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[TheInfamousKira]

Oh, Silent Hill. The thinking man's Resident Evil. It's the Jacob's Ladder to Biohazard's Return of the Living Dead. I love both of the big names in Survival Horror, but Silent Hill is the only game/franchise to ever make me take sanity breaks to go outside and touch grass.

I'd heard about the franchise growing up, I believe my first exposure was an ad in a gaming magazine for Silent Hill 3 before I was even a gamer that had a screenshot of Heather, pipe in hand, facing down an Insane Cancer (I think that's the name, I'm old)

I didn't actually play the games until much later though. I played Silent Hill, the original, on a PS1 emulator at my desktop on the day Obama took office. I was absolutely terrified. The game was sort of scary, too. AYYYYY LMAO. Nah, Silent Hill, from the very first notes of the intro, just fucking OOZED it's own character and personality. It's VERY rare to me in contemporary games for a title to have it's own distinguishable flavor and atmosphere. Everything feels like a derivative of everything else, but Silent Hill just FELT LIKE a Silent Hill game, before I even knew what a Silent Hill game was.

Yamaoka's contrast of light piano, trip-hop bangers and industrial music at different points just added to the feeling of the game being like a constant clenching and unclenching of a fist. Hellish soundscapes like crossing the bridge after exiting the church, or what sounded like someone banging on basement pipes in a rhythm that was barely syncopated enough to be recognizable as a song in the Otherworld Alchemilla Hospital.

Everything about that game (even the shitty subtitles, "The time is neigh!" -Dahlia the horse) was just amazing, distinct, and something that I remember nearly every detail of my first playthrough, all these years later.

And that's not even my favorite game in the franchise! May post more thoughts later. SH is godly

 

[mrabott]

Personal commitments like School, Study, Work... That they have made me suspend the game for a while.

Ah, now I understood. Thank you.

 

[Krathoon]

Ok. I got a save in Silent Hill that looks like I got the drug to save the cop. Not certain where I am in the game.
I will have to look at a walkthrough. I need to find one that is illustrated. The save started me at a pool hall.

Ah, there is a save at the amusement park. That might be before fighting Cybil. That was where I left off when I played it last.

 

[@gkTH]

Hello Hasan !

 

[peronmls]

SH1-4 are pretty

There is also the alternate universe Silent Hill which I will have to dig out. I got it around here somewhere.

The western Silent Hill games are butthole. The music is good though. Sound design is not done by Akira in the western titles.

 

[Unknown?]

The was a hole here, but it's gone now.
Welcome to the Silent Hill thread.
I have been messing around with getting SH2 and SH3 all modded up on my pc.
This is where you go to fix up SH2 PC version.

Silent Hill 2: Enhanced Edition - Download & Usage

enhanced.townofsilenthill.com

This is what you need to fix SH3.

Silent Hill 3 - PCGamingWiki PCGW - bugs, fixes, crashes, mods, guides and improvements for every PC game

www.pcgamingwiki.com

It may be good to run SH3 in PCSX2, you get outfits that are not in the PC version.
You will have to uses patches for widescreen and to show the FMVs. The FMV patch may be flakey. I was going to try playing through this version

Poor Heather, you cult baby.


It sounds like the PS2 version of Silent Hill 4 is the one to play. The PC version is missing some hauntings.

I use PCSX2. Is that better than the modded PC version? Where are these patches?

 

[adamsapple]

I use PCSX2. Is that better than the modded PC version? Where are these patches?

PCSX2 is the 2nd best way to play SH2.

The textures in the PC version are enhanced with the mod so it looks better in general at higher resolutions anyway, the other thing is a proper wide screen support. You can use patches to make the game run wide screen on PCSX2 but since it's running the PS2 code and it wasn't designed around it, you will often see garbage data in the sides of the screens like character models who walk off a screen just stand in the corner etc. Since the PS2 wasn't accounting for you to be able to see them.

 

[Krathoon]

I use PCSX2. Is that better than the modded PC version? Where are these patches?

Is this for SH3? I think it is better because you get all of the outfits in the PS2 version.
I will have to look up where I found the patches. I had to combine two patches, one to get the FMV cutscenes to show up and one to setup widescreen.
Then you want to set the video to openGL and 3x internal resolution (1080p).
Google should help you find the patches. The FMV fix was on the PCSX2 Wiki.

