If this is supposed to be some sort of literary symbolism I'm not getting it, partially because the game isn't fucking explaining anything.

All I know at this point is that Silent Hill is a shitty vacation spot, Pyramid Head has a thing for fucking grimy mannequins, James' wife is dead and Maria looks like her sort of, Amanda is a psycho, Eddie likes pizza, the little girl's a murderous fucker, and nobody seems to realize they've been imprisoned in a town full of murderous convulsing nurses without any faces.

I'd be able to like it more if the characters just seemed to give two shits about their situation, but everyone just seems really really bored :<

Of course, none of the enemies are that dangerous and even Pyramid Head is retardedly easy to avoid, so I guess they all feel that way because they know the threat level in the town is a complete fucking joke

Frankly, I sympathize

It ran just fine when I was using Win95 back on my old P333.

I did, that's when the bugs popped up. I've been smashing them dead for about 5 minutes, which is a long time considering.

It just feels like my time spent on this game could be put to way better use somewhere else

like ET for the 2600

I'm with you on not knowing what the hell is going on. I remember coming to the forums a few months back and seeing a long thread about SH where everyone was talking about how all the monsters were metaphors for the main character's mental hangups, and I had no clue where they got any of that because I didn't see any of it in the game.

Eventually, I figured they just got it from wikipedia, but from whence, wikipedia!?

I've heard a lot of stuff, like how all the monsters are different sexual fetishes and if you spend the time to look around you find clues to problems James has (his drinking problem is referenced somewhere in the Heaven Night), and that's really the only thing I've picked up on.

I came in thinking this would be like the movie, only better, but it's not even close. The trailer for 3 made it look interesting, though, I might check that out at some point. Heather seems at least a little more competant than any of these guys :<

Heather gets a which makes her the best character by default.

Silent Hill 2 is a real mind fuck with a whole bunch of shit where you have to read between the lines and blah blah blah. It's got the best story out of all the games and it's unlikely your average (ie stupid) 16 year old will understand any of that and will just see it as a resident evil type game.

Edit: It's actually kinda interesting to discuss the story in the games, but I think this is probably the worst possible forum for that.

Except Resident Evil doesn't suck this much dick and has way better writing

Don't get me wrong, I want to like this game, but every time I go to try and play it it punches me in the face with the full force of it's incredibly stupid design.

It's not because I'm some drooling uncultured chimp, either, but if enjoying contrived and terrible plot progression and everything else wrong with this game makes me smart I'd rather avoid that, go play something for "stupid" people, and actually enjoy myself.

Yeah, the story in resident evil is very intricate and multi-layered. It's not at all full of sci-fi and horror cliches. The voice acting is also top-notch! I recommend the live action intro video for resident evil if you haven't seen it yet. It's a real treat.

Silent Hill is like 2 parts Jacob's Ladder, 1 part The Mist, with a bit of The Changeling.

Resident evil is essentially an amalgamation of a bunch of B zombie movies.

The gameplay at this point is better in the RE series just because of RE4, but before that they were almost indistinguishable save for the fact that SH had a consistently good storyline and RE was only good if you kinda sit back and enjoy it for the B movie cheesefest it is.

Not that I'd expect you to understand anything that lacks bright, vivid colors and RANDOM, WACKY HUMOR.

Edit: I loved RE2 on n64, but that came out when I was still around 14 or so and even then I didn't take it too seriously. A couple years later when I played through code veronica it was the same thing. I like most survival horror in general, but to me there's just no comparing the two.

Well, no, you're not reading my complaints.

Mostly it seems like Chojin was having the problems with Bioshock that I am with SH2 in that the game just doesn't fucking tell you anything. If it's really the storytelling TOUR DE FORCE everyone hails it as then I'd like to avoid comparing it to Resident Evil, but in RE if there's something YOU don't know it's because your character doesn't know it either, wheras in SH2 the story revolves around James' mental anguish and from what Emu tells me the reason he's ignoring the monsters is because they're symbolic of his mental suffering and remind him of his dead wife, or something. I mean, how the fuck was I supposed to know that? The game doesn't tell you he's got PROBLEMS in that area, so I'm left to assume the writers are a bunch of 14 year olds with Jonathan Clement syndrome who have no idea how to piece together an understandable narrative. The fact that the cutscenes are riddled with horrible dialogue doesn't really help that, either.

The scene where you meet Maria by the waterfront got me so enraged at how stupidly written it was that I shut the game off and didn't play again for a week.

