ThomasGrip

Thomas Grip · @ThomasGrip

19th Mar 2015 from TwitLonger

Why Silent Hill 1 is better than Silent Hill 2


There is a common belief among many people that Silent Hill 1 is somehow inferior to Silent Hill 2. I am here to convince you that is not the case at all, in fact on many levels Silent Hill 1 (hereafter referred to as SH1) is far better than Silent Hill 2 (which I will refer to as SH2).

First of, let's start with the opening. In SH2 James reads a letter from his dead wife and look himself in the mirror while babbling a bit on how she is dead and so forth. All this is a cutscene. Then you set off through a forest where something is moving in the bushes, meet another character, more cutscenes happen and then finally arrive in Silent Hill where you meet a AND KILL the game's first creature in a cutscene.

In SH1 however, Harry is first in a car crash where he almost hits some mysterious figure and then end up in the town. The game starts now. No more cut-scene bullshit. Harry's daughter is gone and you (remember, this is interactive, you are in control now) have to chase her through the foggy and snowy streets. She leads you into an alley where things get increasingly creepy and where you take part in one of the most awesome camera sweeps ever. Eventually, you come across your first monsters; small kids with knives (unless you are European like me, where you get some so-so lizards things. But think about that, SH1 is the only modern horror game I know that got censored. That gotta count for something) But you have no weapons! You try to escape but the exit is gone. You struggle to keep alive but eventually you fail and die. All of this was interactive. The first time I played it I was like: "Shit I tried really hard, this is not fair!". Your heart is pounding and then you wake up in a diner. "Damn, it was a dream? Or something else..."

Now SH2 builds up a nice atmosphere alright. But SH1 is bloody amazing. It is not at all what you expect at all, it creates a mystery that you just needs to solve. SH1 has a way better opening than SH2.

While we are on the opening let us talk about cool INTERACTIVE sequences. SH2 has a few nice ones. For instance it forces you to jump through a dark hole, that time you are stuck in the elevator with a crazy talk-show host, or when you need to row across the lake. This is good stuff. But SH2 has a lot of stuff in cutscenes. The whole first monster encounter, the pyramid head rape scene, etc. And two of the scenes that I mentioned earlier are not THAT interactive, you just stand around and listen or press a button.

SH1 is way better here. The opening is brilliant. Picking up the radio and then having the encounter through the window (it is not that interactive, but it connects to the action of picking up items in a tightly narrative fashion and it introduces us to the radio static mechanic). You then have the first crossing into the dark world, which is brutally disturbing. The first puzzle is also all about picking up drawings from your daughter. This is nice a narrative connection that SH2 lacks in its puzzle set ups. You have one scene where you need to follow the sound of church bells to find your destination. And you got a great boss-fight on merry-go-round.

Speaking of the merry-go-round, let's discuss the different locations. SH2 can be quite bland. It is stuff like an apartment building, a club, streets, some generic underground prison, etc. Apart from rowing over the lake and the room filled with corpses (where you have the showdown with Eddie), none of the settings really stand out to me.

On the other hand, SH1 has some really, really great stuff. Sure it also has that bland stuff that SH2 has too. But it mixes it up with pure greatness. Like when you run around the town you notice how the road has just crumbled into a bottomless hole in places and you even need to climb down the ruins to find some needed items. It has got an amazing lighthouse where you have to run up some spiral stairs, which is one of my all time favorites. The dark world simply looks best in this game too. That mixture of blood and industrial metal leaves mental scars in you. And it has the entire outside world turning into dark world too, with distant, steel-made windmills and other unsettling stuff. Anoter good one is the room with all the TV screens that show your daughter calling for you. Alessas's final room where you finally understand all the hints the game has left you is great too. The snow in the fog adds that extra touch, that I feel SH2 cannot match. And I also mentioned the merry-go-round, which is just brilliant.

Now let us talk music. SH2 has a really celebrated soundtrack and it works great as an album. But that is where I think people mistake themselves, because while SH1's OST album is not as great as SH2's, the music works better ingame. The tunes are more simplistic and sneak into your subconscious in way that SH2 does not manage to. The industrial noise grind is more raw and primal, and it also has builds up tension by dynamically adding tracks to the music, which I cannot recall SH2 doing. Again, SH1 is more focused on being interactive, and true to the medium. It also has these sorta weird, unsettling tunes that SH2 lack, such as this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rah74j6IX3k Finally, it is clear that the theme song for SH1 is the best one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pkSSbGcaz4

Next up let us talk about monster encounters. Oh, let us talk about them. Because, let us be honest, apart from one great, and totally unexpected, encounter with an unkillable Pyramid Head, they sorta suck in SH2. The enemies have no interesting AI, they are all bipedals who just go around and do close range attacks. They are also extremely simple to avoid and there are repeated over and over and over. You find the streets crawling with the same straightjacket monster far into the game. These, like most of SH2's monsters, you can easily just run past them, or occasionally hit with a lead pipe for the fun of it. They are not very exciting, lack variety and are way overused.

SH1 on the other hand has tons of good stuff. First of you got the dogs that are sorta easy to run away from. But then you also have these flying creatures that can be quite difficult to put down and you often end up wasting your precious ammo doing it. It also has these gorilla-like creatures that wrestle you down and become really annoying and scary. The monster children can be quite vicious when close range, plus you have a ghost version that can sets off your radio, scares the hell out of you, but is really harmless. Brilliant stuff. Then you got those damn creatures in the sewers that crawl in the ceiling and drop down when you least expect it. Extremely tense section that's able to make something as boring as a crawl through sewers feel exciting as hell. The boss fights are also quite good in SH1 and again are varied in their AI and overall mechanics.

One thing though. SH2 totally wins on creature design. Demon kids are creepy and all, but SH2 monster designs are freaking amazing. SH1 cannot beat SH2 there, not by long shot. However SH1 has something that SH2 lack in the encounter department, and that is that extremely creepy way in which the creatures materialize pixel by pixel in the distance. Because it's so lo-fi, SH1's creatures are very hard to make out until they are close up (and often hard even then!), which make your mind race all over the place. Because of this, I think that SH1 manages to make their creatures FEEL scarier, despite their designs being far inferior.

When it comes to general story I feel it is a draw. SH1 is about external horrors, SH2 about internal ones. For my part I like both pretty much the same in this area. But I feel that SH1 is better at its interactive storytelling. SH2 is over reliant on cut-scenes and much of the good stuff are things where you just sit back and watch. In SH1 I get to play the horror, while in SH2 I am mostly just a passive member of the audience. And that is what just settles it for me. SH1 is simply the better horror GAME. As I have gone through above, it also got a tons of other stuff going for it, and therefore, I think it is fair to say that SH1 is the superior title.


Additional Info:
But what about Silent Hill 3? How that that stack up? Well for me, SH3 is basically just bunch of fan service and as a hardcore Silent Hill fan I despise that. Sure it has some cool stuff (the cockroaches, the mirror, etc), but overall it just tries so damn hard to connect the lore with the first game. It ends up becoming incredibly messy and lacks a real soul. In my opinion SH3 is not even in the discussion on best Silent Hill game.

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