| The
murky depths of winter always give room for sickening reflection
to ferment. So, what better way to cocoon myself further into
despair than to dig out my annual PS2 fave-rave Silent Hill 2?
It’s basically a remake of the PlayStation
original, with most of the characters and salient plot lines shifted
around a bit. Harry is now called James, and the wild goose chase
brought on by daughter Cheryl ("Laura") has been relegated
to the back burner (and when you do eventually meet her it's like
you've never seen her before). However, the thread of being on
a fruitless search to bring mirth to your fusty life is intact,
and essentially this is what stops the game becoming kindred to
Resident Evil, thank Cribbins.
”Hello? Anyone home? Mr.
Beelzebub? Never mind…”
It starts off with you getting a letter from
your dead wife, telling you to go to Silent Hill because she's
waiting there. Why bother, Jimbo? She was a jaded witch who wasted
three years of your life waiting for her to fade away while you
dutifully smiled and told her you loved her – when what
you really wanted to say was: "I look forward to lying in
bed listening to your breathing, hoping in these moments where
you go quiet you'll never start up again but you always do - yet
for a brief second I stop thinking about suicide. Furthermore,
your pants are a tomb." And now she's cloying from the grave,
attempting repentance – and you go back for more. You maudlin
fool.
It's not so soon in the game until you start
socialising though, meeting up with manic-depressive Angela, a
for-once non-ostentatious seventeen-year-old who seems to have
already cultivated her own personality and doesn't try subsidising
it by throwing Franglais into the melee like all the other Clueless
Silverstones. Then there’s portly Eddie, who's punishing
himself for shooting his neighbour’s dog. For God's sake,
Eddie, chins up (all three of them). No point scraping your heels
like the sound of rain on an unfinished roof. At least you don't
have a dead wife to look for.
“Just popping out for twenty B&H,
love. Do you want anything?”
”Could you rescue my soul from eternal torment? Oh, and
a Kit-Kat”.
There are literally about four monsters in this
game – the main one being a kind of straight-jacketed thing
stumbling around as if it's trying to smuggle half a pound of
pelican through customs. Oh, he looks so much like his father…
The mannequins with four legs hardly swan about with reedy grace
either. All the monsters have a lovely Francis Bacon (the drawing
version) brown smear about them, like they've tried snacking on
a tub of Marmite but ended up using it as make-up, instead. Still,
it's always nice to thwack them around the head with a plank of
wood. Punish the initiators - let's train them.
Who do I prefer then, Harry or Jim? Harry Carpenter
or Jim Rosenthal? I don't know, they're both sporty commentators.
I don’t know anything about that. But I know I'd prefer
football to my deflated personality of a wife – it's briefly
enjoyed and at least you don't hate it when it's gone. A football
that's half deflated is a bitch, though. You try and play with
it, but hate it even when you're trying to make the most of it.
”Don’t be scared,
mister. I’m just a frail urchin with sewn-up eyes…”
In the end it turns out that you did kill her,
anyway. Strange. I always thought James was a ladies’ man.
He probably is when he isn't murdering them.
So which one to go for? Both versions are very
special to me but I will let you wreck their testes for a tenner.
They're both nasty and brooding and draw you in fully, like some
act of bizarre slavery. I've played this through several times
and always almost weep tears when I finish it, but I always have
a laugh about it in the shower afterwards. Then I lie down with
a good book and piss myself to sleep.
That said, if they're going to do another remake,
let's hope it will be a little more inventive. And please don’t
get me started on third-attempt Silent Hill 3 – I was hoping
it was going to be a game about forcing Jimmy Hill into mute behaviour.
JUNOSIX, February
2004.
RODENT CASH RATING -
It’s out on Platinum – so £15, tops. It's worth
£33 though.
"Crivvens! Not the face!"
Comment
Here.
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Things to 'Make' and 'Do'.
A chucklesome
affair called Silent Hill Asylum.
John Cage plays
4’33” in some street.
A magnificent hill.
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