Silent Hill 1 > Silent Hill 2

2 is better than 1.

The cultist super natural stuff, especially the ending in SH1 is so anime level nonsense (Actually if you like that cultist setting, Silent Hill Origin had a better story than SH1, its so underrated because of its release window)

2 is a grounded, psychological masterpiece

This has nothing to do with graphic, or else 3 would be better than 2, but it isn't. SH2 is great not only in a horror game standard, but a great art
 
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2 is better than 1.

The cultist super natural stuff, especially the ending in SH1 is so anime level nonsense (Actually if you like that cultist setting, Silent Hill Origin had a better story than SH1, its so underrated because of its release window)

2 is a grounded, psychological masterpiece

This has nothing to do with graphic, or else 3 would be better than 2, but it isn't. SH2 is great not only in a horror game standard, but a great art
Basicly this.
 
2 is better than 1.

The cultist super natural stuff, especially the ending in SH1 is so anime level nonsense (Actually if you like that cultist setting, Silent Hill Origin had a better story than SH1, its so underrated because of its release window)

2 is a grounded, psychological masterpiece

This has nothing to do with graphic, or else 3 would be better than 2, but it isn't. SH2 is great not only in a horror game standard, but a great art
Grounded? Silent Hill grounded?
 
I'll take this one, thanks!

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😹😹😹

You're welcome. Great choice buddy !
Brendon Urie Ok GIF by Panic! At The Disco
 
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2 is a grounded, psychological masterpiece
SH2 is what a high-school nerd that loved Silent Hill 1 would write after skimming through a bad summary of Freud's psychoanalysis and a moderate diet of horror anime.
Its "psychological" "subtext" is as subtle as a sledgehammer. What James will find out about himself, anyone but he can see quite a while before it is "revealed" in the game. And none of the NPCs is as mysterious or interesting as those in SH1.

Anime or not, SH1 is the better horror story, the scarier adventure, and the better game.
 
I mean, I love both and can't put one over the other. One is really scary, the other is really relatable. Maybe that's why I loved Shattered Memories also.
 
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SH2 gave us Pyramid Head and monster fucking. SH gave us burnt babies. It's a close call but I'm gonna have to go with SH2.
 
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All of the original four Silent Hill games have a special place in my heart. I don't want to dismiss any of them as worse then the others. Sure, 4 especially has it's flaws, but other then that, all are masterpieces of psychological survival horror.
I love Silent Hill 1 and 2 and I replay them from time to time. I really cannot decide which I like more because both are exceptional games in my opinion. For different reasons, but still exceptional.
 
Haven't played SH1 but might give it a go, but I really wasn't impressed by SH2, which I played a few months ago for the first time.

Boring gameplay, too easy puzzles even on hard difficulty, non-threatining combat because it's too easy to run past enemies. It just hurts the atmosphere; e.g. when some monsters running on a ceiling underneath you and you realise they never come up and just make noise. Ridiculous acting with awkward pauses and sentence and word stress, some real bad dialogue. The only good performance I've heard was the letter at the very end. Story was okay but the ending and what's going on here could be seen from miles again.

Visuals, still to this day, are brilliant and the atmosphere is very dense. Too bad it's not really utilised.
 
Well as a parent i can relate more to the horror of losing your daughter in a town full of monsters than to the storyof SH2.
I think objectively 2 is the better game, but we wouldn't have 2 without the success of 1.
That said i'm more concerned people forget 3 exists. The best of the trilogy.
denzel washington GIF
 
I disagree but 1 is still my second favourite. It has a completely different vibe to the subsequent games and I find it more threatening. Obviously the enemies themselves are more violent and that's complemented well by the aggressive industrial soundtrack.

The PS1-era graphics lend it a certain kind of bleakness, it's easily one of the best-looking games of its time but still has a surreal emptiness about it reminiscent of a dream where you haven't captured the details of the scene but just the overall image... And the game itself works off this (deliberately or otherwise) in a way that feels very unsettling to me.
 