It seems like the latest PCSX2 fixed the graphic bugs. The wiki is kind of old.

 

[Krathoon]

PCSX2 is the 2nd best way to play SH2.

The textures in the PC version are enhanced with the mod so it looks better in general at higher resolutions anyway, the other thing is a proper wide screen support. You can use patches to make the game run wide screen on PCSX2 but since it's running the PS2 code and it wasn't designed around it, you will often see garbage data in the sides of the screens like character models who walk off a screen just stand in the corner etc. Since the PS2 wasn't accounting for you to be able to see them.

Yeah. For SH2, use the PC version and the mod I posted in the OP. The mod is kind of annoying to install, it is broken up into many zip files.

 

[adamsapple]

I might be mistaken, but did SH4 have native wide screen support on PS2 ?

 

[Krathoon]

The only drawback to the modded PC version of SH3 is that you don't get the extra outfits.
You can really crank up the resolution on the PC version. It also has some thermal effects added.

 

[Krathoon]

I might be mistaken, but did SH4 have native wide screen support on PS2 ?

I don't know, I will have to try it out in the emulator tomorrow.

 

[Krathoon]

It really annoys me when they leave content out in PC ports. The fact you are buying the game should mean you are getting the complete game.

 

[adamsapple]

It really annoys me when they leave content out in PC ports. The fact you are buying the game should mean you are getting the complete game.

RE: Outfits, I can understand why, the game had a crap load of licensed outfits (SH3).

 

[Krathoon]

RE: Outfits, I can understand why, the game had a crap load of licensed outfits (SH3).

Yeah. They don't bother getting new licenses for the PC version.

 

[assurdum]

I have never watched Jacob's Ladder. The games are supposed to play off of it.

Just the second if I remember correctly.

 

[Neff]

Downpour is underrated, does it stand toe to toe with the originals? Hell fucking no, but it has some genuine great moments and was mainly let down by shoddy performance on consoles on launch.

I loved it despite the jank. In a lot of ways it's exactly what I wanted SH1 to be.

Is Homecoming really that bad?

I gave it an open-minded try and I found it extremely mediocre. I didn't get very far though, admittedly.

Oh, Silent Hill. The thinking man's Resident Evil.

 

[Krathoon]

I just tried out SH4 in the emulator. It does not have a widescreen setting.
I used a widescreen patch.
I can't really tell if it is stretching the videos.
The proportions in the 3D graphics looked fine.

 

[ParaSeoul]

There is also the alternate universe Silent Hill which I will have to dig out. I got it around here somewhere.

The only good western Silent Hill. Was even technically impressive for the platform they were targeting, Really good characters and somehow every in game poster is incredibly high res and readable in game. Even RE2 Remake has illegible text on in game stuff.

 

[Krathoon]

The only good western Silent Hill. Was even technically impressive for the platform they were targeting, Really good characters and somehow every in game poster is incredibly high res and readable in game. Even RE2 Remake has illegible text on in game stuff.

The problem with it is that it only uses the Wii remote. It is a pain to run in an emulator. You can do it, but you have to setup a sensor bar.
You might as well just run it on the Wii.
That is the problem with some Wii games, they don't have an option to use a controller.

I still got my old Wii. It is actually more convenient to use it than a Wii U.

 

[ParaSeoul]

The problem with it is that it only uses the Wii remote. It is a pain to run in an emulator. You can do it, but you have to setup a sensor bar.
You might as well just run it on the Wii.
That is the problem with some Wii games, they don't have an option to use a controller.

I still got my old Wii. It is actually more convenient to use it than a Wii U.

It was also on PSP and PS2.

 

[Krathoon]

A tutorial on using widescreen patches in PCSXS2. I also noticed that you have to set 16:9 in general settings too.

 

[Krathoon]

It was also on PSP and PS2.

Great. Much easier to emulate.

 

[Hugare]

The only good western Silent Hill. Was even technically impressive for the platform they were targeting, Really good characters and somehow every in game poster is incredibly high res and readable in game. Even RE2 Remake has illegible text on in game stuff.

Played it on the PSP and I loved it

Will always defend Shattered Memories

Sure, the gameplay is ... different. Wasnt excellent, and many chases were trial and error, but it was fine.

But I love what they did with the story and how it was told.

Presentation for a PSP game was amazing, easily one of the best for the hardware

Easily the best one outside of the main ones.

