Christmas night 2001. I’m sitting in my nanny’s sitting room surrounded by family. All the gifts are finished being handed out and my Nanny hands me the final gift. It’s a copy of Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3… for the Playstation 2. I didn’t own a Playstation 2, I said thank you for the great gift and I wasn’t going to say anything to be nice.
My dad shouts across the room to me, “Whatcha’ get Lew?” I showed him the game with a smile, he knew I didn’t own the system to play it. “Ah well, at least you have a game when you finally get one pal.” Everyone laughed and my dad looks out into the hallway and furrows his brow, “We forgot one. Who owns this? It says ‘Lewis’.” I’m handed one more final gift. It’s a Playstation 2.
I rushed to set up the system on the small CRT TV in the kitchen where we always played our games when we were over in that house. Just as I am about to turn on the PS2, I am handed my actual final gift. It’s a copy of Silent Hill 2. Silent Hill was and still is a special game to me. I was never a Resident Evil fan growing up, the concept of conserving ammo never clicked with me and I thought I was terrible at the game because I could never kill anything with the knife.
Heading into the fog of Silent Hill 2
Silent Hill clicked from the get-go, from being terrified in my friend’s house as his dad played the demo he got with his copy of Metal Gear Solid, to everyone I knew going bald from pulling their hair out trying to figure out that piano puzzle inside Midwich Elementary School. Silent Hill became cemented not only as a game but a series of memories my father and I share to this day.
He bought himself Silent Hill on the PS1, I watched the journey before embarking on my own save file and now, I own the sequel and the reigns have been handed over to me to begin the next chapter.
I love this game. It is a masterclass of how a sequel is made and how to take the horror genre to new
directions.
At first, it can seem a bit off and dull but as you dive deeper into the game and the town of Silent Hill consumes you more and more you realise there has been and still is so much more going on than meets the eye. One of the biggest tragedies next to James Sunderland himself is the fact this game has never been made freely available to revisit on current gen.(it’s reported this is due to the source code being lost) (we also don’t talk about that god awful HD collection) and all steam and GOG ports require some patching before being comfortably functional. So like its namesake, Silent Hill 2 remained lost to the fog forever.
“You promised you’d take me there again someday…”
Sunday, October 16th 2022
After months of just retweeting Dead By Deadlight skins, Pyramid Head statues and skateboards, the official Silent Hill Twitter page goes active and announces a live transmission to discuss the future of the franchise at 10:00 pm on Wednesday the 19th of October. The impossible happened, after years of pachinko machines, poor-quality merchandise, the cancellation of Silent Hills and what seemed to be turning a blind eye to fans who made the series trend week after week on Twitter. Konami has announced a series of new Silent Hill titles, one of which is a full remake of my childhood favourite “Silent Hill 2”.
Only time will tell if this will be faithful to the original or follow the Capcom approach of their Resident Evil remakes but one thing that we can say for certain. The fog has cleared up a bit and Silent Hill is calling us to it once more.
Words delivered reverently by Lewis Magee.
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