A meeting in a graveyard is confusing rather than horrific, and the final stretch of the journey is marked by the banality of chainlink fences and an industrial hinterland. Nothing terrible happens as James approaches the town. They don't pounce though and they don't make themselves known. The camera angles are indicative of eyes in the fog, things waiting and watching. At times it sounds as if James is being followed but nothing manifests and if you choose to stand still, as soon as the sound of your footsteps ceases, so does the sound of whatever might be lurking in the undergrowth. No monsters, no puzzles, just a linear path, a walk, a conference of whispers and footsteps. It's a distancing effect, marking the transition from one kind of reality to another, but it's also a clear denial of genre conventions.
James arrives at the town via a secluded walkway, a journey that lasts just a little too long for comfort. The sense of being at the border of reality, of scratching and bruising the liminal, is a vital element of the game's setting and mood. Water is an important motif in the game and when James eventually casts off onto the lake, which is a central element in his own story and the town's history, it has the qualities of a threshold.
Seemingly abandoned and fog-shrouded, it has the qualities of a Mary Celeste, and it would be no surprise to find a great body of water at its boundary, isolating it from the rest of the world. The letter brings him to Silent Hill, which is a ghost town in a literal and literary sense. James Sunderland receives a letter from his wife, three years after her death. Without spoilers, this is Silent Hill 2 and what it means to me. With that anniversary approaching and the announcement of Silent Hills for the Playstation 4, I decided to revisit the town in the company of the great pretender James Sunderland on a summer weekend, and found new things to love. As the thirteenth anniversary of its release approaches (on Wednesday), it is still the greatest horror game I've ever played. Silent Hill 2 has little in common with its predecessor. It also contains the first threads of The Order and cult mythology, however, that become a crutch for the series' more familiar horror waffling. The first game deserves mention and credit for introducing the titular town and the initial interpretation of it, as well as the beginnings of the psychological shocks and peeling back of the psyche. Along with the excellent Shattered Memories, the second game is far superior to its silent siblings. But, as I look through the list of releases, I realise that it's Silent Hill 2 that is the real interlude. I think of Homecoming, along with Downpour (another numberless title), as an interlude from the core of the series. The previous games admittedly had combat that could generously be described as thematically appropriate in its awkwardness, but it's never a particularly good sign when a survival horror game falls back on fighting rather than frightening. It came into the world from the creative womb of a new development team (Double Helix), and a marketing push that emphasised the new combat system. The reliance on loose threads from the original and an eventual reversion to the muddled and mystical mean that it's not the best place to start.Īs for Homecoming, it's the equivalent of a direct to DVD release at the tail-end of a once venerated series. It is, in part, a direct sequel and concluding part to the story of the first game, although it does feature a new protagonist and passages of play that are self-contained viginettes as unnerving as could be desired. However, rather than being a character-driven psychodrama, like Silent Hill 2, or a work of weird fiction, Silent Hill 3 is restricted in its storytelling by the mythology of the series. The third game starts well, fracturing an ordinary day at a shopping mall to leave fragments and splinters that burrow and squirm under the skin.
#LETTERS FROM NOWHERE 2 REVIEW SERIES#
Unfortunately, neither homecoming or Silent Hill 3 are likely to convince a newcomer to the series that it deserves its lofty place in the horror pantheon. There's an occasional cheaper sale, usually unboxed, but the third game is far easier to find at a decent price, and the fifth title in the main series, Silent Hill: Homecoming, is available on Steam.
#LETTERS FROM NOWHERE 2 REVIEW DOWNLOAD#
With no digital download available through legal channels, the physical copies available are usually being flogged on the Amazon Marketplace or ebay for £40+. It's easy to forget that Silent Hill 2 is available on PC, if you ever knew to begin with. The first time I came to this place, this special place, I didn't have the courage to remain there alone. Maybe the only way to tell you is to go back there and to write everything down in a letter. There's a place that I sometimes go to but I rarely talk about it.
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