If any of you have the option, forget about the PSP/PS2 versions and play it on the Wii

Much, much better presentation

 

[ParaSeoul]

Played it on the PSP and I loved it

Will always defend Shattered Memories

Sure, the gameplay is ... different. Wasnt excellent, and many chases were trial and error, but it was fine.

But I love what they did with the story and how it was told.

Presentation for a PSP game was amazing, easily one of the best for the hardware

Easily the best one outside of the main ones.

If any of you have the option, forget about the PSP/PS2 versions and play it on the Wii

Much, much better presentation

Also played it on PSP,hate how it gets lumped in with the other shit Konami put out during that time.

 

[Krathoon]

Unfortunately, the widecreen patches on PCSX2 seem to stretch the text.

 

[Krathoon]

Really, the stories of each Silent Hill game are pretty much self contained. You can play them in any order. It is not like Kingdom Hearts.

 

[JimmyRustler]

Such great series and I have a lot of great memories in correlation with it. Remember how it was seen kinda of rip-off of RE at first but then ended up standing on it's own very well. Hype for part 2 was quite insane. The graphics jump from 1-2 was mindblowing back then.

Over the years I've played all of them. 1-3 are naturally the best but I have a super-soft spot for Downpour, which I only fully played around 2 years ago and ended up LOVING. Such a shame it never got some kind of Remaster as it is such a technical mess on the PS3. The framerate was horrible. Here's me hoping that it will end up coming to PS5 sooner or later and then running better.

 

[Melchiah]

I have never watched Jacob's Ladder. The games are supposed to play off of it.

And Silent Hill 2 takes some inspiration from The Nameless.



Both are well worth a watch, like the director's later movie [REC].

 

[FunkMiller]

Origins, Shattered Memories, P.T. are good too

P.T is a demo, so can’t really count it, and the others? Eh…

 

[Arcadialane]

Never played the silent hill games and feel like I missed out on a masterpiece. Hopefully the remake is good

 

[ParaSeoul]

Never played the silent hill games and feel like I missed out on a masterpiece. Hopefully the remake is good

Good news for you,theres 2 other games in development right now. Now which of those will be good.............

 

[ParaSeoul]

P.T is a demo, so can’t really count it, and the others? Eh…

Not even a demo specifically called it Playable Teaser,its pretty much just an interactive teaser trailer but that was enough for hundreds of clones to spawn. Full game would have probably been third person considering its got a celeb likeness.

 

[Krathoon]

I think the voice acting was intentionally bad in SH1. It makes it feel spookier. The people don't speak normally.

That is a way to make things seem off.

 

[Krathoon]

Not even a demo specifically called it Playable Teaser,its pretty much just an interactive teaser trailer but that was enough for hundreds of clones to spawn. Full game would have probably been third person considering its got a celeb likeness.

What was neat about the concept of that Silent Hill was that there was reality warping. It was the next stage of evolution for the game.
Have the environment of the game morph on the fly.

 

[adamsapple]

Really, the stories of each Silent Hill game are pretty much self contained. You can play them in any order. It is not like Kingdom Hearts.

3 is best enhanced with knowledge of 1 though.

4 also has some veeeeeeeery minor call backs to 2 but those you can easily go without prior knowledge.

 

[Krathoon]

I found that PCSX2 comes with the widescreen patches zipped up. You just have to enable it in the menu. The one for Persona 3 FES is really good.
You will have to override the Silent Hill 3 one and add the FMV fix to it for the FMVs not to be blacked out.

 

[Krathoon]

I am not totally certain what the widescreen patches are doing with the FMVs. It seems like the Persona 3 patch is cropping them into widescreen.
I think the SH3 and SH4 videos were already widescreen.

 

[Shizumapower]

Always amusing.

 

[adamsapple]

I am not totally certain what the widescreen patches are doing with the FMVs. It seems like the Persona 3 patch is cropping them into widescreen.
I think the SH3 and SH4 videos were already widescreen.

If FMV had black bars, it's already presented in widescreen letter boxes so it would make it easier to fit the full 16 : 9 frame with patches.

But if the FMV is 4 : 3 then yeah it will probably lose data if patches are zooming it.

I've seen some cases where it just leaves FMV in original state and only effects game play. That is the best IMO.

 

[Krathoon]

If FMV had black bars, it's already presented in widescreen letter boxes so it would make it easier to fit the full 16 : 9 frame with patches.

