All you can really do is look out of the windows at the bustling world outside, where people go about their lives, with no idea about your strange predicament. There’s just something deeply unsettling about walking around Room 302, unclear of what could happen or why Henry is stuck there, and this only gets worse as the game proceeds and you start to summon random hauntings. The previous three Silent Hill games I had enjoyed up until this point were difficult for me, but the third-person perspective acted as a buffer to the chaos, and I was really feeling its absence now. There was nothing to be worried about in the game’s opening hour, but I’m claustrophobic in real life, so I shouted my way through it, telling my friend (much to their delight) that I couldn’t do this, even when nothing was happening. Speaking of which, you really should have seen me when I first booted it up. The blurry and blown-out footage creates a disorienting atmosphere, but the careful edits make it so you never get the full picture of what it’s like to experience these terrors with your hands on the controller. Squealing baby-faced monsters lurch at you, while heavy breathing soundtracks a bloodied corpse dragging itself across a dirty floor. Good luck sleeping after you watch it… The clips blend CGI, real-life footage and in-game footage, some of which has clearly been captured with a handheld camera pointed at a CRT. The opening movie makes an incredible first impression.
But given how little people talk about it compared to the other games, I expected it to be nowhere near the high heights of Silent Hill 2. You’re stuck in a room that has been inexplicably locked from the inside, and you have to crawl out through a widening hole to a series of unsettling Otherworlds. I had heard of the game thanks to some critical writing online, and the premise fascinated me.
My understanding was that after Team Silent was disbanded, the franchise was passed between a few western studios and the results were poor, with the exception of 2009’s Silent Hill: Shattered Memories. When I started playing through the Silent Hill games for the first time earlier this year, everyone I asked about the series told me that the first three games are essential, and then it’s all downhill from there.
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