Why Silent Hill 2 is the Greatest Game of All Time

Anyone who knows me well enough has probably experienced me going off on one about the genius of Silent Hill 2 at some point in our relationship. It’s a game that’s disturbed and fascinated me since childhood, and it was one of my first truly beloved works of art, for Silent Hill 2, as well as being a clunky survival horror that would shitten the pants of even the most jaded fear fanatic, is pure art. In fact, I’ve never seen any game that aims for the emotional depths Silent Hill 2 dares to plumb, and definitely nothing that succeeds so beautifully, or horrifyingly. So, since I’m still completely obsessed with it, here’s another (shh) blog on why Silent Hill 2 is not only my favourite game of all time, but possibly one of my favourite works of art of all time, of any medium.

SH2 isn't just a scary game; it's a crushingly sad one, too, so it's even more fun!

Okay, so the Silent Hill series has blown up in popularity since the year SH2 came out, and the franchise has since disintegrated into total dogshit (except for that one thing that pains me too much to talk about). The first Silent Hill came out on the PS1 and was intended as a challenger to Resident Evil’s B-movie zombie carnival. It involved a single dad getting trapped in the titular town and fighting to save his daughter from the spooky designs of a bunch of sinister occultists, and the story continued in Silent Hill 3, with the weird Alessa-and-the-cult nonsense continuing to pop up all over the franchise, including the movie adaptation. Silent Hill 2, however, is unique in that it follows its own story. It’s not a game about villains or cults or ghosts or any of that bullshit; instead, the team decided to revolve SH2's story around its central character rather than the town itself, and, by going down this more personal route, ended up creating maybe the best videogame story of all time.

The story is: One day, melancholic everyman James Sunderland receives a letter from his wife, Mary, telling him to come meet her at Silent Hill; however, James tells us that Mary actually died three years ago from an unnamed disease. Intrigued, confused, and maybe a little desperate, James drives over to the town, which is now deserted, thick with fog and crammed with freaky monsters, to search for her. As the story progresses, the history of James and Mary’s marriage is illuminated, in all its brutal tragedy, and James descends further and further into the darkest corners of his own soul. Along the way he meets a number of other disturbed and unhelpful individuals who've found themselves beckoned by the town, including a mysterious woman who calls herself Maria, who bears an uncanny resemblance to his late wife. The plot thickens, reality turns on its head, and tragedies begin to unfold.

Symbolism is scattered all over the place, and not always as obviously as this.

Remember when games didn’t insult your intelligence? Believe it or not in this age of hand-holding narrative rubbish, back in 2001, Team Silent poured their heart and soul into this game, stuffing it with so much symbolism and fascinating detail that I’m still discovering new things about it to this day. Nearly every tiny part of it is deliberate and meaningful. The monsters, for instance, aren’t just creepy enemies intended to stand in your way, but actual, manifested inner demons, perversely sexual and just human enough to give you the howling fantods. Freudian psychological shit is going on all over the place, from the esoteric puzzles to the surreal, dilapidated settings; this isn’t so much a game as it is a horror walk through the inside of someone’s head, and what could be more disturbingly raw and terrifying than that?

It’s the little things that make the atmosphere of Silent Hill 2 so unsettling, and it might’ve been the first thing to ever teach me that for something to really fuck you up, subtlety is key. The dialogue, for instance, is jarring and unnatural, almost as if the characters can’t understand each other and maybe aren’t having the conversations that they think they are. Fucked-up English dialogue in Japanese games is usually either hilarious or irritating, but in this game, it actively works to keep you feeling truly alone in the nightmare. In fact, the sound design in its entirety is one of SH2’s crowning achievements, with its ungodly monster cries, its industrial shrieks, and the deafening use of silence itself. Also, the soundtrack is a masterpiece, capable of pulling at your heartstrings one moment and tearing your nerves to shreds at the next.

As the game progresses, the levels become more and more warped and illogical.

Now, when it comes to gameplay, Silent Hill 2 isn’t a winner by any means. It’s not exactly a game to wind down with; it’s barely even fun, in the purest sense. In that case, why do I say that it’s my favourite game of all time? Well, for one thing, games aren’t all about running around killing bad guys and picking up loot. Games are also about setting, and ambience, and exploration. Silent Hill is, at its essence, a walk through a haunted house, or an entire complex of haunted houses. It’s a descending march into a spiralling abyss, a masochistic journey of fear, intrigue and misery, and from start to finish, you're completely submerged in its unique atmosphere. And it couldn’t be a film, or a novel, or a comic book, or anything else. It only works as a world that you yourself must dare to walk through, and be personally affected by.

I could probably write about the ins and outs of Silent Hill 2 for the rest of my life, but, ultimately, the reason I love Silent Hill 2 is because of how much work it puts into making you feel something. As a horror game, it’s the absolute zenith, getting under your skin and keeping you up at night better than any of today’s jump-scare asylum-walkers could hold a candle to. But it’s more than just a thrill ride. SH2’s horrors aren’t in zombies or ghosts or things beyond our understanding; its power to disturb comes from the horrors we all understand – things like guilt, shame, despair, grief, hatred, desire and death. Silent Hill 2 is an expedition through the bleakest shadows of the human psyche. It’s cerebral enough to be analysed within an inch of its life, and harrowing enough to haunt you from now until the end of time. It's fifteen years old now, and maybe a little dated in many ways, but there's still never been anything like it, and if you're looking for a heavy, emotional, frightening and multi-layered gaming experience, consider yourself told that, for me at least, Silent Hill 2 is the number one option, and a work of genuine artistic genius.

P.S: If you’ve read this far and actually fancy giving it a go, as you obviously fucking need to, stay the hell away from 2012’s HD collection, as it’s a monumental clusterfuck. If you can't get the PS2 version, the PC one's easily downloadable.