Silent Hill Heaven

I've loved this series ever since I first got SH2 in Christmas of 02'. Each game in the Team Silent games was really pushing what was possible currently on their respective hardwares. SH2's texture work in 2001, SH3's continuation of this, but also it's phenomenal charecter models that eclipsed most games untill facial scanning became the norm in the mid 2010s. SH4 also has great character models, but really shines in its changing perspective and interactive apartment.
Silent Hill is on another level though. In an era where most games were 3D models on a narrow path, Silent Hill comes out with this Proto open world. Now open worlds weren't completely unheard of in 1999, you had Driver 2, GTA 2(if you top down can count), twisted metal and other car games had fairly open environments. The thing with Silent Hill is it's detail. Silent Hill looks like an actual small town(giant interstate ass roads aside), detailed shops, enterable buildings, cars, items and a real lack of repetitive looking structures. Interiors didn't look like bland vague husks of a building but had things in them. Most open-ish games at the time just had building that looked like cardboard cutouts on the side of the road. They were flat and uninteresting, Silent Hill had a real sense of geometry to its buildings, every place in town has an identity and features. Silent Hill isn't just a background, but a world you can interact with.
Silent Hill gets alot of love for a lot of things, understandably so, but I rarely hear about it's crazy technical accomplishments. I'd love a documentary on just how they put this game together for the PS1. Only other PS1 game I can think of that even comes close to this is Mazurra Falls(spell check?) which had driving like Driver 2, but had a very weird control scheme and no combat. Any other games that do what SH1 does?

Silent Hill has stood up graphically very well compared with contemporary games. The team really knew how to maximize the Playstation's hardware in a way many other developers didn't.

Play in Self View mode in order to see the amount of detail it has. First time I was amazed by seeing the flies over the corpse in the opening alley. 1 is still my favorite game in the franchise.

I played with an emulator with the PS1 wobble turned off and resolution bumped up and...yeah.. it's impressive. I think it's an oft over looked component to what makes Silent Hill special. It was one of the first things I noticed with Homecoming, or the lack of, but couldn't put words too it then. Everything looks repetitive? Like the same texture applied the same way over and over? It doesn't feel lived in like the old games do.

Homecoming also just looks clean and empty in a lot of places. It's like nobody cluttered up the levels to make them look lived in.

Despite it being considered "dated" by todays standards, i know im still personally impressed by the level of detail and love given to Silent Hill 1. Like i stated in another thread, i still occasionally find new things, despite playing the game for well over 2 decades.


Don't get me wrong, While there are games that do have a lot of love and passion put into them still, too bad many games these days don't have the same attention to detail. Sure, there may be a lot more shiny polygons, but so many gameworlds these days lack the depth something released in 1999 has. real shame imo