Silent Hill series wrap-up
Apr. 6th, 2015 10:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
indigozealSo, with the four proper games of the Silent Hill series over & done, let's take a bit of inventory.
Silent Hill POWER RANKINGS:
2: Complex characters and an affecting, true-to-life story told through fantastic use of the medium. One of gaming's true big triumphs.
4: The execution is wonky and gameplay downright aggravating in long stretches, but some of its gambles are well-crafted and pay off big. There's real mystery and pathos here, and some big scares.
1: I admire its chutzpah in not explaining fucking anything to the player, and it leads to some truly unsettling moments; it understands the role of the unknown in creating horror like no other game does. The underlying material suffers from the schlocky cult stuff, though, and the execution of the "story told in passing" idea is far better in 2.
3: Polished for what it is, but has no ambition. A big step backward artistically from 2.
Best protagonist: This has to go to the multifaceted James Sunderland. To plagiarize from myself, he's really the most human of game protagonists, and the game examines everything that happens with him, and how he reacts, from many angles, with a true maturity.
Next would be Heather, who'd be first place in any other field; she's bursting with personality and is really well-acted both in voice and body language, the latter of which is a rarity in gaming. Gormless but good-hearted parent Harry, willing to follow his child into the depths of hell, has his charms. Henry has potential (and a lot of indirect characterization), but he's a bit miffed in execution, as noted.
Best antagonist: People flip out over Pyramid Head, but he's really, like much in SH2, just part of James's mind talking to itself. Which, well, I guess, does make him part of the best antagonist, so to speak. Silent Hill 2 knows that a mere phantasmic boogeyman can't compare with the horrors that come from lived experiences and a man's own mind.
If we have to go with traditional antagonists, Walter Sullivan's probably the best: there's a strong mystery built up around him; the Otherworlds are built from his memories and traumas and fears, so he gets a lot of characterization as a result; and there's a lot they do with his demeanor, his manner of speaking, and his time-delayed facial expressions & reactions to characterize him aand indicate he's not all there that's very good.
Dahlia is a profound monster in her perversion & abuse of parentage, and the voice actress has a lot of fun with the role. Claudia is ultimately revealed to be an intriguing & tragic character with refreshing motivations (and an interesting, genuine method to her madness), but her development suffers from the poor pacing of her game.
The franchise is quite strong in the antagonist department overall. There aren't any bad antagonists per se, and each (save for Claudia) is featured in the story pretty much exactly to the degree needed. (As mentioned in the last SH4 post, thouugh, Walter could've used a couple scenes speaking directly to Henry & Eileen in the second half for reasons of character balance.)
Best partner: Maria, while another part of James's mind talking to itself, has the most profound and successfully-executed role in the overall story of any of the franchise's partners; she's the best in what she represents and brings out in the protagonist. In the "people who actually exist" department, Eileen is quite active & personable and, when the combat works as thematically intended (which isn't often, but still), she's fun to have as a partner. Cybil's largely competent (save for, er, giving a civilian she just met a firearm at the start), but she's not allowed to do much. Douglas isn't allowed to do anything except drive, and he doesn't give the impression of being very competent.
(Note: I am not consciously trying to give SH2 first place in everything here. It's just happening organically.)
Best soundtrack: 2's soundtrack balances otherworldliness with the traditional musical language of emotion; it comes from no traditional place, yet it pulls you into what it's saying. This is extremely difficult, though, as you could make a case for all of them. 1 had unconventional ambient tracks of undiluted horror that are like nothing else in any other game and that work terrifically - and the CD makes for awesome car listening. 3 has a lot of musically complex tracks that go places and great sound design. 4 doesn't make much of an impression while playing, but the "expanded" soundtrack works the same "ambient journey" groove of 1 from a more personal angle; there's time allotted to breathe, to reflect, and to be agog.
Best songs:
1. "You're Not Here": It just sounds fucking great.
2. "Room of Angel": Like the game, a dirge on the tragedy of the failure to connect between people, with a soft, elegiac tone you don't hear in gaming.
3. "Your Rain": Deals with the same themes as "Room of Angel," but has a more rhythmic, poppier edge to it; good musically.
Best tracks from each game:
Really difficult, as there's so much that's good, and to an extent, the Silent Hill OSTs (1 & 4 particularly) rely on the collective power of the listening experience rather than any one individual track. Nevertheless, here're my choices for the prime cuts (with, probably, plenty of unintentional omissions), with links to what I think are the ten best.
