What do you like about Silent Hill, and what would you do differently?

The first scared me the most. Two was better put together with the PS 2's emotion engine powering it but the first game already toughened me up a little so while 2 had its scary moments it didn't get me like the first did. 3 for me was the saddest, was I only one mourning Harry's death?

I would have liked 4 immensely if they kept the classic Silent Hill combat and inventory. The first person parts in the room were great, especially when the hauntings show up. Unfortunately 4 followed one gaming trend that's been irritating me for a long time which is go through the evil versions of the levels you already went through, or in this case the slightly more evil versions. But it certainly a playable but harder silent hill for me. I apologize for being redundant, but homecoming didn't do it too well for me. Haven't played Shattered Memories yet so might I trouble you all not to spoil it for me? Thank you ^^.

A good number of you took the words out of my mouth in regards to showing the actual normal town first. Perhaps in a new game your character lives in the titular town when one of your neighbors or someone comes at you while your in your house, and you have to run defenseless from this person and accidentally lead them to their death. Your character can then be filled in by the police later that the guy or girl had been killed a few other people in town, and in his or her home you find diary pages or writings on the walls about how the victims "made a deal with the devil." Only to find out later that some of these people directly used or knew people who used that White Claudia? I'm just spewing a few brainstorms, so please pardon me.

Ok, not to sound like a weaboo, but I feel that the Japanese did a better job in the scary/horror department than the Americans did. The JP SH games have a very different feel to them than the US ones, and a superior one at that, at least in my opinion. I think the JP sensibilities of horror are better suited to Silent Hill than the American. Not sure if that makes sense to anyone else, but there it is.

The japanese being better at making Silent Hill scarier makes perfect sense to me.

better way to put it.

edited 10th Feb '11 6:03:25 PM by SoloWingPixy

I wouldn't say that. But I do agree that the original developers (who just happen to be Japanese) did make the games scarier than their American counterparts.

But they did it by using Western horror movies as a strong influence. The real problem was that Origins and Homecoming's crews just aped the movie, which besides the pretty much perfect visuals, failed to capture the real spirit of the series and instead just stuck with gorn and fan-pandering. Shattered Memories, while perhaps not as scary, was still a wonderful game that captured the character driven nature of the series at it best pretty damn well and had a lot of emotion to it.

edited 10th Feb '11 6:04:57 PM by Apocali

See, thing about Silent Hill is that it was Western Horror through a Japanese eye. Despite the influences, it was that foreign touch that I think made the series' so scary. A sort of Uncanny Valley effect, if you will.

That's what's missing from the Western-made games, to me. That, and the fact that they're fans of the series, rather than the creators. All they can do is copy, or try and forcibly mold the series into what they think it should be.

Well so after last year certainly there are new things Silent Hill needs, do you think there is going to be a new entry? I think it is safe to say that Downpour got somethings quite right, and the second movie did not -though it was mindless fun and I still qualify the first one as Best VG movie so far- as of Book of Memories, I have no Vita so all I know is that it is like a dungeon rpg and that the joke ending is kinna awesome.

All of this and the only rumour of a new game right now, what do you think can represent for the town?

I will also like to adhere to the idea of being in the normal town, really that would kick so much ass.

As for own new ideas, I don't have many, I loved the sidequest in downpour, they worked similar in their own way to RDR sidequest, and something about the RDR and Downpour sidequest really gave me the creeps, they both make you see tragedies, normal people tragedies and at least here they really lingered for a while, so I hope they come back if the series does.