Silent Hill purists know that The Room was a completely separate game picked up by Konami and after-the-fact shoehorned into a Silent Hill license.
The first Silent Hill is the best horror game you will have ever played. But unless you played it during that narrow window of 1999-2000 when it didn’t look like crap, you missed out. :(
-Tom
I’d love to see them remake the first one at some point. More people should play it, but few are able to get past the visuals. It’s even worse if you turn on texture smoothing on the PS2, because it screws up the fog effects.
I hope they keep the whole “radio static when baddies are around” thing, 'cause that was fucking awesome, and soooo Silent Hill.
If it was a Capcom game they’d remake the first one for every platform every year.
This makes me feel invisible.
Don’t feel invisible. I was actually replying to agree with you and to point out that there was a very narrow timeframe for us lucky few to really appreciate Silent Hill.
I even inadvertently plagiarized Jazar’s next post by using the word ‘shoehorn’!
-Tom
I played the first SH for the first time last year, and I didn’t think it was so bad. Yeah, the visuals take a little getting used to, but they worked for me. I especially loved the school, both versions of it. That said, though, I think the Fatal Frame games are way scarier than Silent Hill was.
Now I feel warm and fuzzy! Crap, I may have caught Jose’s gayness…how long does that last anyway?
I thought the combat mechanics in Silent Hill games were DESIGNED to be shitty, because it simulated your character being just an average Joe/Jill who can’t swing a bat to save his/her life.
But this design decision gets really annoying with The Room. It is the first game in a long time that made me search for a trainer just to finish the game. And thank goodness for porting to PC. If I played the game on ps2/xbox I would just bloody return it ASAP.
For as long as Chick says it does.
The controls really became an issue in SH4, but I was already getting tired of the routine in SH3. I realize Heather isn’t exactly a warrior woman, but c’mon. Aside from bosses, I think I killed like 7 monsters in that entire game. Mostly just ran around stuff. Nameless horrors are pretty slow.
Helplessness is good in a horror game, but not if it is the result of bad controls. At the point, Konami has no excuse. It’s just too easy to use the simplified non-tank controls that other games use.
Maybe this should go in the games forum, but oh well…
I’m sorry, but this argument bugs the hell out of me. I’m no Alex Rodriguez, but I sure as hell could swing a goddamn plank of wood, let alone a steel pipe or a knife, with infinitely more speed, fury, and a frantic desire to survive in a pitched battle against these unspeakable monstrosities than the Silent Hill characters. Harry/James/Heather/Henry stands there and calmly swings their plank of wood or whatever about once every three seconds. THAT IS SO INCREDIBLY STUPID AND NOT TERRIFYING AT ALL BECAUSE I’M TOO BUSY BEING AMAZED AT HOW STUPID IT IS TO BE SCARED.
Gah! Give me the badass but frantic combat of Aliens Vs Predator or The Suffering over Silent Hill any day. At least in those games I actually feel like I’m fighting for my very survival.
And as far as the movie goes, if they emulate the SH games by having the main character stand there calmly while being approached by that ridiculously slow-moving zombie and then slowly swinging a weapon until it drops while not uttering a word, let alone shieking in terror, then it’ll suck. The SH games only give you the impression that your character is actually scared during cutscenes. In fact, I’m trying to think of a horror game that doesn’t fall into this trap, and am failing. Movies shouldn’t fall into it either.
As far as The Room goes, it suffered from far more than the first-person stuff. I still like it on balance because it had the vintage SH art style and neat backstory, but the limited inventory crap nearly ruined the game entirely for me because it had me suffering through more “town portal runs” than Diablo 2. Almost every ten minutes of actual game play, I had to return to my room to re-sort my inventory. Not cool, not cool at all.
You’ve nailed one thing about Silent Hill: They all feel like bad dreams rather than actual dangerous situations, and it’s not because of the surreal Jacob’s Ladderiness of it all. It’s because the player character is never emotionally affected by the environment.
I think I finally figured out SH4. If combat is decent then you get completely different kind of scare.
For normal monsters the inventory limitation supposedly makes you scared: if you can carry around 80 bullets all the time and a few medkits, you are god. If can only carry 20 bullets plus a medkit, and melee combat completely sucks, you don’t know if you can survive to the next hole.
Especially with the vibration on when you see ghosts, you know you can’t kill them (and not enough sword to hold them in place) it really sends the chill down the body, everytime.
For the record IMO only ghost ‘combat’ works, normal monster combat is either tedious (fighting the camera angle, on screen monster and melee combat system all at once) or boring (RUN FOREST RUN) but never scary.
I figure they (Konami) always know that the combat in SH is shit, perhaps ever since their first play tester for SH1 screamed at them: ‘FIX THE SHITTY COMBAT SYSTEM’ (or whatever in Japanese that would mean the same thing). But they stick to their design decision and have progressively nerf the player character, and you finally get Henry in The Room: stronger than a baby with chopsticks, but not strong enough to swing a pipe to save his life. (And not strong enough to stop peeping into Eileen’s room either.)
See, I must be strange, but I always found the SH games infinitely more controllable than in the RE games.
But I’ll agree with SH1 being a fantastic game if you played it at the time. I will also recount a fun story about playing the game.
So back in 98, xmas time, I was home from school. Me and a bunch of friends ended up at another friends house, with his fantastic new TV/stereo system he’d recently purchased. We rented silent hill on an impulse.
Ho-lee-shit.
Picture this: Playing the game, in the dark, on a big screen tv with a surround system, 5-6 late teens early 20s guys sitting around on various couches… scared out of their minds. This is the only game I’ve ever played where not only did it draw you in, but anyone who happened to be there while you were playing.
Anyway, me and another guy were the main players, and when we couldn’t stand it anymore, we’d hand off the controller to the other to continue. Well, we’d just finished the school. Finally, we’re sitting there, laughing a bit, “Boy, that was intense.” Relieved, I start moving down an alley, when this motherfucking dog jumps out at me from behind a garbage can and I shit you not, at least one person screamed. I jumped so bad that I dropped the controller and knocked over my drink.
Not sure I have another gaming moment which can even match that.
Including RE4?
Yes, including RE4.
Anyway, the full trailer is out. All I’ve found is a shitty version ( http://movies.yahoo.com/mv/mf/frame?theme=minfo&lid=qtv-100-p.1401397-161557,qtv-300-p.1401398-161557,qtv-700-p.1401399-161557,wmv-56-p.1401400-161557,wmv-100-p.1401401-161557,wmv-300-p.1401402-161557,wmv-700-p.1401403-161557,qtv-56-p.1401396-161557,qtv-28-p.1401396-161557,wmv-28-p.1401400-161557&id=1808718754&f=1808718754&mspid=1809256111&type=t ) at yahoo movies. If someone finds a better version, link it.
Also: Someone cue the WOOOOOOOOO! graphic, cause this one’s going to be a winner!
Yeah, that trailer looks very promising indeed. I’m actually quite looking forward to this one.
Heh that’s funny - I almost had the same exact experience playing the first Silent Hill - rented the game for a weekend and me and my friends just took turns playing and watching it.