Gamertell

**Fair Warning: This will be VERY SPOILER HEAVY. Read of your volition!!!**

The Human mind is very interesting piece of biological equipment. The way we think, interpret, and create. How our brains use electrical impulses to make it all happen. And yet, the Human mind is also one of the most terrifying things in existence. The way our mental psyche can succumb to an emotion, creating fantastic and frightening events, manipulated by memories and nightmares, an inescapable fear.

Silent Hill 2 isn’t a horror game in the classic sense of the genre; sure it has demons and plays our fears of the dark, but it goes beyond that by becoming truly scary through its playing with the mind. It’s a haunting video game twist on the plot device used in many works such as the short story, An Occurrence at Owl Bridge Creek , and the Adrian Lyne film, Jacob’s Ladder.

The inescapable fear described in the beginning paragraph has pulled in a widower named James Sunderland (who looks an awful lot like Keifer Sutherland’s character from the movie, The Vanishing, which I might is also about a man relentlessly looking for his wife). His wife, Mary, succumbed to unknown disease or so he thought. He received a letter from her telling him to meet her in their “special place”.

Silent Hill.

It was there that the two shared the last special moments together before Mary became hospitalized and pass on. It now is the place where James will confront Mary… and himself.

Silent Hill 2 isn’t a particularly good “game”, it instead is carried fully by its story, one that, to myself, remains good enough to go back through over and over again despite the horrible design choices the game’s designers made. Having to open the menu whenever you wanted to use items or view the map and notes was the most notable pain, though if you imagine Resident Evil controls plastered on a PlayStation 2 game that gives you a better idea of what your dealing with. The graphics weren’t anything spectacular either, even though the rough, grey and grainy visuals helped with the game’s atmosphere. Still, I love every bit of it. If Team Silent would ever get off their behinds to remake this game, I would only demand better sound quality.

Akria Yamaoka was at the top of his game when creating the Silent Hill 2 soundtrack. It’s something that any lover of video game music needs to experience. Promise’s guitar work is haunting and the piano work on it’s reprise is equally matching. Laura’s Theme is the standout track with its heavy rhythmical use of electric guitar.  Even its reprise does a fantastic job with a fusion of a piano and violin dancing a duet. Laura’s Theme is the track that just sucks you into the entire story. Too bad the original version never got released. For our protagonist James however, too bad a lot of things never got released.

After washing his face in a public bathroom that confirms why I’ll never use one, James sets off down a long pathway into a fog-covered, seemingly deserted Silent Hill. He meets his first encounter, Angela, in the graveyard just before the entrance to town.

Angela is mentally ill and is searching for her mother. She was abused by her father and has a fear of men. Further along James finds Eddie, a obese man who also is mentally ill but only wants to have a friend. Eddie killed someone and is on the run from the law. There’s also the little girl Laura, who was in the same hospital as James’ wife Mary. Finally there’s Maria who looks exactly like Mary but doesn’t share the same attitude.

If you play the prelude story on the Silent Hill 2: Restless Dreams re-release, Born From a Wish, you find out that James is a “bad man”.

You see; James Sunderland did something terrible. His visit to Silent Hill isn’t to find his wife, but to confront what he has done. His journey through the town is merely a creation of his own guilt, the people he meets are figments of his own desires and misdeeds. His sins. The monsters are his aggressions and his own fear fighting back, trying to keep him from realizing what he did. The legendary Pyramid Head, James’ personal punisher.

As James puts the pieces together the town and its inhabitants go mad, falling apart, crushed under the power of realization.

Angela representing the way James treated Mary, with disdain over her illness, walks up through a burning staircase after James comes to terms with his hatred of Mary for burdening his life. Eddie is killed by James in a shootout, confirming James to be a murderer and a glutton. In contrast, Laura is James’ remaining innocence. She has committed no sin and therefore isn’t haunted by the demons. She is the little girl that Mary asks James to adopt, his only unselfish link to Mary. Maria, much like Angela and Eddie, is a representation of everything James wanted from Mary. James wanted to be with another woman, someone more outgoing, sexual, and not burdened by an illness.

That’s why James Sunderland killed his wife. James killed Mary. His guilt blocked the horrific event from his mind for years. He smothered her with a hospital pillow to free himself from her burden.

How it all ends after the final realization is a mystery. Future Silent Hill games would only make reference to James going into town and disappearing, his fate unknown to the outside world. Did he kill himself by driving into Tuluca Lake? Did he come to terms with what he did only to repeat the cycle with his imaginary girlfriend Maria? Did he adopt Laura? Does he ever get Mary’s forgiveness? Was it a dog all along? Or did James get abducted by aliens like Henry Mason (the protagonist from the first Silent Hill) before him? We will never know for sure. But what we do know is that no matter the official outcome, Silent Hill 2 remains the best in the series and a game that should definitely be our your Halloween gaming list.

Purchase [Gamestop / Amazon]