This is the last game on this list that was made before the year 2000, I swear.
- Release year: 1999
- Developer: Konami
- Platform: PlayStation
Silent Hill. It’s iconic. Maybe less so than its sequel, but I’ve always preferred the original, myself. Yes, I’ve played it before. Just like Donkey Kong ’94, I’ve played it many times. Maybe even dozens of times, as there was a point in my life where I was trying to speedrun it and get a perfect 10-star ending. And if you don’t really know what that means, don’t worry about it. It’s not relevant to normal people.
I think we all kinda know the broad strokes of the story here: Harry Mason and his daughter Cheryl are heading off on a vacation to the town of Silent Hill, when a ghostly figure suddenly appears from the fog, causing Harry to swerve and crash his car. When he comes to, Cheryl has disappeared, and he finds himself in a town that is mostly vacant, save for a handful of random oddball characters and a legion of monsters.
I picked this one up again to play on Halloween night, and, uh… mostly made it all the way through in one go. It seems that in the few years since I had last played it, my memory of what to do and where to go had eroded a bit more than I’d expected. Most notably, I completely forgot where the rifle is picked up, missed it, and then realized that you’re unable to ever go back for it. Fortunately, it’s not really required to finish the game, but watching those rifle bullets stack up in my inventory, forever unused, really broke my heart.
The thing I like most about Silent Hill is how absolutely weird and mysterious it is. I did a lot of unnecessary exploring during this run, and noticed a lot of hidden details that I don’t remember ever seeing before, which helped to clarify a few parts of the story a little, but so much still remains up to the player’s imagination. I’ve spent the last twenty years of my life, if not more, researching the Silent Hill lore, and the fact that I still can’t explain everything about the game makes me happy.
While it was a revisit of a well-worn classic, it was one that filled my heart. I only wish that Konami would port it to more machines, because the knockoff PS3 controller I used to play it is not great and caused great cramping in my thumb-parts. And even though a big-budget remake is right around the corner, even if Bloober Team completely nails it, I don’t think the janky ol’ PS1 version will ever be dethroned as my very favourite Silent Hill.