I wanna say the only intentionally super goofy is probably Heather, but Alex and Harry take the messy cake.
I voted for Tina and Eric (dinguses) but I would actually posit ShatMemz Cheryl as the unavailable but most correct option.
I voted Travis because he’s a furry Also because it’s a bit silly how he just punches the fuck out of enemies and can carry 100 tvs in his pockets.
For me, the silliest always seemed to be Heather, maybe it was all the self-awareness (refusing to reach in the toilet) or maybe it was the UFO ending always seeming the silliest to me in SH3, so she got my vote.
As for favorite symbolism, it didn’t actually occur to me for some time the connection between Pyramid Head’s great knife and Angela’s knife. He doesn’t actually wield it until James himself sees Angela holding the knife in the apartment building, and with his reaction (and the way you can increase the ‘in water’ chance by examining it) it obviously felt emotionally heavy holding onto it. Also interesting to note that once he sees the portrait of the Executioners with the spears instead of the knife, PH no longer wields it. I think that just proves that the great knife is just James’ mind reacting to Angela’s kitchen knife.
Blurred out spoilers for SH2 just in case
I’ve always liked Henry. The voice actor and the character model combined to make him look like a guy who you just woke up, who has the flu, and is wandering around trying to remember what he got up to do in the first place.
It really pains me how many of you are overlooking Silent Hill’s reigning “Not The Brightest Bulb” champion, Henry:
RIGGED.
Hot take, the Dog Endings are all canon.
I had to vote Murphy cuz his arc is all like "why am I in this town anyways!? "
Also throwing TVs and shit.
But shatmemz Harry takes the cake.
Also this is the general Silent Hill opinion thread, yeah? I assumed it was just the poll but a new thread never appeared(I’m probably just an idiot).
If so, I’ll just start with: I love Silent Hill. Everything Silent Hill. 1-4? Yes. Origins-BoM? Yeparoo. Silent Hill Revelations 3D(Or SHR3D)? Yes! I just legitimately love everything the series gives me, either for it’s symbolism and horror or it’s goofy, absurd, technical messiness.
For the games, Silent Hill 3 is by far my favorite. I love the character designs and I’m super into religious horror and theming. Heather is by far the best Protag of the series and 3’s otherworlds are top notch. The only game in the series that can still scare me(Maybe besides 1). I also prefer 3’s symbolism of motherhood WAY over the sexual fueled symbolism of 2.
2 I love but it has always been the least scary barring Shatmemz to me, only thing in 2 that was super scary was the Prison and Pyramid Head’s design. Most of the monsters were cool but unthreatening(save for Abstract Daddies). Though 2’s story was fantastic and it’s symbolism was RIDICULOUS, it just wasn’t a particularly great “horror” game to me.(Angela’s character is still one of the best in gaming though.)
1 I haven’t played(Really want to though!) and 4 I have yet to finish, but I love it too. Not big on the ghosts but they do add some urgency to messing around in rooms. I’m only around halfway through 4 though, and haven’t gotten to the Eileen half yet so my opinion may change.
All I can really say about Origins is that the theater was rad, besides the first and last all the bosses were rad, and there’s some really cool monster designs(Twoback is one of my favs in the series).
Homecoming was just… an experience. I beat that 5 times. I loved it. It was goofy, dumb, and a mess, but I love it. All the bosses are real cool to me.
Shatmemz is weird because I saw a walkthrough a long time ago and LOVED IT. I didn’t pay too much attention to any one thing though, but I loved the ideas. Then I watched a certain someone’s LP and… it made me look at it in a different light. I still love the concepts but its a mess. Doesn’t help that Her Story retroactively made it worse to me lol.(This is the one I love the least)
Downpour was just… a slight miss? The epitome of wasted potential. It’s a fine game and it’s otherworld is SUPER creative! I love it’s otherworld. But it’s monster design and bad endings are just bad.
Have not played BoM but I love dungeon crawlers and a dungeon crawler with a Silent Hill skin is rad. I’m perfectly fine with it existing considering it literally came out like 8 months after Downpour, so it clearly didn’t affect mainline development. Spin offs need to be creative and different.
