The survival horror genre is one of the most thriving areas in video games and it’s incredible to watch how titles have found innovative new ways to frightened audiences and get in their heads. Konami’s Silent Hill franchise used to have a reputation that rivaled Resident Evil, but the series has cooled off in recent years.
It’s been nearly a decade since a new Silent Hill game and fans are wondering if they’ll ever get to revisit the creepy community. There’s such a rich world that’s been created in these video games that it’d be a tragedy to abandon it. Accordingly, here is every Silent Hill game, ranked according to Metacritic.
10 Silent Hill: The Escape (Score: 58)
It's become common for any popular video game series to churn out a few mobile entries in an attempt to appease casual gamers. As a result, it's not surprising that Silent Hill: The Escape is the smallest of the games with the least favorable reputation (in fact, this Metacritic score of 58 is from users, not critics).
The game is a first-person shooter that lovingly features lots of enemies from the franchise like nurses, wheelchairs, and a disturbing hybrid between the Butcher and Pyramid Head. Unfortunately, the game is more a novelty than a fulfilling Silent Hill experience.
9 Silent Hill: Book Of Memories (Score: 58)
Silent Hill: Book of Memories is another outlier in the horror franchise, not only because it’s a release for the handheld PlayStation Vita, but it chooses to radically mix up the series’ formula.
Rather than the standard survival horror experience, Book of Memories is a disturbing dungeon crawler that incorporates the dark world and enemies of Silent Hill. It’s never a bad thing for franchises to experiment around to find new inspiration, but this was not the right direction or what fans wanted from a Silent Hill release.
8 Silent Hill: Downpour (Score: 68)
Silent Hill: Downpour was the final game to be released in the main Silent Hill series, which makes it disappointing that it goes out with a whimper. Downpour utilizes many of the ideas and themes from previous, but puts players in the mindset of problematic protagonist, Murphy, a prisoner. Downpour is most interested in the moral decisions that the player and Murphy make throughout the game, all of which make a difference to the overall story. Downpour isn’t a broken game, but at this point it seems like audiences were just tired of Silent Hill’s current direction.
7 Silent Hill: Homecoming (Score: 71)
There was a lot of pressure on Silent Hill: Homecoming since players were ready for more forward momentum of the lore after the latest prequel game. As a result, Homecoming is slightly frustrating as it begins the dissolution of the series' tight chronology in some ways. Homecoming doesn't bring that much new to the equation and its biggest selling point is that its protagonist, Alex, heavily suffers from PTSD and is more fragile than the typical main character in the series. Alex's journey to find his brother has weight to it, but not much else clicks.
6 Silent Hill 4: The Room (Score: 76)
Silent Hill 4: The Room is perhaps the most ambitious in the original run of games from Team Silent. It was criticized upon its release for doing something different, but it's since gained more of a cult reputation. The game mixes things up and turns the protagonist's apartment into a source of tension, rather than security. It leads to a bunch of supernatural worlds as the story becomes increasingly paranoid and resembles headier texts like Jacob's Ladder and the works of David Lynch. It's a deviation from the previous three titles, but it's a risk that deserves some more respect.
5 Silent Hill: Origins (Score: 78)
After the departure of the original Team Silent, the horror series tried to break fresh ground for their fifth game and decided to deliver a prequel that gets deeper into Silent Hill’s history and the events that lead into the first game. Silent Hill: Origins is actually quite clever with how it plays against the audience's expectations. It connects to the previous titles in ways that feel satisfying rather than manipulative. It’s also worth pointing out that this score is for the original PlayStation Portable version of the game, since the PlayStation 2 port that followed is actually slightly inferior.
4 Silent Hill: Shattered Memories (Score: 79)
Nintendo has developed a reputation of being a more kid-friendly company, so it’s always exciting when a new survival horror entry debuts on one of their consoles or they take a risk. Silent Hill: Shattered Memories is an interesting experiment since it’s a “reimagining” of the first game, but it still pushes the material in a new direction and adds a lot of fresh concepts. This score is also for the original version of the game, which makes the best use of the title’s new control scheme, not that the ports suffer from that much of a drop in quality.
3 Silent Hill 3 (Score: 85)
Silent Hill 2 is a tough act to follow, but Silent Hill 3 is a smart sequel that’s just as good as its predecessors in many ways and it’s not afraid to take some ambitious swings. Silent Hill 3 benefits from its extremely creepy amusement park environment and teenage Cheryl is a great change of pace as far as protagonists go. Silent Hill 3 figures out new ways to try to make audiences unravel and there's a seriously impressive story that brilliantly connects back to the first game.
2 Silent Hill (Score: 86)
The title that started it all is still seen as one of the most impressive entries in the series. The first Silent Hill doesn’t overextend itself and even though elements like combat aren’t great, it was still a groundbreaking PlayStation release for its time. The first Silent Hill still figures out how to get into the audience’s head and disturb them in more psychological ways. This title becomes the framework for everything that follows and there’s a reason that the original premise is never deviated away from that much.
1 Silent Hill 2 (Score: 89)
Silent Hill 2 looks at widower James Sunderland’s journey to Silent Hill to locate his seemingly dead wife. The story is an emotional masterpiece and the way in which James’ trauma influences the events of the story is amazing. Mature themes that were once unheard of for video games are explored here and the ending is still a gauntlet to endure. Not only is Silent Hill 2 one of the best survival horror games of all time, but the enhanced Restless Dreams only makes a sublime title even better. This is the benchmark to achieve for psychological survival horror games.
Next: 5 Survival Horror Games That Deserve A Remake (And 5 That Don't)