Why Silent Hill 2 Is So Damn Good

If you've not at least heard of Silent Hill 2 at this point in time you're either VERY new to gaming or have been living under a nuclear blast proofed rock for many many years.  When people say the words "horror game", at lot of people instantly bring to mind either Resident Evil or Silent Hill and if it's the latter they usually are thinking about the second one.  While my personal favorite Silent Hill is 3 because I really like the occult story line in that game, there's absolutely no denying the impact of SH2 on not just it's own series but the horror genre in general.

The reason that I feel it's so effective at what it does is that no matter what age you are, there is a level of horror to be found in Silent Hill 2 that will freak you out.  I remember when I first played it, I don't remember my exact age but it was around high school time I think.  My parents, every evening after work, would unwind and relax before making dinner and doing housework by chilling on the couch with a glass of wine and a bowl of nuts.  Meanwhile, I'd be on the PC or something gaming away or just generally wasting time.  Most of the time they would be watching TV but there was one occasion where the TV was vacant so I decided to jump on and the game I set on that evening was Silent Hill 2.  It was daylight outside, my family behind me and yet just the opening section of that game freaked me the fuck out.  It didn't need a dark, isolated room and a pair of headphones, it managed to scare me regardless of all that.  The spooky atmosphere and the creepy monsters managed to freak me out in a way that a lot of games didn't back then and even don't now.

Now when I was younger, scary monsters and things like slasher movies had quite an effect on me.  I was a bit easy to scare back then but as I got older that stopped happening.  The idea of a zombie apocalypse stopped being a terrible prospect, monsters jumping out of my closet became a laughable idea and ghosts flopping from my TV lost it's charm.  Admittedly, I'm very hard to please when it comes to horror.  I can enjoy a horror game or horror movie but it's a VERY rare occasion when I'll actually be scared.

But then I replayed Silent Hill 2 in my adult years and was JUST as freaked out now as I was back then.  What makes Silent Hill 2 isn't the fact that it managed to keep scaring me despite the fact I'd seen it before AND it pierced my adult cynicism but the fact it scared me for an entirely different reason.  Silent Hill 2 is about the main characters wife getting sick and dying, the plot twist (spoilers) being that he killed his wife because she was going to die anyway but mainly because he couldn't handle it anymore.  When I was younger this was just a "wow, how horrible" moment and then I went back to being scared of tables with tumors on them but playing it now it was THIS part that shook me to my very core.

I grew up and got married and one of the things that worries me to no end is the idea that one day I'll lose my wife.  When you play Silent Hill 2 and you see what James went through in that game your brain starts asking you questions that you don't have the answer for.  "What would you do if YOUR wife became terminally ill?", "would YOU be able to handle it?" and worst of all "is there a chance YOU might do what he did?!".  Of course you'd hope that you'd assume you'd be a good person and care for the one you love but Silent Hill shows you that very real, very human weakness that maybe you just aren't as strong as you think you are.

It's multi-faceted horror like this that makes Silent Hill as good as it is.  Doesn't matter if you're a teen scared of monsters or an adult scared of loss or even a lack of knowledge about yourself.  It's something I've not seen in a game EVER since Silent Hill 2.  I've seen games try, but never do it this masterfully. 

If you've never played it you ABSOLUTELY must.  Go do it right now