Me, fighting nurses: Why are there so many of you???
Tem: It's a hospital, Riona.
Me: As if any hospital is this well staffed.

In early 2020, about fifteen years after I'd first played Silent Hill 2, my friend Tem persuaded me to try out the original Silent Hill. I was hesitant - I wasn't sure how much I'd enjoy it without getting to play as my terrible boyfriend James Sunderland - but in the end I agreed to give it a go. Here are some disjointed thoughts!

I was, it turned out, staggeringly bad at Silent Hill. I started out on Easy mode, played up to the café and promptly died to the first enemy you can fight, eight minutes in. Silent Hill 2 has a Beginner mode in which most enemies die in one hit; I missed that!

The original Silent Hill also made me grateful for James Sunderland's sexual issues in Silent Hill 2, because it means the enemies he faces are all adult-sized with plenty of leg, making them reasonably easy to hit. The first enemies Harry encounters, meanwhile, are flying creatures that are too high up to melee, and dog creatures that are too low down. I never really appreciated the practical advantages of perceiving only monsters you could theoretically bang.

The atmosphere and environmental design are genuinely impressive for a PS1 game. Silent Hill really works at creating an interesting, unsettling environment within the limitations of the technology it's working with. I was struck by details like the patterns rain left on sand.

The sound design is also great. I was very struck by the final door, the one with slots for the five talismans, and how the background noises built up and became more unsettling with every talisman you added.

I love the silly little backwards hop that Harry can do. It's a crime that they removed that for the second game.

The way they took the trouble to animate Harry slamming straight into walls if you run at them at high speed is also very good. And falling backwards off stairs. I ended up playing Silent Hill as a slapstick comedy.

It's strange to see Harry actually asking people 'hey, uh, any chance you've heard anything about some sort of weird nightmare alternate dimension?'; James took it very much in his stride.

Dahlia's voice actor is having such a great time.

Very pleased that the mysterious Flauros turned out to be a disco ball that shoots you.

It struck me partway through that both Silent Hill and Silent Hill 2 have casts that are approximately 70% female. It feels notable when majority-male casts seem so much more common in videogames, and indeed in fiction in general.

I got the bad ending on my first attempt. I feel that most people probably do. I laughed very hard when the comedic 'outtakes' started up straight after that bleak conclusion; it just wasn't what I expected!

I did have a save far back enough to play through the ending sequence again and get a better ending. I laughed during the good ending as well, I'll admit, when Alessa starts to birth a dark god in front of him and Harry's response, after a long pause, is an unsubtitled 'Huh?'

After the good ending, Harry pauses with his new baby in his arms and looks up into the sky with such a 'what now?' expression, and I can't blame him. I assume Harry has friends and family, and that Cheryl went to school; what is he going to tell them? 'Hello! My seven-year-old daughter had a baby and died, which is why she's suddenly been replaced by this infant. No more questions, please.'

It's really interesting to me that a New Game Plus starts with Harry waking in the café, rather than straight after the crash. Is there some sort of time loop going on?

The original Silent Hill generally seems more interested in the nature of the town than in Harry himself, whereas Silent Hill 2 is an intensely personal story. In Silent Hill, Harry exists as a means through which you explore the town; in Silent Hill 2, the town exists as a means through which you explore James. It's an interesting difference.

back