SSS Tier = (for me it's 2)
S Tier = 1, 2
A Tier = 4
B Tier = 3, SM
C Tier =
D Tier = Origins
E Tier =
Shit Tier = All other games
 
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SSS Tier = (for me it's 2)
S Tier = 1, 2
A Tier = 4
B Tier = 3, SM
C Tier =
D Tier = Origins
E Tier =
Shit Tier = All other games
Lol I mean I have a lot of complaints about 3 but come on man. And 4 IMO is barely better than the outsourced games but that's just because it at least had some interesting ideas, the rest of the game is straight trash

The real question is which is worst, Downpour or Homecoming. For my money Downpour is... they had actual ideas for the game rather than being completely derivative like Homecoming, but most of them were bad ideas and everything was executed about as poorly as it possibly could have been anyway. Those monster designs, lol. And the ghost police car that summons monsters if it gets close to you. How da fug does that get past the idea stage
 
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100% agreed OP. SH2 has great story & atmosphere but I found it waaay less compelling to actually play. The gameplay peaks early with the aprtments, and never recovers from being a bunch of jogging. I felt in SH there was more room-by-room tension.
 
I think Silent Hill 2 has a terrible middle section with the underground Civil War prison and labyrinth whereas the original Silent Hill keeps upping the stakes and stays strong even during its sewer section. The trees, fog, and puzzles are better in 1 but the animations are better in 2. The soundtrack of 1 is much stronger and in contrast to 2 it intimidates without relying on jump scares. The one nurse in 1 is better than all the nightmare fuel sexy nurses in 2 combined. I genuinely dislike Eddy and Laura in 2's cast whereas I have a high opinion of everyone in 1. The dialogue in 1 inspires uneasiness whereas the dialogue in 2 makes me want to ask:
s-l300.jpg

This dialogue from 2 never fails to make me laugh:


P.S. Silent Hill 3 to me is unpleasant. I hate the sewer segment and monster designs. I dislike the repeating one shoe walking sounds but the soundtrack is great. I do not even like the NPCs with the exception of the detective. I really like everything about Silent Hill 4 on the other hand outside of the limited inventory system and water prison puzzle.
 
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SH2 is what a high-school nerd that loved Silent Hill 1 would write after skimming through a bad summary of Freud's psychoanalysis and a moderate diet of horror anime.
Its "psychological" "subtext" is as subtle as a sledgehammer. What James will find out about himself, anyone but he can see quite a while before it is "revealed" in the game. And none of the NPCs is as mysterious or interesting as those in SH1.

Anime or not, SH1 is the better horror story, the scarier adventure, and the better game.
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I always preferred the story and atmosphere from the original, but the characters and scenario from part 2. I love both equally to be honest though. Both are amazing, scary, tense games.
 
I think Silent Hill 2 has a terrible middle section with the underground Civil War prison and labyrinth whereas the original Silent Hill keeps upping the stakes and stays strong even during its sewer section.

WRONG WRONG WRONG

The sewer section in SH1 was a complete non-sequitor, a level that is completely unrelatable to the plot or the themes or indeed to the player, who has only ever experienced sewers inside of bad videogames.

The prison in SH2 existed first of all as a reference to another kind of living space (after the apartments and the hospital) that would be very close to James's mind— somewhere where murderers would be locked up. It's also a place that we know cannot exist, it's separate from the real world whereas previous levels were morphed & distorted versions of real world locations. It vaguely resembles what could be a real place, but it isn't quite right.