But if the FMV is 4 : 3 then yeah it will probably lose data if patches are zooming it.

I've seen some cases where it just leaves FMV in original state and only effects game play. That is the best IMO.

Yeah. They really should just leave the videos alone. They always got to force it to widescreen format.

 

[IDKFA]

The atmosphere in the first silent hill was amazing. The school was the standout section. Ghost children, hearing crying in the toilets....... really nailed the creepy vibe.

 

[Heimdall_Xtreme]

There was also an arcade shooter.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Hill:_The_Arcade

When I travel to Europe, I will play the title.

Played it on the PSP and I loved it

Will always defend Shattered Memories

Sure, the gameplay is ... different. Wasnt excellent, and many chases were trial and error, but it was fine.

But I love what they did with the story and how it was told.

Presentation for a PSP game was amazing, easily one of the best for the hardware

Easily the best one outside of the main ones.

If any of you have the option, forget about the PSP/PS2 versions and play it on the Wii

Much, much better presentation

I played it on PSP, I really liked the version, it didn't seem simple or unplayable.

I still remember the minigames from the psychiatry session, one where you have to draw and color a house and family.

I put everything purple (House, Clothes, Door, etc....), I even said it was "The purple family xD"

 

[Arachnid]

A Silent Hill thread, you say?

 

[TGO]

People always praised Shattered Memories.
So much so I eventually got a copy for a price
Honestly I love style and the way it looked with all ice, but the game did not play well.
Those running sections were terrible.
Out of all of them release after SH4 The Room.
Shattered Memories is probably the worse.
But that's just my opinion.

 

[NeoIkaruGAF]

What a terrible way to start the thread

Right? Apologies, but I saw the freshly made thread and the chance to make 1st post was too good.

So let me elaborate.

I played SH a short time after its European launch. I was 16.
The game's intro CG and the playable prologue cut deep. Deeper than maybe any other game did to me. That intro music is something anyone can recognize immediately, and sets the tone for the whole game. Perfect accompaniment to the images, as Yamaoka's genius soundtrack and audio design is to the whole game. SH draws you in from the first frame.

I remember my first session with SH like it's yesterday. The start of the game, up to the dead-end alley and the encounter with Cybil, is one of those things I wish I could experience again in the same way. Ten minutes in, the game had already done things Resident Evil had never managed. And it was just the beginning. I remember finding the three keys during that first session, and then turning the console off. I was shaken, uneasy, disturbed. Everything I had experienced that far - the fog, the dogs, the sirens, the radio's crackle, the flying monsters, the awkward VA - was a statement. I think I kept a bedlamp on for a few nights after starting SH. Yes, that's how deep it went.

Nothing -nothing- in gaming ever gave me the same sense of dread Silent Hill did. Not before, not after. The game is a constant descent into darkness and despair. Every major location is absolutely perfect, every twist is played at exactly the right moment. There is nothing in SH2 that's as powerful as finding out that the hospital has another floor in SH1; nothing as terrifying as hearing a telephone ring in an abandoned classroom as you're leaving; nothing as absolutely devastating as seeing what happens to Lisa when she realizes the truth about herself; no jump scare as perfectly executed as the school's locker room. Few things in a game I've waited so anxiously to find like the functioning VCR in the final area of Silent Hill 1.

The tension in SH is beautifully built and kept. It's with you all the time, really, except for those few moments of solace when you meet a NPC. I remember feeling genuine relief washing over me during those cutscenes, even if the dialogues only added to the general uneasiness. All the hardware limitations of the PS1 somehow managed to add to the game's atmosphere, too. In comparison, SH2 is too clean, too advanced, too perfect. SH1 is rough, dirty, low-res as fuck... and it's all the better for it.

The thinking man's Resident Evil? Maybe not. But I gotta say, that piano keys puzzle was brilliant. I still remember it, and how good it felt to solve it.

I could go on. Funny thing is, I only finished SH once, and that was long ago. I could never bring myself to get to the end twice. Somehow, knowing what was expecting me made it all the more dreadful. I didn't want to live it twice. The first impact was just too strong. It's not a game you can enjoy in the same way a second time.


