Hehe, yes, I have been silent quite some time, although there would be PLENTY to tell :)
Let's start with one of the classic games I played, and actually FINISHED.
Playstation 1 players will remember this one, its one of those love/hate games, and its name is
SILENT HILL.
I started it almost a year ago, then I had to pause it (not literally) until three weeks ago.
Then I ordered myself one session every two or three days.
Genre:
Well, SILENT HILL at the time was one of its kind.It is an adventure, it is a survival horror action game, it is puzzling, frightening and hard to control.
Actually it shares the control scheme of another famous genre mix: RESIDENT EVIL.
So You move Your 3D character on screen as if it was a car rather than a human beeing.
Gameplay:
The game plays like RESIDENT EVIL with more puzzles and a more psychological plot.
You got an inventory, You got weapons, You can pick up things (mostly health restoring items and ammo for the various guns).
The game itself plays around the story, and it has You walk around A LOT, fight many enemies and use special items here and there to open doors and paths to other locations.
Story:
The story of SH is actually a point of discussions, and the fans of the series do that a lot.
Its much like the typical, strange asian horror flick story, where a lot happens, but in the end (and there is 4 of them in this game) its all a convulted mess and You dont go "Aha!", but rather "Say, what ?".Basically its You looking for Your daughter Cheryl, who, after You were driving with her in Your car and crashed, disappeared towards the village of SILENT HILL.
After that crash, You wander around in SH, trying to find Cheryl.You encounter several people (which are as strange as the surroundings), have non-interactive dialogues, find clues, fight strange creatures who for whatever reason attack You...and thats it.Not much happens in SILENT HILL.The story progresses slowly and is really told with the least effort possible.So, at the end of the day, You would call this a very repetitive, boring game. What saves SH though, is the eerie atmosphere and sense of surrealistic haunting that comes with the masterfully created surroundings, sounds and events.
There is a constant fog around You, allowing You only to see so far.There is strange noises, screams, howlings.There is the surroundings transforming from peaceful, quiet village into rusty, dirty and bloody nightmares.Its all about frightening You, and the developers really use every trick in the book to achieve that.And they do.Despite the fact that I was playing this PSX game on my PS3, it kept me hooked because the art design is so successfull.The enemies and creatures are so totally sick an weird, that even by todays standards, they are just fantastic.
Graphics:
Well, this beeing a PSX 3D game, it didnt age as gracefully as many of the PSX 2D games.
Nonetheless, its still awesome as the graphics are very inventive and straight to the point.
Its a horror game, and the artists knew how to frighten You even with muddy low res textures.
The player character wears a flashlight, and that lighting effect is really well done.
Some of the cutscenes are prerendered, and again, for that time, they were nice to look at and well animated.
Sound/Music:
Creepy.Eerie.Cruel.Shocking.The sound effects and the score have already left their mark in history, they underline the constant feeling of terror and loneliness, and their timing is well done.
Verdict:
If David Lynch would do a japanese horror movie, it would probably be like this game.
Its fascinating, sometimes (especially versus one of the ends) tedious and repetitive, yet never really bad enough to NOT let You try to escape this village for good.
The movie based on the game is very well done, too, with exactly the same strengths.
If You wanna start the seris, start here: SILENT HILL welcomes You.....
