Silent Hill 2: Restless Dreams

The Good
-The atmosphere is unbearably good. Never before have i been so frightened in a videogame. The ridiculously thick fog in Silent Hill makes everything so scary.

-The sound is amazing. The sound effects of the monsters are so scary. This game also uses background noises for the monsters. For instance; you are walking through a forest, you hear your own footsteps but you also hear footsteps that are not synchronous to yours which means that someone could be behind you. You turn around to find out there is nothing there. This happens in a lot of places in Silent Hill 2. The music is also great. In many places throughout the game you will hear mucho scary ambient music & sound effects that also add up to the atmosphere of this game. The idea of a broken radio used as a monster detector is also cleverly thought of.

• The graphics are simply amazing. No pre-drawn environments like in the Resident Evil games, but rendered three dimensional backgrounds. The grain effect is probably the best thought of feature of this game. The grain effect really comes to life when you are in the apartment building. The shades of dark colors are also nicely done.

• The monsters are probably even better. I've never seen such craftsmanship when it comes to enemie's. Not your standard "Thriller video clip" type zombies, but four legged what-ever-you'd-like-to-call-it enemies. A survival horror game is even scarier when you expect and find the unexpected. I also loved the sound effects from these monsters. The monsters are also pretty smart. They'll back each other up in combat, they respond to footsteps and your flashlight, and some of them even use other forms of attacking (the sprayers can/will lay themselves down on the ground and start crawling around at immense speeds and they can collide with you to cause extra damage).

-Some of the scripted events are also nicely done. Distant screams, monsters that avoid being detected by your radio by staying still etc.

-The idea that you received a letter from your deceased spouse alone is scarier than the entire Resident Evil series.

The Bad
-Well, some of the puzzles are to straightforward and perhaps a little too easy. -Oh, and another thing. Don't play this game on your own at night before you go to bed. Believe me. It was pretty hard for me to sleep that night (i've even had a nightmare about this game :-).

The Bottom Line
Resident Evil, move over! This game is TRUE horror. Never before has a game been released with so much suspense and horror. This game is not gory, but it will frighten your pants off.

The Good
May be it is a great adventure. May be it is scary. May be it has atmosphere. May be it has a good story. I don't know about that, because I was too frustrated with the game to notice all this.

The Bad
Controls are terrible. I don't care that it was ported from game consoles. In 2002 developers no longer have an excuse not to make decent controls for the game. You press the attack key, but nothing happens because the game didn't finish the character animation yet. The fighting system in general is crap. Every 5-20 seconds game pauses for a fraction of a second without apparent reason (no disk activity, no transition to another scene and my 3D hardware is more than adequate). The sounds are supposed to be scary, but they are annoying an low quality. The graphics look pathetic. The noise feature is probably intended to make the image similar to the crappy picture that console users had on TV and it succeeds briliantly. It does look crappy. And you are not going to see farther than 5 meters from your nose. Yeah, it's a fog, I know, but it doesn't make the game look better.

The story might be great, but things like broken lip sync for cut scenes spoil it. Having to spend some considerable time in the beginning in the fog fighting some generic annoying zombies (same model, 30 identical copies running around) doesn't improve the first impression.

The Bottom Line
If you like adventures and are not afraid of disappointment, you might give it a try. Who knows, may be you will like this game better than I did.

The Good
everything in this game was great :) when i first played it i was sitting in front of the tv waiting on the FMV sequence finishing at the begining where he was standing in the road side toilet cubicle. and i waited for about a minute thinking when is this going to give me control of the character cos i just saw him standing there so i tried to move him and he started to move and i thought to myself i`ve been standing here like a fool and i could have moved all along that was how god the FMV sequences were just like the graphics i couldn`t really tell the difference i had never seen anything like that before.

the story line is the best one in any game so far it touches your emotionaly at times or tries to while still keeping its horror feel to it which was really good i thought. atmosphere was and is second to none ill wait till res evil comes out on the cube to see if it can match SH2 for atmosphere .

great game far superior to the original in every way the start of the game was well done you started at least a couple of miles away from the town and had to run all the way there when you left the road side toilet and ran down the stairs into the forrest and down the path you heard a loud noise as if something was coming through the trees at you but nothing happened its things like that that i love about the game pure genius so it is they have to be to think of games like Silent Hill 2.

roll on Silent Hill 3 cant wait to see how #3 turns out.

The Bad
there is nothing to hate about this game if you like survival horror games<br><br>**The Bottom Line**<br>if you like survival horror games then you have to play this even if you did not like the original you will like this because it`s far far superior.