SH1: "Ain't Gonna Rain," "Kill Angels"/"Only You," "Not Tomorrow 1" (either the disc version or the actual in-game version), "She," "Claw Finger," "Don't Cry." (As mentioned, the ambient aspect of the soundtrack is also important, and this is perhaps best represented by: "Devil's Lyric," "Never Again," "Fear of the Dark," and "I'll Kill You.")
SH2: "Theme of Laura," "A World of Madness," "Betrayal," "Letters," "True," "The Day of Night," "Null Moon," "Alone in the Town," "Magdalene," "Fermata in Mistic Air," "Love Psalm," "Black Fairy" (which seems like an odd choice but works superbly in its purpose, which is to set the feeling of being utterly lost yet driven inexorably toward an inevitable conclusion).
SH3: "You're Not Here," "Float up from Dream," "Breeze - In Monochrome Night," "Please Love Me...Once More," "Uneternal Sleep," and "Sun," oddly; McGlynn's relates the tale as both myth and an oddly comforting fairy tale.
SH4: Going from the 100% soundtrack in part here, but: "Room of Angel," "Your Rain," "Tender Sugar," "Melancholy Requiem," "I Didn't Know," "Nightmarish Waltz," "Sunrise" & "Sunset," "The Suicidal Clock Chime," "Remodeling," "Traversing the Portals of Reality," "Cry It Out," "Results." ("Remodeling" & "Traversing" are iffy, since I don't think they play in the actual game, but picking tracks from 4 is tough because there are a number of different official soundtracks for the game, and I'm not sure "Cry It Out," say, plays in the game, either.)
Best boss: I don't think the series does bosses all that well, actually. That's OK: good boss fights need to be good, meaty fights, and the characters in Silent Hill aren't meant to be proficient in combat. Thinking back, however: though I resented this battle when I first encountered it because it actually requires you to learn the mechanics, a questionable decision in Silent Hill for the reasons stated above, and because it is a big pain in the neck - the Memory of Alessa fight in SH3 boasts impressive staging & showmanship, it demands a long-haul strategy - you can't just get lucky - and it really feels like a long, drag-out life-or-death struggle, a real battle of attrition.
The final battle with Walter in 4 isn't bad either; success depends on more than brute force, and the time limit gives a good bit of tension to it.
Worst boss: Probably the One Truth. It's a case of particularly stupid & unnecessary literalism, and unless you cheese the fight by going in & out of the room to make the vulnerable enemy respawn near the doors, Eileen will unavoidably get wrecked.
Best dressed:
That tie.
Seriously, this probably goes to vestless Heather. I appreciate, though, that after considering saints' & Marian robes for Claudia in concept art, they eventually opted for a simple priest's cassock, its stark simplicity and unexpected gender swap highlighting the subtle wrongness in Cynthia's look.
Best weapon: 1's emergency hammer represented the biggest & most welcome leap up in offensive power - after scraping through the school and being confronted with another potential gauntlet in the hospital, you're gifted with a weapon that, as Run Button put it, just wrecks enemies. (The really powerful pseudo-joke weapons like 2's Great Knife and 3's maul are too slow to be practical.)
Most useless weapon that isn't meant to be a total joke: 3's submachine gun. One clip does as much damage as like two shotgun blasts, and you get about three clips in the game.
Best puzzle: 1's piano puzzle is probably the absolute best: you have to make multiple mental connections - that the title of the poem is directing you to play the keys that make no sound; that the birds in the poem are color-coded to the keys on the piano; how the positions of the birds correspond to the keys - but, while they're tough, they're not unfair. It's an immensely satisfying puzzle to solve on your own. The "zodiac" puzzle in 1 has a neat twist, as does, to a lesser degree, the painting puzzle in the same area. I also liked how 4 depended on you remembering and using things from Room 302 in an organic way.
Best environments: The mental traffic accident of 1's Nowhere. The end level in 4 - the walls echoing with the cries of a woman in labor and crawling with bubbling blood, and that great, dangerous audio undercurrent really selling the "this is it" factor. 2's hotel, its comfort & familiarity mixed with danger, eventually yielding to scale-falling malaise. 1's school, a viscerally frightening location with its knife children, its use of darkness, and of sound and surrealness. The Myst-like exterior of 4's water prison. 3's haunted manor, even though the game screws it up by ensuring that its impact will be robbed by repeated playthroughs. Room 302 in 4.
