Highlights

  • Silent Hill's original game sets the standard in terms of horror atmosphere for the franchise, thanks to its unnerving sense of dread.
  • The game purposely disorients players and blurs the lines between reality and nightmare, making traversal and finding objectives a challenge.
  • The atmospheric design of Silent Hill masks the technological limitations of the PS1, creating a truly terrifying experience that still holds up today.

Long before advancements in hardware and game engines made photo-realistic renders a possibility, the survival-horror genre practically lived and died based on its games' atmospheres. The genre's rise to prominence during the 5th console generation on the PlayStation was essentially divided between two franchises, with Konami's Silent Hill taking the prize for the most unnerving atmosphere and sense of pervading dread over Resident Evil's action-leanings and campy B-movie vibe. As a franchise, Silent Hill has continually placed importance on psychological horror and nerve-shattering tension over pure shock or jump scares, but few games in the series (if any) come close to matching the esoteric weirdness of the PS1 original.

25 years out since its initial launch back in 1999, the original Silent Hill might not be the best game in the series (an honor that arguably goes to Silent Hill 2), but it almost certainly has the best horror atmosphere of any game bearing the Silent Hill name. Between the oppressive fog, disorienting white noise from the pocket radio to alert Henry to the presence of threats, and the strange plot that borrows as much from Twin Peaks and The Outer Limits as it does from traditional horror, the first Silent Hill is a master class in how the appropriate setting and atmosphere can prop up a game's longevity and place in fans' hearts.

Silent Hill 2 James in the Mirror
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Silent Hill Purposefully Disorients the Player to Put Them at Unease

Though all games in the Silent Hill series tend to intentionally blur the lines between what's real and what isn't, the first game's beginning is an absolute master class in obfuscation and distortion of reality. Players begin the game in an actual nightmare (or, at least, that's what the game leads you to believe), suddenly waking up inside a diner within the mysterious town of Silent Hill at the moment of death. From here, the game only further leads players down the proverbial rabbit hole, using dynamically shifting camera angles and persistent heavy fog to make the act of traversal a challenge in and of itself.

Harry acquires a map within the first few seconds after players are given control over the protagonist, but it does little to waylay the confusion surrounding how he's supposed to find his daughter. Nearly every street ends in a mysterious cliff, blocking access to main thoroughfares and forcing the protagonist to routinely backtrack and try to make sense of their direction within the shifting camera and sight-obscuring weather conditions. That it's necessary to contend with plenty of hideously deformed enemies during this opening only serves to ratchet up the tension, making even getting to Silent Hill's first main section, the school, a daunting task.

The Atmosphere of Silent Hill Masks the Technological Limitations of the PS1

The 5th console generation represented a seismic shift within the industry, seeing developers fully embrace 3D-rendered worlds and characters and utilizing cinematic techniques to transform how interactive media can tell stories. While some series would stumble out of the gate into the new dimension of full-3D gaming, others (such as Zelda or Mario) would excel on their first outings, establishing precedents that nearly all other contemporaries would follow. The PlayStation's existence as the initial home for survival-horror is due in no small part thanks to both Resident Evil and Silent Hill, and the first game in the series pulls out all the stops to show that video games can be truly terrifying, even if they might look slightly dated.

25 years since its initial release, Silent Hill is still capable of instilling a pervading sense of dread and unease thanks to how its audio and environmental design combine to create one of gaming's most disturbing settings. Every move in Silent Hill makes the player feel as if they're gambling with the tethers of their own sanity, and simply going from room to room can be an exercise in testing the limits of one's resolve. This year's Silent Hill 2 remake doesn't just have the pedigree of its source material to live up to, as it also stands in the shadow of the original Silent Hill and its genre-defining atmosphere.