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Videogame
Source : PlayStation 2 |
Silent
Hill 2 |
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| Gameplay |
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| Overall |
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6.0 |
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Review
by JR Clone |
Let’s start with a question: Has a video game ever
scared you? Well, until I played Silent Hill , the answer was no. Modifying some
lukewarm elements of other survival horror games and warping them to its own twisted
design, Silent Hill was a true horror game, an experience that pulled out al
the stops to deliver an engaging, honestly creepy encounter.
As a man in search of a his little girl, running through the fog ridden town of Silent
Hill with only a flashlight and a radio that picked up on the presence of monsters was
neither boring nor banal, but rather one of the most tense, gory games ever unleashed.
On the second trip through Silent Hill, aptly titled Silent Hill 2, things have
been touched up a bit, but nothing has really changed in order to keep gamers on the edges
of their seats. This time, the hero is James Sunderland, a man not in search of his
daughter, but of his dead wife Mary. After receiving a letter from Mary, who departed
three years past, James fires up the old station wagon and guns it to the town of Silent
Hill. The tale of James is less convoluted than the yarn spun in the original, and yet
less compelling. Following in the footsteps of the mind bending independent films that
have been in abundance in the last two or three years, Silent Hill 2 is rife with
psychological head games, but feels like a rip off of the aforementioned films.
Just like the original, Silent Hill 2 journeys into new, ghastly territory in the field of
videogames, but is still behind the times when compared with other forms of entertainment.
The signatures of the original Silent Hill are fortunately still present and, for the most
part, even better then before.
Most positive among SH2’s positive qualities is its unprecedented cinematic
presentation. Unabashed in its gruesome portrayal of death, insanity, and demonology, the
two Silent Hill games have certainly taken it up a notch from Resident Evil. RE’s
campy edge is gone, and in its place is a troubling milieu of madness. The camera can
prove unwieldy, but equally as often it will present things from sweeping canted angles,
highlighting the warped, unnaturally dark world. Ah yes, the darkness. Wandering
throughout Silent Hill outdoors, fog will impede you from seeing much further from ten
feet in any direction, and inside, good luck seeing anything without a flashlight.
And when the flashlight turns on, get ready to be awestruck by the amazing lighting
effects. The dank, almost colorless environments don’t exactly push the PlayStation 2’s
limits, but the light that emanates from your torch is simply fantastic. I have even been
freaked out by James’s shadow in the game, the way it often shoots out of nowhere,
moving almost realistically along with his every move. Other shadows are incredibly
accurate, and anything and everything shows the effort of the game’s programmers as
the light reflects and refracts convincingly. Invisible monsters lurch forward; screaming
crazily as beam of the flashlight captures their disfigured corpses, the enemies
glistening in the almost complete gloom that otherwise surrounds James and his foe.
I hesitate to say Silent Hill 2’s voice acting is above average, but in a world where
voice actors who can form coherent sentences are considered par for the course, this cast
of B-list folk (sporting Canadian accents…these people are American for god sakes!
Come on, Konami, just bite the bullet and spend the extra dough) are fine. The fact that
virtually no music accompanies SH2 is definitely a good thing, and the sound effects are
often utterly disturbing.
On the surface, Silent Hill 2 is a beautiful package…
…but this review wouldn’t have a score of six next to it if Silent Hill 2 was
perfect, right?
Recently, survival horror games have disenchanted me. Everything seems stale, overdone,
and rather tedious. Silent Hill escapes these traps in the aesthetic sense, but
unfortunately does not live up to the standards on the gameplay front. The supernatural
radio, which, if used with tact, can reveal the distance, direction, and type of enemy
present, is a cool feature, but this was present in the first Silent Hill installment. And
beyond the radio (and the whole darkness thing that’s already been discussed), Silent
Hill 2 is a conventional horror game to the core.
The ‘Resident Evil’ control interface (this ‘Resident Evil’ notation’
denotes that forward always makes the character move forwards no matter the direction
he/she is facing in, and normally involving pressing an ‘aim’ button that must
be pressed in conjunction with the fire button to utilize a weapon) makes yet another
appearance. These controls have become second nature for me and other people who have
played various games like Resident Evil, but for the uninitiated, things can be
hairy at first.
Control isn’t the crux of what’s wrong with Silent Hill. Taking down bumbling,
slow moving enemies and solving inane puzzles isn’t what it used to be. No matter how
Konami dresses it up, survival horror games have always, and Silent Hill 2 is no
exception, like so: Find 2-4 key items to open a locked container which has a key which
opens a door which leads to a boss who gives a key to the next area when defeated. Repeat
10-12 times. Watch end credits. Yes, you might be finding coins, or hands to a clock, or
magic passwords, but they are essentially the same thing. And, to comment on these “dressed
up” puzzles, who leaves notepads containing clues written in iambic tetrameter just
casually lying around their apartments?
Sure, it may be unfair to criticize game simply for stretching the boundaries of reality a
bit, but this sort of thing has been done so many times, and it especially doesn’t
seem to work in the dank, dilapidated context of Silent Hill 2. This is not Alice’s
Wonderland.
The Bottom Line
Silent Hill 2 is a impressive sized game, and those who have never partaken of the
survival horror experience, or those that just can’t seem to get enough of it, are
encouraged to go out and get this game (You’ll probably find it better than most of
the large mound of mediocrity otherwise known as the PlayStation 2 game line-up).
Various scenes in Silent Hill 2 are worthy of hefty praise simply for their film-like
presentation. A grim visual feast, Silent Hill 2 will certainly impress any viewers, but
the jury is still out about the majority of players will respond.
Silent Hill 2 is a hard, hard game to give a concrete score, simply because it appeals so
differently to so many different groups of people. An action oriented gamer who cares
nothing of a story might give this game a 2, while an old survival horror fanatic who
craves a disturbing, well produced adventure might give this a 10. If you’re looking
to purchase this game, disregard the score, and judge the game for what I said about it’s
various elements instead..:. JR Clone |
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