Best moments: Pretty much everything in 2 from the final meeting with Eddie on - "It's all the same once you're dead!", the hotel level and its eventual deterioriation, Angela's goodbye, James's final realization & scene with Maria, Mary's last letter over the "Leave" end scene. Claudia's explanation in 3 for why she's done what she's done, and her conviction. Staring into the peephole, and Walter staring back at you in 4. The peephole haunting from 4. The bit in the clock tower basement in 1 where you, without any fanfare, cross over into the Otherworld; it's smart about good horror gives you no mental handholds, and its unheralded flip in perspecctive makes you doubt your own senses. The Abstract Daddy in 2: an example of symbolism that's not graphic in the conventional ways but utterly horrifying - it's you know exactly what it represents.
Worst stretches: The broken puzzles on Hard mode in 3. The overemphasis on combat in 3; I remember Brookhaven being a particular low point. The rotten, unrewarding web of resource management in the second half of 4, which I've examined in detail already. Having the superghosts take so many hits to go down in 4; I wonder how many people who weren't using a walkthrough just gave up trying to use the Sword of Obedience on them altogether. (The answer is, probably, "most of them.") 3's determination to end most of its best scares with instadeaths, thus forcing you to play through them again and robbing them of their impact.
Also, that bit in 1 where Harry's trying to get from the boat to the lighthouse or the lighthouse to the boat or something, and there are like 10,000 Rompers out to get him, and he has to negotiate these narrow planks on the docks that make evasion impossible. That was just a fucking mess.
Things on which I've come around: When I first finished the initial Silent Hill, I was really disappointed in the story and its apparent lack of the psychological resonance for which the series is known. I'm still not enamored with the cult stuff, and I do think the idea of a tale told primarily through environmental clues is better-done in 2, but I respect the original's audacity for not explaining freaking anything.
While I don't think Douglas's character was well-written, I do like his "You think you're Superman or something?!" "Y'know, I always wanted to be him!" exchange with Heather in the amusement park - it says a lot.
And "Hometown" is really not great, but the end verse is a good bit above the rest of the song.
Also, this isn't quite a thing I've come around on, but I do have to admire the breadth of the stories that the franchise chooses to tackle: an abstract, Stephen King-ish descent into hell; an emotional, introspective tale of a widower and his lost wife; a slick Hollywood horror sequel; and a serial-killer murder mystery/suspense tale. It wasn't always successful, but when it hit, it worked like nothing else in the genre.
******
And that's it for Silent Hill right now! As a sidebar, I might come back eventually to take a look at Shattered Memories, the odd Western reimagining of 1 that reshapes itself according to what it thinks is your psychological profile, but until then, it's over & out!
Silent Hill POWER RANKINGS:
2: Complex characters and an affecting, true-to-life story told through fantastic use of the medium. One of gaming's true big triumphs.
4: The execution is wonky and gameplay downright aggravating in long stretches, but some of its gambles are well-crafted and pay off big. There's real mystery and pathos here, and some big scares.
1: I admire its chutzpah in not explaining fucking anything to the player, and it leads to some truly unsettling moments; it understands the role of the unknown in creating horror like no other game does. The underlying material suffers from the schlocky cult stuff, though, and the execution of the "story told in passing" idea is far better in 2.
3: Polished for what it is, but has no ambition. A big step backward artistically from 2.
Best protagonist: This has to go to the multifaceted James Sunderland. To plagiarize from myself, he's really the most human of game protagonists, and the game examines everything that happens with him, and how he reacts, from many angles, with a true maturity.
Next would be Heather, who'd be first place in any other field; she's bursting with personality and is really well-acted both in voice and body language, the latter of which is a rarity in gaming. Gormless but good-hearted parent Harry, willing to follow his child into the depths of hell, has his charms. Henry has potential (and a lot of indirect characterization), but he's a bit miffed in execution, as noted.
Best antagonist: People flip out over Pyramid Head, but he's really, like much in SH2, just part of James's mind talking to itself. Which, well, I guess, does make him part of the best antagonist, so to speak. Silent Hill 2 knows that a mere phantasmic boogeyman can't compare with the horrors that come from lived experiences and a man's own mind.
If we have to go with traditional antagonists, Walter Sullivan's probably the best: there's a strong mystery built up around him; the Otherworlds are built from his memories and traumas and fears, so he gets a lot of characterization as a result; and there's a lot they do with his demeanor, his manner of speaking, and his time-delayed facial expressions & reactions to characterize him aand indicate he's not all there that's very good.
Dahlia is a profound monster in her perversion & abuse of parentage, and the voice actress has a lot of fun with the role. Claudia is ultimately revealed to be an intriguing & tragic character with refreshing motivations (and an interesting, genuine method to her madness), but her development suffers from the poor pacing of her game.
