Just Started: Silent Hill

So I played up until the first save point a couple nights ago, which is only like 15-20 minutes into the game. But I was quite upset to find that the SD graphics from PS1 look ATROCIOUS on an HDTV. Now I'm not trying to be all elitist rich guy complaining about having an HDTV - believe me, I am extremely grateful for everything I have in my life, but the way the image stretches out, the pixels are all over the place, its hard to make out what is what, and to add a layer of difficulty, there are no 3D controls. Meaning no matter which way the camera is facing, Up is always "walk forward." Even if your character is walking towards the camera, you still press up to walk forward. It's really confusing and frustrating until you get used to it.

Also, I don't remember the voice acting being as bad as it is. One of the first scenes is your character talking to a policewoman about your missing daughter. Now, let's remember exactly what's happened. You were in a car crash, your young daughter is missing in an abandoned town where you're pretty sure you just saw a few demons from hell walking around stabbing you with knives. Do you think you could work up a little more excitement than:

"Hello. Have you seen my daughter?"











"Haven't seen her."

That massive blank space in there represents the uncomfortable, unnatural pauses in conversations in this game. I'm still convinced that I will allow the game to scare me, and in a way, the unnatural voice acting adds a certain layer of creepiness to the whole affair, intentional or not.

I was talking to a friend about this game and we got on the topic of the fog. If you've ever played a Silent Hill game you know that when you're outside, there is the ever present entity of a heavy fog that hangs over the town. Now, this is obviously a deliberate design choice, but it's also a very clever coverup for straggling technology. In the days of PS1 there was something called "pop in" - this is when objects in the distance would appear or "pop in" to the scene unnaturally. This happened because the system couldn't render the objects until they were a certain size. So if you throw a thick blanket of fog over the entire outside world, with a visibility of only 4 or 5 feet in front of you, the problem is eliminated, or at least unnoticeable. Very clever, Konami-san. Very clever.