SILENT HILL

I was introduced to the Silent Hill series in 2000 by playing the first part of the game on PS One in a computer club (yes, I remember that I promised to write about them - but this is such an amazing echo of the past that you need a separate mood for this).

You know, it's hard to explain today, but at the time, any game that was some endowed with a storyline, or characters, atmosphere, or just made you feel immersed and involved in what was happening on the screen, could already be considered a masterpiece.

Silent Hill wasn't some endowed with all that. Its was a whole fog of mystery and obsessively climbed into your head, not letting you leave it.

Each new installment after that has become an absolute phenomenon for the time it came out - they pushed the boundaries of immersion, each time becoming the most intriguing and unpredictable games of our time. While playing them, you never understood the whole picture of what was happening until the very end, when the developers revealed their cards - but even after that, as soon as you thought about what you saw, you began to torment yourself with missed details and think that everything could be not so easy. Just discovered just a few years ago about James' reflection in the mirror in the Silent Hill 2 opening cutscene. I won't spoil it, but those who played Silent Hill 2 might google it.

Even 19 years after the release of the game, there is still something in the game that can scare you.

These games were a phenomenon until Homecoming came out - this game was handed over to the development of an American team based in California, with the goal of Americanizing the series, making it marketable and popular in the American market, and adapting it to the modern needs of the developed market. The prerequisites for such a decision arose after the best game in the series - Silent Hill 2 (the most anticipated and invested in the development of the series the greatest contribution) - caused an incredible response, but subsequent parts (3 and 4) began to make players feel secondary. Apparently, based on this, konami decided that the series should be adapted to modern trends in the gaming industry.

The very concept of the game has changed - the camera has changed, the approach to plot formation has changed, copy-paste has begun to appear in the design - all this has led to the game simply becoming secondary, similar to other products on the market. The game became uninteresting. We played it, purely by inertia, on the mental image of those games that we played before. I remember even trying to defend Homecoming on the forums, trying to prove to myself and other people that the game is good.

Now I can say that I was wrong. I won't be able to remember a single impression of her now, and I won't be able to remember anything outstanding about her, at all - she was a dummy. Unfortunately, Downpour became the same empty shell, which finally killed the series, was absolutely helpless - playing it, the players realized that the series would never be the same as before.

I don't really like what the designers and writers of the Eastern countries do, but Silent Hill was exactly their game - their madness and visual delirium, the nightmare and horror of a madman. So concentrated that it plunged you into madness. It was Americanization that killed the series, I think. I may be wrong, but this is my opinion.

So - based on all this, from the fact that when changing the country of development and the spirit of development, the series turned in a completely wrong direction, I do not expect anything from new parts - it seems to me that in such cases it is very difficult, almost impossible to regain the lost reputation, make players believe in miracles again.

The upcoming remake of the old 2 part is amazing. Silent Hill 2 is the pinnacle of the entire series. Parts 3 and 4 pulled their roots to him, it was he who became a revolution in the genre (as was the first part, but it is, nevertheless, already too old to be modernized, it can only be restarted completely) - this is beautiful, frightening, mysterious and charming, the kind of story that will keep today's players in suspense until the end, and old farts like me will be given a return to that wonderful time when we were still young and it seemed that everything would only get better.

Silent Hill 2 Remake is great. This is very good that it will be remaked.

About new parts of the series - well, I hope they drew conclusions from 2012.