Silent Hill Redefined Gaming: It Hasn't Been the Same Since

Every year there are many video games that come to the market, but none of them will ever grab my brain like Silent Hill. Not any of the sequels but the original Silent Hill on the Playstation. Since that game hit the shelves and my Playstation there has not been one game that grabs my brain, and freezes it in terror, like Silent Hill did.

For a video game to bring you so far into its story that your hate rate changes and you really taste fear. Silent Hill did all this without having splitting edge graphics, or movie like qualities. Between the game styling and the over all story, no other game has hit the market like Silent Hill.

Resident Evil started the horror game trend but Silent Hill revolutionized it by putting a plain Joe into the shoes of its main character. Never before did I have the experience of wading into the unknown with only a pipe, radio, and a possible handful of bullets for a gun, which I never wanted to use. In Silent Hill the sounds around you were the biggest clue to your environment. Those sounds that were the clues were the same sounds that are in everyday life, and that is what made Silent Hill such an event to play.

On the newer more powerful console gaming systems I feel that the games are starting to repeat. The stories, ideas, and types are all just being upgraded with visuals, tuned down for casual gamers and pushed out into the market for the market share. During the Playstation era of gaming video gamers were cheaper, story lines were original, and the idea of a casual gamer did not exist.

I remember very well starting a game only to have to restart within minutes of starting because of a character death or getting stuck. Now with casual gamers having a larger percentage of the market, but not spending as much as regular gamers, the games have gone soft and character deaths are now hard to find. No more the days of single death game overs.

Casual gaming has loosened the tight restrictions that use to complicate game progress, pushing players to steady their hand sharpen their minds and be a step ahead of the enemies. In some of the most popular games the idea of health has even been replaced with a "force field" type system where just sitting aside after a close call will rejuvenate your health to full. Personally I boycott those games until I can get the for under 5 dollars, thereby making sure that game developers get the least for their work.

In the current gaming industry game developers need to get their head out of their posteriors and bring creativity and originality back into the system. Instead of focusing on cutting edge technology and graphics for a 10 hour game, bring back the games that could take hours upon hours to beat and the gritty knife edge quality that the stories, characters, and style brought to the market. Possibly then I will consider paying up for a console newer than 5 years.