A qustion I ask myself very often. Why? What does it have that set it apart from other games. The story? The charecters? Atmosphere. I personally think it's how everything comes together. The music plays when it needs too. Cutscenes pop up at the right time. The enviroments are beautiful and interesting. Everything about it is just...WOW. Explian why you love it!

I try and come up with an answer to that but I end up in the same spot. It's perfect. If it didn't have the soundtrack it wouldn't be the same - for me. Theme Of Laura is one of the most beautiful instrumentals I have heard and it fits so well with the tragic love story(?) that is Silent Hill 2.

If I had to guess (although I agree, it just has that appeal that's hard to pinpoint) I'd say it was the fact that it was disorientingly different. You expect things with the horror genre and, yes, while the original put a new spin on it as well that also made it different. "Ah, Silent Hill 2" we say "must be like the first" but instead it's twisted in a different direction. It doesn't play on pure terror so much as the fear of a lost loved one and the hope that they may not be dead afterall. The journey through an impossibly twisted and the strange drive to continue because you want to see if, perhaps, it's not a lie and she's really real. It's a twisted love story that's very intoxicating

The characters seem real and very...3D in personality (although, the same could be said for the other games) the atmosphere is beautifully tragic and fits perfectly with the story.

Also
[spoiler]The twist at the end is delightfully shocking. I mean, through the entire game you're there with James, rooting him on and striving to help to retrieve the wife he lost three years ago. You want him to find his wife, somewhat. He's the protagonist. He's the good guy. He's kind and goodhearted, just like Harry, just trying to get his wife back. He could never do anything wrong. Then BAM that's all gone when we learn he killed his wife and suddenly we're left not with James, but this stranger who isn't that kind, gentle good guy we thought he was. We no longer know what to think. That single moment makes the game shine, every imaginative creation that can suddenly change the way you see things, without changing the world they set up for you, is worthy of praise. And it's very human too, isn't it? I mean, haven't you ever known someone, thinking they were a certain way and suddenly they do something that completely shatters the image you created of them in your mind? You feel betrayed and awkward, even though they had no obligation to stay the same to you, nor did you expect them to.[/spoiler]

Yeah I completely agree. That game had some great twists in it and for me, the letter at the end that mary reads is very very touching.

I applaud thee AP.That sums SH2 up very well.The twist is one of the best ever.I still loved James though. XP

Oh come on, he's no Pyramid Head..!

j/k

Basically it's the only perfect game ever made, the graphics still amaze me now, not even the best movies get me attached to the characters like I was to James, every character in the game has a story more interesting than 99% of the games that come out now. I wouldn't change one thing about the game, exept maybe that fact that I don't have a 80 inch plasma with monster component cables to play it on, martin Logan surround sound and cumfiest laz-y-boy ever to play it in... but that's my fault.

The story is what definitely did it for me. The thought of these people coming together in a monster-filled (their perception) town that acted as a personal purgatory . . . that there is just brilliant writing that I wish I could have come up with.

I've long harbored the feeling that this game came together so well out of some sort of destiny - molded by circumstances beyond Konami's control. In particular, I've wondered whether much of the material from this game that was lost during production may have served not to make it better, but only longer, while in effect taking away from the actual game.

Nonetheless, I suspect the core of the game being what it is, the overall quality of the finished product wouldn't stray too far from it's basic roots based solely on length or additional content, so, in the end, I have to say this game is perfect because they didn't strain themselves trying too hard to make the "perfect game" - they let the story tell itself. It felt loose, and it breathed, it flowed naturally, never forced anything, never beat you over the head, and most important: it walked a tenuous tightrope suspended over that middle ground where everything is represented in just the right proportion to make it all rich, but finely balanced and perfectly ambiguous. It wasn't too scary, it wasn't too saccharine, it wasn't too unrealistic, it wasn't too mundane, it wasn't too violent, it wasn't a snorefest, it wasn't too fast, it wasn't too surreal, and it wasn't what anyone would have expected. When you let things happen, good things happen...

Uhhhh......what?@Drewfus,not nowhereman.