Series : Silent Hill
Developer : Team Silent
Music : Akira Yamaoka
Themes : Horror
Bio-horror
Audio : Ambience
Other Tags : ghosts
multiverse
Greatest Music
Achievements : retroachievements.orgCOMPLETED
Silent Hill is similar to Capcom's Resident Evil games from the same era, but opted for fully realtime graphics instead of prerendered backgrounds. The result is a world that feels more open due to the camera moving, and the relatively low polygon rendering capabilities of the PlayStation is offset by clever use of fog and darkness. The game seems to have been designed with this in mind, as fog and darkness plays into narrative and gameplay alike, while helping to render an open world on limited 3D hardware.
The combat is difficult and can get frustrating - often because your weapons feel inadequate. This is supposedly intentional, making the option of running away from monsters seem like a better choice than standing your ground. This design goal can very hard to get right, but Silent Hill mostly gets away with it.
The artwork is very effective, making the most of very few polygons to evoke monstrous creatures and the beautifully bleak locations in the town of Silent Hill. Akira Yamaoka's music is very unique, he forewent the traditional orchestral horror music to go with a mix of melancholic instrumental guitar tracks and nightmarish sounding industrial sample collages.
Image source: hardcoregaming101.net
Facts
Good Ending - Complete Kaufmann side quest and kill Cybil.
Good+ Ending - Complete Kaufmann side quest and save Cybil. Saving Cybil requires doing the following when first entering the hospital. Get the Plastic Bottle (Hospital kitchen) and using it to get Red Liquid (Hospital director's office).
Zodiac Puzzle - This puzzle doesn't have anything to do with astrology, it's a big red herring. Actually, the puzzle is about counting the limbs of each sign. Apparently, a scale has two limbs ... Hmm...
Sign Object Limbs Pisces fish 0 Libra scales 2 Aries ram 4 Cancer crab 10
Solution:
Sign Object Limbs Sagittarius centaur 6 Taurus bull 4 Gemini twins 8
The Grim Reaper's list - sorted numerically:
18 Albert Lords 35 Lydia Findly 38 Edward C Briggs 45 Roberta T Morgan 60 Trevor F White
The first letters spell out 'ALERT'.
Reset to main menu - R1+R2+L1+L2+Select+Start.
Article: Silent Hill Mini-FAQ
This Mini-FAQ has my collected notes for Silent Hill (PSX).
Read more...Extra options - In the options menu, press R1. First person camera is 'View Mode: Self View'.
Analysis
Realism - The city of Silent Hill and the interiors of the buildings you can enter have a sense of drab realism to them that felt novel at the time. Usually, video games are more amazing that real places, colors are more vivid, everything has a purpose, represents a bit of lore, or provides some humour, but Silent Hill's environments just - exist. They seem to be created to be realistic and even a bit depressing.
Snow Effect - this game has snowflakes that fall down, move in the wind, and stop and disappear when they hit the ground. Very neat.
Quotes
CUT-RATE CHAINSAW SALE
