Two Decades Later, Silent Hill 2 Is Still The Scariest Game Of All Time

gameinformer.com:

James Sunderland is not going to survive this.

By the end of his journey through Silent Hill, everything will be chaos – his mind and even the world around him, a violent cacophony of anguish.

But in the beginning, it’s silent. The kind of quiet that’s deafening, where you hear your pulse in your ears, and every tiny sound becomes the worst thing you can imagine.

Includes spoilers for Silent Hill 2

The opening hour of Silent Hill 2 is – without question – the scariest thing I have ever played. Which, taken at face value, might seem a bit ridiculous. Your goal is simply to navigate James through a dilapidated apartment building. At most, you’ll face 10 enemies throughout the building’s three floors, but they hardly pose a threat; they’re easily avoided or killed. Gameplay primarily consists of walking up to each door in the building and trying to enter; more often than not, they’re locked. There’s a boss battle at the end, but it’s on a timer; you can just run around until it ends. It’s tedious by design.

And yet, it’s that damn silence that wears on you as a player. The vacuum of sound leaves enough room that you start to imagine hearing things – or worse, the game has random sound effects that mess with you, such as whispers in rooms that may or may not play, depending on your playthrough.

Within this silence, I started to become my worst enemy. James’ footsteps sounded like anvils falling on the wooden floor. I imagined he was walking too loudly. That someone would hear him and come after us – a mechanic that does not actually exist in the game. In the moments Silent Hill 2 decides to break the silence – whether via the game’s score or, heaven forbid, a monster’s footsteps or cry- I was so on edge that I would often