A good game but not a good Silent hill (game)??

[ww_andi]

what he said


anyway on homecoming


did you not enjoy it mmy

[DistantJ]

I'm not arguing with you, MMY, partly because this isn't a bash SH2 thread, and partly because you make a decent point. however the value of the story is in the eye of the beholder. It's still one of my favorite games, really, but I just think a lot of times people put it on a pedestal it is undeserving of.

I feel it's a lot like Zelda: Ocarina of Time, where it was amazing at the time but even when something surpasses it, we still are disappointed that it doesn't blow us away the same way as it did. The fact that the online is constantly reinforcing how great it was, shoving top 10s of "all time" down our throats, doesn't help either.

[AuraTwilight]

Well in all honesty there really isn't that much to the story of silent hill 2

That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever read on this board.

[SPRINGS02]

Yeah, i agree that sh2 does get overrated i mean im not one of the people who's like "zomg sh2 has the best story ever made anywhere!" but to say that there's not much to the story is kinda crazy .

[Fantastic Mr Fox]

I would hope that Silent Hill 2 had 'something to the story' if only because I'm in the process of writing an undergraduate essay on it.

[ww_andi]

omg now i am getting ridiculed jeez forget i said anything

all i was trying to say was that the game had story

but its not like it would fucking fill a novel or anything without a bunch of filler


Also Aura you h ave been talking alot lately and insulting ppl, cut it out

it doesn't suite you

[The Adversary]

>its not like it would fucking fill a novel or anything without a bunch of filler
Except there is a novelization of Silent Hill 2.

[Shacknasty]

To me, it certainly felt like a Silent Hill game. Not what I would consider the best of the series, but not as god awful as some people make it out to be.

[krakalackin]

Well in all honesty there really isn't that much to the story of silent hill 2

That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever read on this board.

^ This.

Don't even try to compare SH2 to SHH. Though I haven't play SH2 in several years, I still remember it very well and I just recently played SHH and there is no debate. SH2's story is (imo) in my top three SH games. SHH is poorly paced and very blunt in its delivery.

[JKristine35]

I'm honestly shocked that anyone would say that a story as deep and full of symbolism as Silent Hill 2 isn't much of a story.

[krakalackin]

I'm honestly shocked that anyone would say that a story as deep and full of symbolism as Silent Hill 2 isn't much of a story.

thank you.

[ww_andi]

Okay you pickers i will explain my complete opinion


First of all the silent hill games Sh2 imo has a good story and yes it is deep and has symbolism. However all of the games have depth and symbolism. Now i consider Story to be the aspect of what occurs.

Story is a description of a sequence of events

this technically does not include the symbolism. if a vg or movie has a fucking picture on the wall that doesn't count as story.


Stop bitching at me for what i had to say about the story.

ON homecoming i am not saying its the nest goddamn game there is in the silent hill series.

I am simply saying that its not as bad as most of you are saying



and i dint say it wasn't much of a story

i said that there really wasn't that much story to the game

i never said it was bad or not deep

for fucks sake anybody says anything bad about sh2 everybody jumps and types with an insulting fury

[paladin181]

Not true, actually. No one jumped on my case when I said it wasn't good as a game. It's more about presentation and the arguments you choose to make. No one can tell you SH2 was an entertaining game if you didn't find it to be so. Same with Homecoming. I like both. But as a game, SH2 lacks a bit, and as a narrative, there are a few issues, but nothing major. The back story is what really makes SH2. The story it tells isn't new, nor was it really in 2000. But the presentation and the detail, combined with the (intentional or not) ambiguity is just fantastic. It's the environment in combination with the story.

But I agree, the story is pretty simplistic at its base level and presentation. But it gets complex in nature when you take into account what it doesn't give you. Where as Homecoming is just the opposite, IMO (also not a bad thing necessarily). The plot is laid out in front of you, and there's surprisingly little to discuss; it's all explained away in a neat little package.

PRIME_BBCODE_SPOILER_SHOW PRIME_BBCODE_SPOILER:

Margaret Holloway dies at Alex's hand. Wheeler either dies or doesn't. Lillian Shepherd dies right in front of you. Sam Bartlett dies right in front of you. Martin Fitch dies right in front of you. Adam Shepherd dies right in front of you. You kill Curtis Ackers. You killed (or contributed to the death of) Josh Shepherd. Alex goes home and fucks the prom queen (Elle). <- it's a figure of speech people, not insinuating Elle was the prom queen. The order, losing it's new found head in Margaret is thrown into shambles as quickly as it was resurrected.