If I may make comparisons to Killer 7, too.

In that, you are able to understand what's going on if you pay at least a little attention, and anything the game doesn't tell you is either unimportant at the moment or something the Smith assassins aren't aware of.

And yet, people still hail that game for having a story with depth and great symbolic value, which it indeed does.



Mabye it was just easier to get into the groove of Killer 7 because it reminded me of Earthbound in the carefree and floaty way all the remnant personalities talked, I don't know. Point is, SH2 would be great if I was actually given a fucking story that I could identify symbolic shit from.

The thing about SH2 is that when people talk about how great it is they're under the assumption that you've played through it more than once. SH2 is best on the second playthrough once you've seen the ending and you can actually start making sense of the plot. It's also got the most non-linear plot of the series (except maybe 4) and that's why I don't recommend people to play it first. You'll probably like the third one better TBH.

well dang i just tried running it in windows 95 compatibility mode and it seems to run a lot faster, but now it's got some sort of stuttering effect when you're turning- maybe running it that way + some sort of windows slowdown program (cpukiller or turbo) might get better results

Doom was scary when i played it,
and so was diablo 2, fighting diablo was SCARY! and plus he bone walled your portals, and you had to fight him in one sitting. :shocked and he looked freaky as hell!

blood raven was easy if you had *wink wink* hero editer.

The scariest game I ever played was Doom 3 :chatter

Though I bet if I played it again now I'd be rubbish.

Alright, i have to adress this, i never found the resident evil games scary up till 4. Everytime i was gettin excited, i'd be hit with a slow puzzle, clunky controls or low ammo. I found this frustrating, not scary. 4 had a few tense moments that had me on the edge of my seat, while not slowing down. Condemned was amazing, as was FEAR. Don't mess with Alma!

Anyone here play Kuon? :eek

I was going to buy that and then faggot gamestop couldn't find the disc :<

I think you'd be surprised. The graphics and lighting effects still hold up for an old generation game. I still get these pangs of anxiety playing that game (in fact its probably the scariest game I've played since my last Silent Hill run).

i still find system shock two terrifying, especially on impossible when getting hit three times will end your life and hybrids constantly spawn in areas you've already cleared

Emu's right. Silent Hill 2 is a much more cerebral game than any of the others and that really is a double-edged sword. I don't play Silent Hill 2 to have fun, persay. I play Mario Strikers to have fun. I play Team Fortress to have fun. I play this game more like a novel. I notice things I didn't notice before, I make realizations...it's a really rewarding game in that regard.

That said, the gameplay is extremely tedious for the most part and is only exciting when you come across something interesting (like There Was a Hole Here... )

I genuinely don't understand the "OH MY GOD WHAT IS GOING ON" question. In Bioshock it was viable, because not ten minutes into the game you're shooting needles into your arm without being prompted to. In most games, the survival aspect of it rides over all else; not in this case. You could've just passed by that syringe dispenser, you didn't know what the hell it did. And you did it anyway, you imbecile. I think I recall the guy (O'something) not even telling me to do it, the game itself did. I still think Bioshock is a fun game but I can see where that's off.

On the other hand, you have a genuine motive in Silent Hill 2, albeit a bit odd. Your wife, dead for however many years, sends you a note saying to return to Silent Hill. She knows enough about you and speaks as your wife, so it's not a joke. You go in search of her and throughout the entire game your purpose isn't necessarily to survive, but rather to find Mary. The answer to exactly why you're going isn't explained until much, much later. All you know is that you're trying to find your wife, you'll know why soon enough. So for now, enjoy the ride. It's one of those games where the protagonist knows more than you do and if that pisses you off, just don't play it.

To be honest, I hated SH2 the first time I played it too. I got into the SH series via the third one, which is much more gameplay oriented. Why? I don't know, it just feels better. The settings were much more alive and interesting in my opinion. But it suffers from the same sense of "WHERE AM I" so if you hate it that much then I'd steer clear.




What a big post!

EDIT - And to answer your question about why everyone is so calm, there's a reason for it. It's up to you to figure it out. Or a website, one of the two. What I did when I played the game was I made observations and later looked them up to see if others felt the same way I did. What I found were some neat little tidbits.

For instance, in SH2 I think the only vehicles in the game are big white vans, right? I might be wrong, it might be the first game, I don't know. But when people think big white van, they generally think of abduction, displacement, kidnapping, that sort of stuff.

GW, once I get over my flu I'll send you my extra copy of SH1. You'll probably like it better than 2.