I'm not entirely sure how the conversation began, but somehow while hanging out with a friend of mine whose a massive survival-horror geek, I ended up getting forced to sit down and play Silent Hill 2...and wasn't allowed to leave until I'd beaten it.

(One sitting isn't completely accurate, I did break for coffee a little more than an hour in.)

I'll admit, I have a slight aversion to the survival horror genre. It's not that ammo is intentionally scarce, it's not even the fact that the protagonist always seems to move in slow motion when attacking with a melee weapon.

It's the massive hordes of endlessly spawning monsters whose main attack is usually grabbing you and squeezing you until either your health depletes or you manage to mash every damn button and controller to get free...at which point you're usually one hit away from dying anyway.

As I learned though, Silent Hill 2 doesn't suffer from these problems as badly as other genres.

Heck, ammo is pretty damn plentiful as long as you remember that there's no point in trying to shoot Pyramid Head...until the appropriate time of course.

Now issues aside, what does intrigue me about survival horror games is that many (not all of course) tend explore plots that I wouldn't imagine working in a video game setting...and somehow make it work.

Silent Hill 2's story line is far from unique in the world of literature and film, but for a video game it's rare to see something where the main character is working through the death of his wife without being on some violent quest for revenge.



And is it just my imagination, or does the Maria character in the game look strangely like Cameron Diaz in Vanilla Sky?

Overall, (to make this more a review than random musings) I've spent five hours of my life doing far stupider things, so I consider it to have been worthwhile.

Plus with multiple endings (possibly my favourite gameplay element ever!) odds are good I'll kill off another few hours on it. Which leaves me thinking I may need to reconsider my prejudice against the genre.