What actually happens to Angela? What happens to James? How does Laura fit into the whole scheme of things really? If she doesn't leave with James, will she ever hitch a ride out of town? Will James ever truly forgive himself? Does anyone really care about the endings in homecoming after seeing any of them?

The biggest debate about this game is the appearance of the boogeyman, and his significance. And how it was very improper of the big bad American developer to use a monster that is unique to James (because executioners didn't wear big red hoods that may have resembled the metal pyramid construct on the Red Pyramid Thing's head in SH2, or SH:H, which James' mind then turned into a big metal helmet, right?) in a game just to sell units. How dare they cheapen the SH2 fanboys' experience at the expense of feeding their families by selling more units?

That's about it though. SH2 just left a lot more vagueness rather than wrapping up everything in the story. And hinted at possibilities with background details. In all, whether any or all the unanswered questions were truly intentional doesn't even matter, because if they were or weren't, we've gotten years of use out of them anyhow.

[ww_andi]

interesting i am not arguing that fact with silent hill 2 or with homecoming

i suppose i might have been misconstrued

[DistantJ]

I see where you're coming form though ww_andi. It seems there's a certain shelf of games somewhere where you're forbidden to dislike them without being frowned upon (Zelda:OOT, Silent Hill 2, Final Fantasy VII) and their perfectly competent followups can be treated more harshly than they would have if they hadn't followed these particular games up (Zelda:TP, SH Homecoming, FFVIII) especially if they're a little differently executed.

But I also agree that it's silly to compare Homecoming to Silent Hill 2 as they're completely different. We'd do better to compare it (if at all, it does stand on it's own merits) to the other games in the series - 1, 3, 4 and 0rigins - as it follows in their footsteps and recreates their version of Silent Hill, not the black sheep of the series, James' adventures in mindfuckville.

As for Pyramid Head, nothing in the game itself ever says that PH was created by James' mind, this is only when we look into expanded media, so we might as well either consider that retconned or just notice that James' story doesn't really 'count' in the bigger Silent Hill picture (the Alessa/The Order story). Sure, Pyramid Head was designed for James, but he made such a huge impact that it would have been a real disservice to have not had him appear at least once more.

Not to mention the movie/Homecoming incarnation is a very different Pyramid Head, a much more dignified, ominous executioner, as opposed to an awkward looking thing which spends most if it's time raping stuff (not bitching about SH2's PH, just pointing out the differences). I mean even the way he drags that knife along is different, it doesn't seem to phase the muscular, hulking behemoth, compared to Silent Hill 2's average build PH really struggling to pull the thing along behind himself.

I got chills when I saw Pyramid Head in the movie. In Homecoming a little too, though he didn't scare me and I was a little let down that he only appeared in cut-scenes so there was nothing to fear from him. Frankly I really don't care about what was or wasn't manifested from James' subconscious in Silent Hill 2, that game's like 9 years old now and most of the series seems to have completely ignored it in the canon (minus one newspaper article James read which SH4 was based around) so why should it really matter that one awesome character shows up who may or may not have been designed as a manifestation of James' guilt? It's not like it's even the same character, he only roughly resembles him, and they don't even officially use the name.

[AuraTwilight]

It's not that it's "illegal" to dislike SH2; it's just that there's a big difference between not liking the game and then simply trying to claim that parts of it just don't exist or something.

Speaking purely as a writer, Silent Hill 2's storyline is a holy grail of writing, because even though it's "simple in presentation" and whatnot, it's still unbelievably compelling to an unbelievable amount of people. What more could you ask for?

Not to mention the movie/Homecoming incarnation is a very different Pyramid Head, a much more dignified, ominous executioner, as opposed to an awkward looking thing which spends most if it's time raping stuff (not bitching about SH2's PH, just pointing out the differences).

*facepalm*

[DistantJ]

Ugh. What now? Could you perhaps tell me the flaw in my argument instead of just sarcastic 'facepalm' crap? I think what I said was perfectly valid.

[SPRINGS02]

This is gonna be an interesting debate. *grabs popcorn*

[DistantJ]

Haha... I'm just saying, I have no idea what I said wrong, can't I get an acknowledgement at least?

[ww_andi]

i wasn't trying to compare the two games mmy brought two up