SILENT HILL
Why It Isn’t Working So Well
Anyone who follows the Silent Hill franchise knows exactly why things aren’t so going well for it. The last unequivocally good Silent Hill game came out a long, long time ago- that being Silent Hill 3 in 2003. The series has seen a lot of ups and downs since then. Shattered Memories on the Wii was admittedly decent, while Silent Hill 4 and Origins weren’t exactly bad games either, but the heights that the series touched with its first three games have never been seen again. It also doesn’t help that Downpour and Book of Memories, which were the last two games to come out in the series, have been massive disappointments. For a while it looked like the series would be getting the bold reinvention it deserves with Hideo Kojima’s Silent Hills, but that obviously is not going to happen anymore. So where do we go from here?
How It Could Be Better
WITH FRICTIONAL GAMES
Silent Hill as a series was as good as it used to be because it was the perfect psychological horror experience. Sure, it had the typical jump scares you would expect in a survival horror video game, but the series was mostly as frightening as it was because it left so much to the imagination. And Frictional Games are some of the best makers of psychological horror games out there right now. Amnesia: The Dark Descent is a perfect demonstration of their qualities as developers of psychological survival horror, while their most recent release Soma shows their writing chops as well. Silent Hill has been in need of an overhaul, of something fresh for a long time. And while we can all lament the loss of P.T. and Silent Hills, Frictional Games looks like the next best thing.
