Silent Hill 2 is one of my top five videogames. I’ve played a lot so for the game to make it up there means that it’s something special. Indeed all of the entries in the series up until the fifth instalment are.
What I liked about it was the fact that it played with survival horror conventions such as making the player vulnerable physically and psychologically whilst the player wrestled with cumbersome controls that made navigation of the environment difficult. It also played around with sound and camera angles, thus affecting player perception of the environment and heightening the sense of the unknown and increasing fear. The series also made an attempt at tackling psychological issues – whole games being built out of an issue like mourning the loss of a loved one – far more interesting to me than the b-movie excesses of Resident Evil.
This AMV captures all of the darkness around the psychology of the characters and the horror of the game by weaving together all of the video cut-scenes, sometimes in order of the instalment. Furthermore the music compliments the images perfectly. I’ve never heard of Lacuna Coil and I don’t particularly feel like listening to any of their other work but their cover of Depeche Mode’s Enjoy the Silence is darker and grittier than the original.
With news of a new film, game and HD remakes of the second and third instalments of the Silent Hill series, this AMV is a timely reminder of what makes the series so good.
Genkinahito 