The franchise is quite strong in the antagonist department overall. There aren't any bad antagonists per se, and each (save for Claudia) is featured in the story pretty much exactly to the degree needed. (As mentioned in the last SH4 post, thouugh, Walter could've used a couple scenes speaking directly to Henry & Eileen in the second half for reasons of character balance.)
Best partner: Maria, while another part of James's mind talking to itself, has the most profound and successfully-executed role in the overall story of any of the franchise's partners; she's the best in what she represents and brings out in the protagonist. In the "people who actually exist" department, Eileen is quite active & personable and, when the combat works as thematically intended (which isn't often, but still), she's fun to have as a partner. Cybil's largely competent (save for, er, giving a civilian she just met a firearm at the start), but she's not allowed to do much. Douglas isn't allowed to do anything except drive, and he doesn't give the impression of being very competent.
(Note: I am not consciously trying to give SH2 first place in everything here. It's just happening organically.)
Best soundtrack: 2's soundtrack balances otherworldliness with the traditional musical language of emotion; it comes from no traditional place, yet it pulls you into what it's saying. This is extremely difficult, though, as you could make a case for all of them. 1 had unconventional ambient tracks of undiluted horror that are like nothing else in any other game and that work terrifically - and the CD makes for awesome car listening. 3 has a lot of musically complex tracks that go places and great sound design. 4 doesn't make much of an impression while playing, but the "expanded" soundtrack works the same "ambient journey" groove of 1 from a more personal angle; there's time allotted to breathe, to reflect, and to be agog.
Best songs:
1. "You're Not Here": It just sounds fucking great.
2. "Room of Angel": Like the game, a dirge on the tragedy of the failure to connect between people, with a soft, elegiac tone you don't hear in gaming.
3. "Your Rain": Deals with the same themes as "Room of Angel," but has a more rhythmic, poppier edge to it; good musically.
Best tracks from each game:
Really difficult, as there's so much that's good, and to an extent, the Silent Hill OSTs (1 & 4 particularly) rely on the collective power of the listening experience rather than any one individual track. Nevertheless, here're my choices for the prime cuts (with, probably, plenty of unintentional omissions), with links to what I think are the ten best.
SH1: "Ain't Gonna Rain," "Kill Angels"/"Only You," "Not Tomorrow 1" (either the disc version or the actual in-game version), "She," "Claw Finger," "Don't Cry." (As mentioned, the ambient aspect of the soundtrack is also important, and this is perhaps best represented by: "Devil's Lyric," "Never Again," "Fear of the Dark," and "I'll Kill You.")
SH2: "Theme of Laura," "A World of Madness," "Betrayal," "Letters," "True," "The Day of Night," "Null Moon," "Alone in the Town," "Magdalene," "Fermata in Mistic Air," "Love Psalm," "Black Fairy" (which seems like an odd choice but works superbly in its purpose, which is to set the feeling of being utterly lost yet driven inexorably toward an inevitable conclusion).
SH3: "You're Not Here," "Float up from Dream," "Breeze - In Monochrome Night," "Please Love Me...Once More," "Uneternal Sleep," and "Sun," oddly; McGlynn's relates the tale as both myth and an oddly comforting fairy tale.
SH4: Going from the 100% soundtrack in part here, but: "Room of Angel," "Your Rain," "Tender Sugar," "Melancholy Requiem," "I Didn't Know," "Nightmarish Waltz," "Sunrise" & "Sunset," "The Suicidal Clock Chime," "Remodeling," "Traversing the Portals of Reality," "Cry It Out," "Results." ("Remodeling" & "Traversing" are iffy, since I don't think they play in the actual game, but picking tracks from 4 is tough because there are a number of different official soundtracks for the game, and I'm not sure "Cry It Out," say, plays in the game, either.)
Best boss: I don't think the series does bosses all that well, actually. That's OK: good boss fights need to be good, meaty fights, and the characters in Silent Hill aren't meant to be proficient in combat. Thinking back, however: though I resented this battle when I first encountered it because it actually requires you to learn the mechanics, a questionable decision in Silent Hill for the reasons stated above, and because it is a big pain in the neck - the Memory of Alessa fight in SH3 boasts impressive staging & showmanship, it demands a long-haul strategy - you can't just get lucky - and it really feels like a long, drag-out life-or-death struggle, a real battle of attrition.
The final battle with Walter in 4 isn't bad either; success depends on more than brute force, and the time limit gives a good bit of tension to it.
Worst boss: Probably the One Truth. It's a case of particularly stupid & unnecessary literalism, and unless you cheese the fight by going in & out of the room to make the vulnerable enemy respawn near the doors, Eileen will unavoidably get wrecked.
