Silent Hill 2: Restless Dreams

The Good
it freaked me out. I thought it was scary. Not in the way so much as something jumping out and going "Boo!" kind of scary but just the overall atmosphere of the game I found especially creepy. I don't scare easy, I found movies like The Exorcist hilarious but this game was scary.

I also thought the graphics were pretty good. The fog gets irritating but I thought the shadows cast by the flashlight were very realistic, reminded me of the quality of shadows on Doom 3.

Sound = excellent. Attributes to probably 70% of SH2's creepiness.

The Bad
Will the Silent Hill series ever understand that the movement and camera angles are completely inadequate?? There is nothing more frustrating than walking in to a room, hearing a monster in there but the camera is facing your characters face and you can't move the camera around to see whats in the room. Unfortunately, this happens almost every time you walk in a small room (i.e. especially the beginning apartments you explore).

I wouldn't say it's enough to ruin the whole game but it's definitely annoying. The fighting is pretty bad too. The response time is unrealistic. The guy, for some reason, has a hard time using a wooden plank as a weapon. Just swing it for gods sake. Nope. He has to stop ALL movement, then get in to a swinging position and then it takes about two seconds for the signal to go from his brain to his arms to make him swing. It's just very bad programming in my opinion and lazy quality control guys down at Konami who don't want to go back in and make it more enjoyable for us.

The Bottom Line
Lets face it, even if you're a dedicated fan of the SH series, you can't deny the camera angles, movement and fighting controls just plain suck. But I still don't think it was enough to ruin the game. I would recommend this game to anyone who likes these style of games. It's definitely better than Silent Hill 1.

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
Almost everything. Graphs are nice, specially on cutscenes (which are almost same as graphics in game).

Game`s plot is very good and there are many sad scenes which can even make you cry. It´s also very long, but it isn´t that it would be too hard, it just rocks. Monsters are very scary, they (still) looks like cool, specially bosses, like pyramid heads.

There are separate levels: action and riddle level, so if you like e.g get more challenge to shoot monsters, but don´t want to solve stupid puzzles so much, you can set action level to hard and riddle level to easy.

5 endings are really cool, my favorite is Rebirth. You can get that ending only on replay game. In PC version, Directors Cut, you have sixth ending, called UFO, it also rocks very much.<br><br>**The Bad**<br>Sometimes, you can get stuck pretty badly, but usually you can find answer with Google. Also, some graphs has problems, even if theyre cool, you can see some cracks on textures.

The Bottom Line
Horror game from top