Why Silent Hill is Scarier Than Resident Evil

Konami's Silent Hill and Capcom's Resident Evil are the scariest videogames of all time. That is not an opinion. Clock Tower, Nightmare Creatures, Fatal Frame, and all the others can surely hold their own, but these peasants would and should make way for the kings.

I'm talking about the original Silent Hill and Resident Evil. Some sequels might've improved on the formula, but these games started it all. So you won't find me writing about how frightening that Loch Ness Monster-wannabe is or how phobia-inducing it can be to wake up locked inside your apartment.

So, why is Silent Hill scarier than Resident Evil?

(Spoiler Alert!)

Harry Mason (Regular Joe) VS Chris Redfield/Jill Valentine (STARS Members)

Harry, the protagonist of Silent Hill, is the kind of guy no male gamer ever dreams of being: a single dad with a dead wife and a little girl, not particularly good-looking, not particularly skilled, who runs as if he never participated in Track & Field. He is, however, surprisingly apt with a samurai sword and a chainsaw. Chris and Jill, the STARS (Special Tactics And Rescue Squad) members who are the selectable characters in the first Resident Evil, are your standard heroes, basically equipped to kick some ass (let's not talk about Chris being weaponless in the beginning except for the practically useless knife) and to save the day. Chris is a reputed marksman, and Jill is a total hottie (maybe not in the original but definitely in Director's Cut and Resident Evil 3), but gamers can't relate to them. I know it's disappointing, but most of us gamers will most likely end up being closer to Harry than to Chris or Jill. In other words, Harry seems real, and that's scary.

Misty Town VS Well-Lit Mansion

Yes, the mansion in Resident Evil is scary. All those rooms, corridors, closets, windows, stairs, and basements. But you've got light (most of the time). Sometimes, the camera angle even lets you see the entire room brightly lit with an electric lightbulb or a chandelier. Not the case in Silent Hill. Most of the time, you're running around the foggy town with a flashlight that lets you see only fifteen feet ahead. Morning and night. When you're not running around town, you're either at a school or a hospital or some place that's usually not too scary - when it's daytime and you're surrounded by people. In Harry's case, he's there alone under total darkness, armed with only a flashlight, a radio that spouts out white noise when monsters are nearby, and a pistol that he didn't even know how to use before he arrived in the town of Silent Hill.

This World VS That World

In Resident Evil, no matter how bad things get, you know someone's coming for you - in a good way (sometimes). Any veteran knows the protocol: You'd better get out before the whole place blows up. The point is, there is an escape. A visible escape. You see the sky at the end of the game, knowing full well there's a world outside of all this, the helicopter hovering above, ready to pick you up as soon as you blast apart that huge monster with the rocket launcher given you. But in Silent Hill, the town is it. You never see the sky (except in one very special ending on top of the lighthouse). You (by "you," I mean Harry) lose your grip on reality, and you wonder what's real and what's not. It's one thing to blast away at monsters, but it's quite another to blast away at monsters wondering whether or not you've already gone off the deep end.

Humans VS Monsters

Most of the monsters in Resident Evil were once human (the zombies, Tyrant, and that guy who eventually betrays you) while some are aberrations of natural science (hellhounds, killer plants, and so on), but the game never makes you think about the fact that you're unloading bullets into former fellow humans. Come on, the game created the genre called "survival horror." Survival of the fittest. No mercy. In Silent Hill, however, you're forced to watch people who were once your friends degenerate into monsters, and you either kill them or run. Such a shame. That nurse was cute too.

You VS The Monsters

The crown for most surprising moment in videogame history is typically awarded to the moment in Resident Evil when the hellhounds jump through the windows without warning and start chasing you down the corridor. I had prior warning from my cousin who had played the game before me, and I still launched out of my seat. Silent Hill has its fair share of shock moments like the phone suddenly ringing in the classroom with your daughter's voice on the other end (I think it is now an official cheat to use little kids for horror effect) and all those TVs popping on simultaneously in the department store with your daughter's face on every screen. But these aren't the true moments of horror in Silent Hill, for every moment is a true moment of horror. When you're playing Resident Evil, you're scared because of what might jump out at you. When you're playing Silent Hill, you're scared because you're playing Silent Hill. The entire design of the game wracks at you mentally, putting you constantly on edge. You scare yourself. The atmosphere gets to you after a while. I actually made my sister stay up with me while I played at night. I'm not ashamed to admit that. Silent Hill is one scary game. Neither before nor since have I ever needed someone to stay up with me while I played a game.

So...

Resident Evil may have kicked off the modern generation of videogame horror and is undoubtedly still a more popular franchise today, but Silent Hill is scarier than Resident Evil for the same reasons that Psycho, Halloween, and the new generation of horror films like Saw and Hostel are scarier than the teen flicks of the '90's like Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer.