Commended as Being Strongly Vaginal

"To absent friends, lost loves, old gods, and the season of mists; and may each and every one of us always give the devil his due."
— Hob Gadling

I'd say that I give Silent Hill 2 a hard time, but the fact of the matter is that I like it just fine. There's nothing wrong with, as Yahtzee puts it, Jaaaaaaaaaames Sunderland or his adventure through Fogville.

Aside from the obvious, of course.

I suppose that my admiration for the original PS1 game stems from its clear lineage of inspiration of great horror novelists. The street names in Silent Hill include King, Bachman, Bloch, Koontz, Ellroy, and Bradbury. The school is called Midwich Elementary. You have to give kudos to the creative minds who built their creepy little castle on those cornerstones. The fact that they used the same terrain for the sequel doesn't really diminish the second story, but it forces the game to stand more solidly on its own two legs, which I feel it does. Admirably, in point of fact.

The real divide between Silent Hill and Silent Hill 2 is that of man vs. nature and man vs. self. In Silent Hill your protagonist is pretty much removed from the events of the story. He's an outside observer who just wants to get his daughter back. James, in contrast, is only ever really confronting himself. He is clearly beset on all sides by monsters, but the dark world of Silent Hill is truly one that has been tailor-made to his own very special kind of penance. He has brought this on himself. His story is one of self-revelation as he comes to terms with his past and gains clarity into what has happened and when. His perspective on seemingly incontrovertible facts changes as he puts the pieces together and realizes that maybe, just maybe, things didn't happen quite how he thought they did.

Is it a better story than the original? It depends on your opinion: is man truly the greatest possible evil, or do lost gods really lurk in sleepy resort towns waiting to be reborn into a world that has forgotten them? I like the work of H. P. Lovecraft, so it's obvious that I dig the kind of story that entertains the possibility of creepy crawlies and something big and unrepentantly evil waiting to come bursting through the door and devour your soul. Sure enough, both games offer monsters and dank, terrifying ambiance. As James puts together the pieces, the symbolism of his torment becomes much clearer. It becomes rather obvious to you, the player, why all the bad guys in Silent Hill 2 look the way they do. It's more of a stretch to put together why the monsters in Silent Hill are doctors and nurses, dogs, beetles, dinosaurs, a lizard, a caterpillar, and a big moth. Once you get it, though, it locks in and you have a real "oh my God" sort of epiphany, the kind that James never really has for himself.

In fact, in at least one of the endings, you are left to wonder if James has really learned anything about his experience. Maybe you could wonder such a thing after any of the endings. Like I said before, he's a dolt and a douchebag. It's up to you to keep him alive long enough to find out why you should hate him so much.

Personally, I don't have that kind of patience. I just skipped to the good parts and saved myself the agony of listening to radio static for twelve hours.