Silent Hill

Silent Hill is the first game which launched the survival horror franchise, this first game was the brainchild of Keiichiro Toyama who previously worked on games such as Snatcher as a graphic designer - he eventually pitched the idea of Silent Hill to Konami Computer Entertainment Tokyo (KCET) and set up his own team named Team Silent to work on the game and it's first sequels. The basic pitch for the game was to develop a horror title that would appeal to a Western audience and would have a different feel to the cheesy B-movie style horror games that have come before. The plot was intentionally left vague and unexplained to allow the player to make their own connections. Toyama would leave the company after the games release to create other games.

The game was designed from the ground up for the Sony PlayStation as a fully 3D psychological horror, the game took advantage of the inherit limitations of the console hardware by utilising heavy fog and distortion which also had the added effect of increasing the tension and horror aspects of the game. Unlike other survival horror at the time (eg. Resident Evil) you play as a normal person without any military or firearms training - you play as Harry Mason who ends up in the American village of Silent Hill whilst looking for his daughter Cheryl who had gone missing. He subsequently finds himself embroiled in the middle of weird and wonderful monsters along with cultists attempting to revive their deity.

Silent Hill is played in a third person perspective (occasionally the camera moves to a fixed point and 'swings' around to follow the character movement) in perpetual fog and darkness - a single flashlight is the only light source and immense care must be relied on to discern what is in front of you. The camera in the game is intriguing as it doesn't quite follow behind Harry - this was done for a more cinematic experience, and to constrain the view so that the player wouldn't necessarily be able to see too much.

As Harry is no expert, he is a poor combatant and while he can use weapons and firearms, he is unskilled and thus clumsy with them. Plus, he cannot sprint very far and must rest or slow down frequently, which increased the tension and forced the player to have maximum reliance on caution.

The game also introduces the broken radio mechanic, which emits static when enemies are nearby. The range on the radio is further than visible range, so the player will know that there is a monster nearby but they won't know exactly where. The radio static itself has a few different 'patterns' depending on what monster is close, which the player can learn and be able to tell what is ahead if they have encountered them before, without having them in visual range.

It features a world that can be explored albeit with many locked doors and obstacles to prevent progression unless a puzzle is solved or a key is found. This game also introduces the Otherworld, a staple in the Silent Hill franchise.

At release, the game reviewed well with most publications giving the game an 8/10 or 9/10. Comparisons were unfavourably made to Resident Evil but critics also noted that they had an inherently different atmosphere and design philosophy. The main criticism to the game were the controls which, being an early fully 3D title, is expected. The game now has a reputation for being one of the scariest horror titles and of course spawned the Silent Hill franchise which has grown from games to novels and to the big screen.

It's also worth mentioning that a port of the game was released for the Gameboy Advance only in Japan (titled Play Novel: Silent Hill) - the game is stripped down to what is essentially an interactive graphic novel format where occasionally the player will be asked to make choices that will affect the story.

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