By Mia Warren
The Silent Hill franchise is a popular horror game first released in 1999. It is a physiological mystery game that has many tasks to find your main character’s dead wife who mysteriously sent him a letter from a deserted town that is far from ordinary.
Characters are drawn to Silent Hill in search of people of their past, but encounter monsters and strange puzzles that lead to countless dead ends until the most important part of the puzzle is completed. This is a great game for people who love mystery books, shows, solving puzzles, clues, and poems.
The game has remained popular over the years and has around 13 versions of the game, but the most popular is still Silent Hill 2 because of the unique puzzles and amount of thinking it takes to complete the game.
BHS student Vivienne Schultz says, “Silent Hill 2 is a perfectly executed horror game. The story and its pacing create an intense sense of suspense. A highlight of the game is definitely the creature designs that represent the main character James Sunderland’s fears and desires, like Pyramid Head, which you have probably seen at least once in your life. This game has one of the most legendary plot twists in any media (find out for yourself), this is one of those games that will change your perspective on many different things. Another interesting factor of the game is the multiple endings that create many different interpretations for how James’ story ends. It’s a masterpiece of a game in every fact of the matter, I recommend it to anyone that enjoys horror or videogames, or both.”
The different levels of the game are another factor that makes the game so popular, there are monsters you have to fight to unlock items, and countless places to search and visit throughout Silent Hill to hopefully find what your character is searching for. It contains a lot of fighting scenes with the creatures roaming the abandoned town and is intended for a mature audience.
Players have ranked it one of the top horror games along with Resident Evil, despite it being released over a decade ago many people play it today. It is a fun horror game to play solo or with the company of friends to take turns, the game has jump scares that give players an adrenaline rush, so if you love scary movies this is a good game for you.
The game was created to bring light to traumatic experiences many people face today, it is a physiologic horror experience that shows the side of the human mind that is not only happiness, but sadness, anger, guilt.
The town has a dark power that lures people who are hurt or searching for a part of their life they have trauma from. Examples of this are one of the characters’ lost daughters, missing wife, sick Mother, and answers to the mystery of their early lives that left trauma and fear they still feel but can’t remember why.
The game is more serious than other games made for younger audiences. If you enjoyed Silent Hill you will enjoy similar games such as the Resident Evil series, Dead Space, The Last of Us, and The Walking Dead.
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