Now on to SH2. I started it in my late teens, and didn't get far. When I finally returned to the game to finish it, I was in my early 30s. I played it on a real PS2, on a CRT. And... no, it just didn't hit as hard. The main NPCs being essentially unrelated to the main character's quest, compared to Dahlia, Lisa and Kauffmann in SH1, made them pretty much inconsequential to me, random encounters living their own horror in Silent Hill. And maybe that's the biggest difference between the first two games: SH1 is about Harry, a desperate father looking for his child daughter in a place that doesn't make any sense; SH2 is about the town itself, and what it represents for people. The impact on the narration is significant. SH2 felt disjointed; stuff seems to happen at random, people's goals except James's are obscure, some bosses and events don't really seem to belong. And the locations don't hold a candle to SH1's, sorry. They just don't. The museum is good and one of the upper corridors of the hotel scared the bejeezus out of me with a simple sound (I was wearing headphones and it was 1 in the morning: that was intense, let me tell ya); but apart from that, the game's locations didn't stay with me. The monsters were too much in your face with their symbolism, too, and that's another problem I have with SH2: it isn't subtle, at all. I could see the big "twist" of the game coming from a mile away, and the fact that it's revealed to you through the same device (the VCR) that was so effective at keeping its mysteries to the very end in SH1 made the revelation feel even cheaper to me. The audio recording you find after that scene is much more effective, possibly the best thing in the whole game.

So no, I don't understand the hoopla about SH2. As a piece of psychologic horror, it's amateurish at best. Oh, James is sexually frustrated - gee, really? I'd never have guessed from his wife's sluttily-dressed doppleganger throwing him horny looks and from those legs-upon-legs mannequins running around! Oh, Angela's life is hell? So that's what that flaming staircase must be trying to tell me! Sigmund Freud, eat your heart out! /s
And when the subtext can't really hit you as a revelation (ie, when you play the game after your life experience has expanded a bit further than a teenager's), what's left is a barely coherent patchwork of things between the cutscenes concerning purely James's story. Which can be impactful, I guess... if you aren't a jaded guy that's seen a hundred stories about a dying life partner already.

------

There you have it. I hope this makes up for my drive-by first reply.

 

[TheInfamousKira]

People always praised Shattered Memories.
So much so I eventually got a copy for a price
Honestly I love style and the way it looked with all ice, but the game did not play well.
Those running sections were terrible.
Out of all of them release after SH4 The Room.
Shattered Memories is probably the worse.
But that's just my opinion.

The concept behind Shattered Memories was cool, but it was really executed in an insultingly simplistic way. LOOK, YOUR HOUSE IS THE COLOR YOU PAINTED IT IN THE THERAPISTS OFFICE! You looked at cleavage, the cop is now a roleplaying stripper! Like...it deserved a bit more transparency as a concept, I think.

Also, the chases were ass, controlled horribly, and dropped frames a lot. I'm divided on whether or not I enjoy the fact that there are only enemies in the Otherworld segments, because it does allow for more atmospheric world building in the regular world, but it also neuters the sense of danger. If they had environmental hazards or encounters with animals or something, maybe that would have been a compromise, but eh. It was an interesting game, but calling it a good one would be something of a stretch, I'd say.

 

[Spaceman292]

There you have it. I hope this makes up for my drive-by first reply.

Nah it's still a terrible take

 

[Neff]

Sigmund Freud, eat your heart out! /s

Exactly. Its babby's first introduction to subtext and it wears its themes on its sleeve, only the most pretentious of gamers would pretend otherwise. Which would be fine were it not for the fact that SH2 is a huge downgrade in terms of challenge and level design compared to SH1.

 

[ACESHIGH]

Currently going through SH2 again.

I hate the fact that we have all this shiny tech, 16 core CPUs ultra fast storage and memory. soon to be 100 TFLOP GPUs, crazy ass rendering resolutions and high refresh rates...

And still these games made for weak HW are at the top of the horror genre alongside many games from the same generation.

20 years from those days and Indie devs bar some exceptions were never able to pick up the mantle. They lack the talent, they lack the finesse.

Much easier to go with your stock UE4 or Unity graphics and put together a walking simulator or worse.. a third person OTS game where you are Rambo but fighting zombies and monsters in a dim lit environment. Because that's what survival horror is all about right?

Folks that played the PS1 golden era survival horror games at release in their teens should be in their 30s or even 40s. Many of them working as devs. Yet we never had a rennaisense of the genre. Like we did with tired 8 bit platformers then Metroidvanias and now doom clones.

Had Capcom released RE 3.5 instead of gears of evil 4 I am sure the story would have been a lot different.