Besides the games, I love the movies, the comics, the arcade, all of it. I pretty much grew up with Silent Hill(specifically 3) and it honestly(Personal stuff ahead) kept me alive through bouts of suicide when I was younger. Probably wasn’t really healthy for a 10 year old to use this horror game as an emotional crutch but you take what you can get when you’re desperate.
PT and Silent Hills being cancelled legit put me into a severe depression. It was the most mad I think I’ve ever been at a company. Dream of my favorite series finally reviving was crushed before my very eyes. I was one of those “its all a performance” conspiracy theorists, delusional.
Also sidenote: The soundtracks and Mary Elizabeth McGlynn’s vocals are some of my still all time favorite songs. MEM and Akira were a fantastic duo. Sad we’ll never get more by them
TL;DR
I love Silent Hill
I fondly remember 11 year old me booting silent hill 1 for the first time…
Getting cutscene killed by the goblins and silently freaking out.
I persisted though!
Then the pterodactyl bursts into the diner and I’m “NOPE, FUCK THIS!”
Only played it again as 13…
Sorry for asking what I assume is literally the #1 most asked question about SH BUT:
I’ve only played Silent Hill 2, which other ones are good?
That’s complicated and incredibly subjective.
I like 3, Downpour, and the rest are squirmy.
1 and 3, and 4 is okay to an extent. I feel they’re all worth trying though. Especially Homecoming. The only ones that you could skip and lose nothing really is maybe Origins or Downpour.
P.T.
Resident Evil 7
er, I mean
Silent Hill 1-4 are all must-plays. I liked Shatted Memes fwiw, and Homecoming and Downpour you’re probably better off watching a good lp of imo
I love the first 4 SH games to death. Part of me wishes 4 got a bit more development before being thrown out there, because the first half is pretty darn good and then it kinda just falls apart in the second half.
Also, is it just me, or are Homecoming and Downpour both terrible in equal, but opposite ways? I feel like if you took the good parts from both games, you’d have one really good Silent Hill game overall.
Alright silent hill is my favorite horror game series, 1-4 are the best in my opinion, after those I only really like downpour. now lets all have a moment of silence (pun intended) for silent hill RIP.
I’d say you might like 1, 2 and 4, but for different reasons. 3 might be the closest in feel to 2, but it’s boiling in cult juice. Maybe 4 might be your best bet if you want to ease into the cult?
I just finished the Silent Hill 2 a few days ago and then marathoned VB’s LP of it and I was honestly blown away. If you had told me the themes the game deals with I would have honestly never believed it could handle them in anything relatively close to a tactful manner, but the game honestly does a really good job being mature about how it broaches the central themes. I foolishly attempted to play it on Hard action because I didn’t know it was a fixed camera angle game, but the rough portions never felt bad enough to sour me on how good the rest of the game was.
The only other Silent Hill game I’ve played was P.T. (unless you count watching the movies while not even close to sober lol), though sadly it was on my at the time boyfriend’s PS4 and I didn’t have one in time to download it before it went rip. I feel like there were a lot of similarities between the 2, especially in how they both never really pop the bubble of tension that they constantly blow bigger and bigger. Even when Lisa would jump out, it wouldn’t really go back and start feeling “safe” again, which felt like a really stark contrast to how a lot of jump scares work in games and especially movies, where you get jumped then everything is safe and you get to reset and chill out. For that reason P.T. and especially Silent Hill 2 really reminded me of John Carpenter’s The Thing, with how incredibly well that movie never lets you feel safe or really sure about anything, and in how incredibly well both the games and the movie handle very open ended endings that can be interpreted radically different between each individual person’s experiences and how they viewed certain scenes.
Also part of me is still blown away that Silent Hills almost existed, it was such an insane sounding lineup. Kojima and Del Toro teaming up with monster design from Junji Ito and Norman Reedus as the main character??? Like it almost sounds like it was just too wild to ever have actually happened.
Part of me wants to try to get into the other games, but I feel like it’s going to be like trying to play through all the Resident Evil games except with no nostalgia, which seems like it would be less than enjoyable lol