yes, sadly nothing about this game scared me...my first and only silent hill related disappointment. i probably would have loved this game if it didn't bare the silent hill name, but the one single thing i expect from SH games is feeling deeply distrurbed and unnerved while i'm playing them.
maybe on my next playthrough i'll enjoy it more because i'll know what to expect, did anyone find they enjoyed it more second playthrough?

^ I actually found it less scarier the second time around lol, and even the first time it wasn't that scary. But the changes due to the profile still kept things somewhat refreshing but the gameplay was a little boring my second playthrough to be honest. So I'd say I enjoyed it a little less than the first time unfortunately.

I found the chase scenes more rage-inducing than frightening, sadly. It did have a really great atmosphere, but without the thought of 'is something going to jump me if I open this door?' it lacked punch.

Some of the later chase scenes.
The paranoia of the game watching my every move.
The labyrinth.
The sinking car.
The movie screen.
Stuck in the Tunnel of Love.
The 2nd falling scene (I love my Daddy I love my Daddy I love my Daddy)
My monsters started off freaky, and ended looking really f'ed up.

i enjoyed the chases, they were kindda "adrenalinish", the labyrinth was frustrating, messages made me jump out of my seat occasionally, and the game didn't have the heavy creepy atmosphere of the older ones.

so it's definitely the least scary sh game (for me at least), but it was an unforgettable emotional experience.

The chase scenes were freaky, no doubt about it. I don't know if I was terrified but I was definitely tense.

The thing is, I feel like there were parts in each area that really weirded me out. I don't recall ever feeling calm in this game, although I wouldn't say constantly terrified.
Some of my favorite moments\places were:
- The woods.
- The Labyrinth. The uncanniness of going into the same room over and over again really tripped me out.
-The theater.
-Car under water. It seems that freaked a lot of people out.
-Also, I don't know why this really struck me, but when your in the salon and you turn on the hot water to see the code written on the mirror,
it really weirded me out that it was written in reverse, as if someone on the other side of the mirror wrote it.

Really, nothing scared me. Nothing usually does scares me about horror games...EXCEPT, for today. I was playing it, trying for the FOURTH FEAKIN TIME to get the Wicked and Weak ending and in the woods, I thought I had lost the Rawshocks, so I was just walking along, letting Harry catch his breath, and when I went to open the door, a Rawshock randomly grabbed me from behind the door and screamed. Jumped at least 3 in. in the air.

P.S. I didn't get the Wicked and Weak ending. _ _||

For me i felt paranoia, and fear. never knowing where they were really was intense.

The game freaked me out at first because I was unaware that nothing could attack you in the normal world.

Although on a random play through, seeing the cut up bear with meat hooks stuck in it in the forest took me off guard. I played the game probably 7 times at that point. I assumed they had taken it out of the game by that point (I seen a screenshot of it once when it was first announced) and seeing that was a serious wtf moment.

I wonder what in the psyche profile makes the gutted or normal bear appear.

Eventually I was lulled into a sense of comfort, which more or less stayed the entire game. Now rather than being scary it's mostly like playing a comfortable serene nightmare.

I never found the chase scenes scary either. They were intense (and still can be from time to time) but it was more of a BRING IT ON BITCHES than OMFG RUN. I still find them pretty fun.

To be perfectly honest, very little about SM scared me. It just didn't have the same feeling of dread that the other games had. In the other games there's always the chance of bumping into something grumpy and ugly when exploring, but in SM there was no such problem. So that kind of killed the tension in half the game. The ice world also lost a big part of it's impact when I found out Harry doesn't actually die when attacked too much. Despite being armed, the other protagonists seemed more vulnerable to me than Harry. Unlike Harry, whose death barely affects the game play much, the others death will cause a game over. If ones lucky there was a recent save, but Harry just gets put back at the start of the nightmare sequence. Having said all that I really did enjoy the story. exploration was fun, and the story was great. But it just wasn't scary.

Gutted/normal bear? where? i dont remember that...

In the forest inside the hunters cabin.

There's a bear that's either laying on the table or it's gutted and half hung up on meat hooks. I <might> be wrong but I also think the bear is sometime standing up as a piece of taxidermy art.

Yes, there are two versions of the room:


You can see most if not all the changes in the Collected hidden stuff,variations, pics, videos, etc. thread thread.

^That actually does look kinda freaky.

In game (at least in the PS2 version) that bear on the table version, the entire room is bloody red.

On paper, the game seems like it should be scary, with tons of unkillable smart monsters chasing you. But it doesn't work. The reason is because of how they have to alter the gameplay in order to accommodate those monsters.

If you think about it, a game with monsters like SM's that are everywhere would make the game near unplayable... it would make exploring rooms with monsters in them an excrutiating process. The designers realized this, and their solution was to relegate monsters to specific "nightmare" sections which you wouldn't need to explore, and keep the "exploration" segments seperate.

This was a bad solution. They figured that the nightmare sections would be scary since you couldn't fight back, and the exploration scenes would be scary solely from atmosphere and "jump scares." The nightmare sections aren't scary because you are constantly running and thus there is no suspense. Also because you are constantly dying, and the sense of frustration you get overwhelms and fear or adrenaline. The exploration sections aren't scary because there is no threat.

A better solution would have been to tone down the A.I. of the monsters, make them less frequent, and make hiding more effective. A horror game with unkillable monsters can work, but it needs to be designed very carefully... stealth is pretty much a mandatory element, and one that SM is direly lacking.

So yeah, it's absolutely no surprise that many people don't find SM scary. Even Homecoming and Origins are scarier games, and that's sad. To be fair, though, SM does have it's moments, although they are mostly scares that are only going to work once. The car moment is pretty cool. What I don't like about it though is how you can't die... you have the facade of being able to interact with the environment, but the same thing will always happen, so it is essentially a glorified cutscene.

The most scary part for me was the forest.
It was perfectly desinged to be scary.

The moment near at the end when you had to keep swimming towards the lighthouse, all you could see was the endless dark waters and the little light at the horizon, and simultaneously watch the bottom of the dark sea having parts of your memories was... well... it made me feel really uneasy and emotionally harassed.

I didn't know the game was supposed to be scary

Not much scared me in this game, but I thought it was pretty freaky when the car is going underwater. I had no idea what I was suppose to do.
It's also kind of scared me at the parts where you can hide, and the monsters are walking past and you're hoping they don't find you. =/ lmao