Best dressed:
That tie.
Seriously, this probably goes to vestless Heather. I appreciate, though, that after considering saints' & Marian robes for Claudia in concept art, they eventually opted for a simple priest's cassock, its stark simplicity and unexpected gender swap highlighting the subtle wrongness in Cynthia's look.
Best weapon: 1's emergency hammer represented the biggest & most welcome leap up in offensive power - after scraping through the school and being confronted with another potential gauntlet in the hospital, you're gifted with a weapon that, as Run Button put it, just wrecks enemies. (The really powerful pseudo-joke weapons like 2's Great Knife and 3's maul are too slow to be practical.)
Most useless weapon that isn't meant to be a total joke: 3's submachine gun. One clip does as much damage as like two shotgun blasts, and you get about three clips in the game.
Best puzzle: 1's piano puzzle is probably the absolute best: you have to make multiple mental connections - that the title of the poem is directing you to play the keys that make no sound; that the birds in the poem are color-coded to the keys on the piano; how the positions of the birds correspond to the keys - but, while they're tough, they're not unfair. It's an immensely satisfying puzzle to solve on your own. The "zodiac" puzzle in 1 has a neat twist, as does, to a lesser degree, the painting puzzle in the same area. I also liked how 4 depended on you remembering and using things from Room 302 in an organic way.
Best environments: The mental traffic accident of 1's Nowhere. The end level in 4 - the walls echoing with the cries of a woman in labor and crawling with bubbling blood, and that great, dangerous audio undercurrent really selling the "this is it" factor. 2's hotel, its comfort & familiarity mixed with danger, eventually yielding to scale-falling malaise. 1's school, a viscerally frightening location with its knife children, its use of darkness, and of sound and surrealness. The Myst-like exterior of 4's water prison. 3's haunted manor, even though the game screws it up by ensuring that its impact will be robbed by repeated playthroughs. Room 302 in 4.
Best moments: Pretty much everything in 2 from the final meeting with Eddie on - "It's all the same once you're dead!", the hotel level and its eventual deterioriation, Angela's goodbye, James's final realization & scene with Maria, Mary's last letter over the "Leave" end scene. Claudia's explanation in 3 for why she's done what she's done, and her conviction. Staring into the peephole, and Walter staring back at you in 4. The peephole haunting from 4. The bit in the clock tower basement in 1 where you, without any fanfare, cross over into the Otherworld; it's smart about good horror gives you no mental handholds, and its unheralded flip in perspecctive makes you doubt your own senses. The Abstract Daddy in 2: an example of symbolism that's not graphic in the conventional ways but utterly horrifying - it's you know exactly what it represents.
Worst stretches: The broken puzzles on Hard mode in 3. The overemphasis on combat in 3; I remember Brookhaven being a particular low point. The rotten, unrewarding web of resource management in the second half of 4, which I've examined in detail already. Having the superghosts take so many hits to go down in 4; I wonder how many people who weren't using a walkthrough just gave up trying to use the Sword of Obedience on them altogether. (The answer is, probably, "most of them.") 3's determination to end most of its best scares with instadeaths, thus forcing you to play through them again and robbing them of their impact.
Also, that bit in 1 where Harry's trying to get from the boat to the lighthouse or the lighthouse to the boat or something, and there are like 10,000 Rompers out to get him, and he has to negotiate these narrow planks on the docks that make evasion impossible. That was just a fucking mess.
Things on which I've come around: When I first finished the initial Silent Hill, I was really disappointed in the story and its apparent lack of the psychological resonance for which the series is known. I'm still not enamored with the cult stuff, and I do think the idea of a tale told primarily through environmental clues is better-done in 2, but I respect the original's audacity for not explaining freaking anything.
While I don't think Douglas's character was well-written, I do like his "You think you're Superman or something?!" "Y'know, I always wanted to be him!" exchange with Heather in the amusement park - it says a lot.
And "Hometown" is really not great, but the end verse is a good bit above the rest of the song.
Also, this isn't quite a thing I've come around on, but I do have to admire the breadth of the stories that the franchise chooses to tackle: an abstract, Stephen King-ish descent into hell; an emotional, introspective tale of a widower and his lost wife; a slick Hollywood horror sequel; and a serial-killer murder mystery/suspense tale. It wasn't always successful, but when it hit, it worked like nothing else in the genre.
******
And that's it for Silent Hill right now! As a sidebar, I might come back eventually to take a look at Shattered Memories, the odd Western reimagining of 1 that reshapes itself according to what it thinks is your psychological profile, but until then, it's over & out!
