The “Silent Hill” franchise is a series that I hold close to my heart. Back in 1999, when there was little competition for Capcom’s survival horror powerhouse “Resident Evil”, Konami came out with their bizarre, Japanese take on the Western horror story – “Silent Hill”.
With it’s frenetic switching of realities, mind-bending (albeit convoluted) plot and grizzly content, it presented gamers with a product like no other. It was a landmark in horror video games.
“Resident Evil” had its campy, B-movie inspired infection narrative. It had its jumps and its scares, but from fairly early on, we were pretty certain as to what was going on. Evil, Nazi-esque corporation + Chemical Weapon + Accident= “Oh Bugger” and it all goes tits-up.
“Silent Hill”, on the other hand, took the approach of telling us as little as it could get away with. I equate the bafflement I felt playing “Silent Hill” to the first time I saw “2001: A Space Odyssey” and until this day, I still don’t completely “get” what the hell was going on in that fucked up town.
It allowed the gamer to speculate, theorize and fill in the gaps, like no other game I’ve ever played. I can’t recall a game that has inspired nerds around the globe to babble on foums, collaborating to piece together and make sense of the story elements of the game they’ve just played in the same way as Silent Hill.
Of course the franchise, after the releae of the equally excellent sequel, has waned. The third barely passed as being “alright”, let down by an overly “spunky” female lead and the fourth installment was all over the place – over-adventurous and frustrating gameplay choices.
The original team behind the game have moved onto other ventures, handing over the rights to American company “Double Helix” and the games that came after this just didn’t feel the same.
And of course, with the success of the franchise came the spinoff movie, which has done nothing but damage the franchise, with later games such as “Origins” and “Homecoming” choosing to follow it’s flaccid take on the game’s original plot by helpfully telling the audience EVERYTHING they need to know.
The possibilty of the “Silent Hill” franchise being reinvented on the grand and successful scale that its main competitor “Resident Evil” saw with the excellent “Resident Evil 4″ seems unlikely. The series has grown stale and become a “paint by numbers” checklist of cliches. Where there was once intrigue, now ennui.
Whilst it’s not going to happen, I believe its time to put the series to bed. Let us rejoice in the good times when the series was new, interesting and frightening! “Silent Hill” was definitely alright!
