Silent Hill HD Collection

Published by : Konami
Release date : 30 March 2012

Rightio folks, you’ll be used to me churning out some WP7 reviews, but here is my first retail review! So relax, sit back but remember to fasten your seat belt! To start with lets explain the “collection” tag in this release, you get Silent Hill 2 & 3 all in glorious HD with the bonus that SH2 has a choice to have “new voices” and “original voices”

Before moving onto the reviews it’s worth mentioning that this release coincides with the newest title in the series Silent Hill : Downpour excellently reviewed by our own Colne Crusader. This is also the 3rd set of titles re-released in HD, obviously the first being HALO :CEA, whereas HALO : CEA had a complete overhaul, SH HD collection has just been HD’d which means it’s still 10 and a half year old graphics, just in HD. The other being Resi Evil 4, between SH and the RE series Konami and CAPCOM cornered the market in survival horrors in the early years of console gaming. Lets see what Konami had on the table 10 years ago!

****SPOILER ALERT, SPOILER ALERT****due to the age of the games (10+ years old) there are spoilers mentioned in this review, as most of us will have either played the game, heard/read about it by now. If you haven't and don't wish to read any spoilers, below the last picture of a UFO (dont worry not an actual game picture!) is safe to read.

Silent Hill 2

Set in the mythical (or is it?) American town of Silent Hill, however SH 2 has you exploring a different part of town from the original and also changes the main character, SH2 has you playing as James Sunderland.



Now I’m not going to go into too much depth and detail about the storyline and plot, I’m assuming most of you are aware but for those of you who aren’t here goes. James is in SH due to a letter from his dead wife Mary, now learning this I felt somewhat perturbed, I mean if I received a letter from my dead wife I’d run a bloody back to back marathon in the opposite direction! Besides the fact I wouldn’t want to meet a zombified version of my wife, I’m dead against necrophilia!

Shortly after arriving you encounter Maria who looks like your dead ex wife, and who must be the most unfortunate character during the game she gets killed and resurrected more times than a voodoo witch doctors wife. Those of you who are new to the SH world will be confused, well I’ll let you into a little secret SH doesn’t abide by the normal rules of the universe, in fact it disobeys them like a petulant 2 year old girl. In fact it flaunts the space time continuum so much it would have Sheldon from the big bang theory in meltdown



Basically as you progress you realise that SH the town actually takes the form of your own psyche, and James is punishing himself for his wife’s death, which leads us nicely onto one of gaming’s most recognisable monsters.....pyramid head



Pyramid head makes a couple of appearances throughout the game, and in fact 2 of them appear at the end when James realises what’s actually going on within his own head. However depending on what items you pick up, manipulate, how much health you lose and heal will dictate which ending you will see, 2 are only available after finishing the game once....meeting Mary as Mary, meeting Mary but it’s Maria, meeting Maria pretending to be Mary, pretending to be Maria, meeting a politician that’s honest....oh ok even the SH universe isn’t that messed up! Onto SH3

Silent Hill 3

Ok so rather than SH2 being a direct sequel to the original, we find SH 3 is actually the sequel....Now for those peeps that don’t know the original SH had Harry Mason arriving in SH to find his missing adopted daughter. Lo and behold! Yep the astute of you will have realised that SH 3 has Heather (Harry Mason’s adopted daughter) returning to SH 17 years later. WHY??? WHY WOULD YOU? Seriously why would you go back to a place that you were not only kidnapped and held in but has different planes of existence? No, any normal person would never ever go near it again, Heathers the equivalent of the girl who has sex in a horror film, or the veteran cop who has 1 day left on the force but has to train a rookie up that day.



Sadly however were not going to see Heathers stupidity teach her a fatal lesson as you control her throughout the game, which starts in a rather warped scene that looks like the Duracell bunny was doing a spot of crystal meth and playing with knives and his bunny mates all called his mum a fat cow. After dipping in and out of a different plane of existence inside a shopping centre, you return home to find your father killed by monsters from SH. Ok OK OK so there’s a fair reason for you heading to SH to seek revenge on the person who ordered your father to be killed. Sounds like a good way to create Emo’s doesn’t it?



If you thought things were strange before, once Heather arrives in SH is when things really take a hippy acid trip, and I really....really can’t describe exactly what’s going on. It’s actually given me a headache trying to write about it, and it gave me 3 migraines trying to play the game and write down what was happening. Basically the bad guy at the start (Douglas) is actually a good guy, the guy you think is a huge enemy is actually Claudia’s dad who Claudia kills, I’ve made it sound simple but believe me it’s not there’s a couple of twists and turns in there for good measure!

Now the end scenes are one of the most phucked up ends/boss fights I’ve seen, you actually vomit out a baby which is then eaten by Claudia, who then dies giving birth to the baby shes just eaten, which then morphs into a god who you fight. SERIOUSLY?????? Whatever drugs the developers were on when they wrote this is some serious grade A heavy duty military shit that I wouldn’t touch in full NBC gear.

There’s actually only 3 endings this time only one of which is available on the first play through, I didn’t see the other endings but allegedly there’s one in which you have to kill Douglas, and a UFO ending!!!



Anyway what did I think? Having never played any of the Silent Hill titles I didn’t have any preconceived ideas, unfortunately I was playing a game that’s 10 and a half years old, with 10 and a half year old graphics (made shiny by HD though!). The massively psychological horror/thriller this had been labelled as fell somewhat short of scaring me, mainly because both games have the same control method which I found to be very dated, which is a nice way of me saying it sucked! So rather than being scared I found myself being frustrated with my avatar not going where I was telling him/her to.

It’s also due to these early releases paving the way and innovating the survival horror genre. I mean would we have great titles such as dead space if Konami hadn’t released upon this earth Silent Hill? Would films like SAW and all its 73 sequels have popped up? Who knows but for it’s time it was like Chris Columbus exploring the new world. Fans of the series and indeed those that played the originals, will love seeing these games resurrected and given a new lease of life and being able to get 1000GS along the way.

In all honesty if you haven’t played the silent hill series I’d advise to play the more recent releases like Downpour, and if you like them then pick this up for a couple of nights retro gaming. For those that played and loved the originals this could be a guilty pleasure.
So what did I score it? Hmmm well several factors come into play here.....
But overall I’ll give it a 6/10 folks

This being my first full retail review, constructive criticism will be most welcome....Donations will be more than welcome 

Nice review mate, shame the game isn't up to scratch they could have done a great job with these classics on the new hardware

Good work Evil! Entertaining as ever mate, but I think you need to put a spoiler alert at the start. There's a few plot twists in there buddy.

Thanks for the plug too!!

Well done mate.

Sorry didn't notice the spoilers, you might wanna pull them out buddy as it will ruin it for some people

I'll put a spoiler alert at the beginning of the review, this game is sooooo old that most people will have played it or heard about it/be aware....thought i did say that at the start..guess i must have taken it out!

Nice one mate!

I know the games are old, but I think there will be a new audience on 360 for these games, who didn't play them originally.

Fair point! Thanks for the feedback

You're a gent!!

Like the UFO btw!! Where did you find that?

Tiny Pic, I use it to store all the game pics I use as it has a link that gives you the already done

Nice review fella I would be interested in the breakdown for your scoring.

Ummm There's a reason I did a quick 6/10 rating, I did actually start to do a breakdown but then changed my mind (I'll PM you the reason)

great review there mate i'm currently on my second playthrough of SH2 did you have any freezing problems when achievements pop ? i'm having really bad problems with it i have to wait about 2-3 mins every time one pops and when i completed it first time it was a full 20 mins before i got the results screen up.