she shows up, the town is completely fine and is not filled with decay. It's a signature of the series to have decaying surroundings along with rusty and bloody walls but when Laura shows up, the town is back to normal. There is even a scene with Eddie and her eating a pizza at a bar which was really off the way I saw it.

Pyramid Head:

Oh what's this? Why did I add Pyramid Head as a character? Why that's because after playing so many playthroughs and reading online about how symbolic these monster designs are, I finally realized how Pyramid Head was actually symbolic for James' guilt. Guilt always haunts us and nothing is more scary than a giant Pyramid Head following us till the end of the game in the shape of guilt. Pyramid Head was always invisible in every occasion, he also only attacked James only when he attacks him. Throughout the cutscenes, he only shows up as a guide to show James where to go. The other instances were for him to stop Maria who was trying to manipulate James. In fact, after finishing the fight with him in the apartments, you find Maria for the first time and that makes you wonder if he is an enemy at all because in the end when the two pyramid heads show up and kill Maria for the second time, James realizes his guilt for killing Mary and realizes what he has to do then. Then and only then do they commit suicide, having served their purpose as a guiding light to James. It's a very interesting character because despite it being seen as a villain, it really is not in Silent Hill 2 despite it changing in future installments.

It amazes me how much I am discussing here from a Survival Horror game. It amazes me there exists a game that can only tell that kind of story through this medium. I love how deep Silent Hill 2 is and I still love how there are many questions left for me. It amazes me how even though there are so many bad controls, AI, annoying puzzles and cheesy dialogue at times, it still manages to captivate all players to them theorizing about it over the Internet. My outlook on it may be completely different than what others have and that is the best thing in an art form. Silent Hill 2 has an HD version on the PS3 and on PS2 for an earlier version. Thank you for bearing with me if you have on this rant of a review and here is to hopefully continuing horror games in the near future.