Then the labyrinth is a series of abstract spaces that resemble the apartments, but are clearly nowhere near reality. It's the fusion of the mundanity of the apartments (and by extension, everyday life) and the turmoil in James's (and in one room, Angela's) minds that juxtapose in this place. e: the mundane btw is a major part of the game and its psychological horror. It's the whole reason Maria exists. She represents an aspect of James, he has conflicting emotions about the mundanity of life with Mary and that perhaps factored into what he did... imo it's why the apartment is a level in the game and why they use the appearance of it for the labyrinth
 
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The prison existed first of all as a reference to another kind of living space (after the apartments and the hospital) that would be very close to James's mind— somewhere where murderers would be locked up. It's also a place that we know cannot exist, it's separate from the real world whereas previous levels were morphed & distorted versions of real world locations. It vaguely resembles what could be a real place, but it isn't quite right.

Then the labyrinth is a series of abstract spaces that resemble the apartments, but are clearly nowhere near reality. It's the fusion of the mundanity of the apartments and the turmoil in James's (and in one room, Angela's) minds that juxtapose in this place.

When James first descends into the Historical Society, the direction he's walking would actually mean he's basically walking underneath the lake. Listen to the sound as you're descending...sounds like a boat horn, right? And remember that article that talks about the boat tragedy decades ago on this very lake…
 
When James first descends into the Historical Society, the direction he's walking would actually mean he's basically walking underneath the lake. Listen to the sound as you're descending...sounds like a boat horn, right? And remember that article that talks about the boat tragedy decades ago on this very lake…
Yeah, there's stuff like this too, but I find it less interesting than the psychological aspect. The place that James is descending to is personal to him.

It's been a while though so I'm curious, what relation does the boat have to anything?
 
Yeah, there's stuff like this too, but I find it less interesting than the psychological aspect. The place that James is descending to is personal to him.

It's been a while though so I'm curious, what relation does the boat have to anything?

A boat sunk in that lake in the 1910's (IIRC), killed over a dozen people. The Silent Hill Arcade game actually focuses on said boat.
 
A boat sunk in that lake in the 1910's (IIRC), killed over a dozen people. The Silent Hill Arcade game actually focuses on said boat.
I PLAYED THE SILENT HILL ARCADE GAME. Very briefly. Once. Many years ago at an arcade here on the north-west English coast. I was shocked to see it because I'd previously assumed that it was exclusive to Japan.

I think the sinking of a boat there is a small detail though. It's something they wrote in to add to the mystique, but it's not a critical point. I don't think the prison and the labyrinth have anything to do with it.

That said... I need to replay SH2 some time. It's been a couple years at least.
 
Yup. Played both kinda recently and the first was even better than I remembered, while 2 was quite a bit worse,...still okay, but honestly it dropped quite significantly for me and it feels more like SH for normies tbh. (which makes sense given it's popularity over 1)

Less frightening atmosphere, less oppressive music, more focus on STORY, even more linear.... and worse combat too.
 
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WRONG WRONG WRONG

The sewer section in SH1 was a complete non-sequitor, a level that is completely unrelatable to the plot or the themes or indeed to the player, who has only ever experienced sewers inside of bad videogames.

The prison in SH2 existed first of all as a reference to another kind of living space (after the apartments and the hospital) that would be very close to James's mind— somewhere where murderers would be locked up. It's also a place that we know cannot exist, it's separate from the real world whereas previous levels were morphed & distorted versions of real world locations. It vaguely resembles what could be a real place, but it isn't quite right.

Then the labyrinth is a series of abstract spaces that resemble the apartments, but are clearly nowhere near reality. It's the fusion of the mundanity of the apartments (and by extension, everyday life) and the turmoil in James's (and in one room, Angela's) minds that juxtapose in this place. e: the mundane btw is a major part of the game and its psychological horror. It's the whole reason Maria exists. She represents an aspect of James, he has conflicting emotions about the mundanity of life with Mary and that perhaps factored into what he did... imo it's why the apartment is a level in the game and why they use the appearance of it for the labyrinth
Ok Carl Jung, how am I wrong that the level design is poor and the pace slows to a crawl in that awful segment of Silent Hill 2? In case you forgot, this is still a videogame. Themes and tangeants are not enough to inspire most individuals to reexperience this piece in full.
 
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