The Scariest Video Game of All Time

Despite being released back in September of 2001, “Silent Hill 2” remains the most impactful, and scariest, video game so far released this century. Why exactly is that? The reasons are numerous, but let’s start with the surface level. Even as a visual piece of media, “Silent Hill 2” is strikingly terrifying. Of course, there’s the decrepit design of Silent Hill itself. Many areas are dark, grungy, ruinous, and dirty, like a town that time has long left behind. The town itself is eerily abandoned, allowing the player to feel alone and defenseless, much like a bad dream. One of the most famous aspects of the game’s visual design is the fog mechanic. Silent Hill (both the game and the town) are shrouded in a dense fog, resulting in a claustrophobic and hesitant atmosphere. Like any great piece of horror, some of the scares come from the implied or unseen rather than the visual and literal. It’s arguably scarier to sense the monsters approaching in the thick fog than it is to actually see them. By that measure, simply walking through the town of Silent Hill becomes an exercise in fear and hesitation, as your imagination runs wild with the possibilities of destruction. The game often utilizes the player’s imagination to scare or unsettle them in various subtle ways. These include the...thing that follows James as he walks from the car to the cemetery. The game show that randomly blares from the radio and is never mentioned or acknowledged again, despite Maria asking what it was. Sounds of glass breaking offscreen, their origins mysterious. Not to mention the creepy messages left behind in Neely’s Bar that are completely unexplained, like “There was a hole here. It’s gone now”. By not explaining the origins of these instances, the game allows the player’s imagination to fill in the possibilities. This in turn creates a more unnerving atmosphere, as wild imaginations are often scarier than the answers. Like the fog, it helps trap the player through claustrophobia and threats of the unseen and unexplained. This sense of claustrophobia and the unseen is paired wonderfully with the game’s sound design. Sound is an often underappreciated aspect of a game or movie’s production, yet sound can make or break any piece of entertainment. A game with bad sound design will appear cheap, whereas stellar sound design will help immerse players within the game’s world - they won’t even notice the art of the sound design itself. It will become natural. Even the soundtrack is unrelentlessly terrifying, with tracks like “Only a Nightmare,” “Death Shamble,” and “Mangled Corpses” providing horrific sounds and music that do wonders to creep out the player. The sound design of “Silent Hill 2” is impeccable, from the imposing silence of the town to the horrifying static of James’s radio alerting him (and you) to nearby creatures. Many of the game’s best scares are produced through the use of sound, including the footsteps that follow James, the fog horn that blares as he descends into the prison, and the enemies frightening noises. Of course, a monster wouldn’t be scary without a scary visual design. Most of the monsters littered throughout the game are imaginatively and petrifyingly designed. There’s the Bubble Head Nurse, who appears as a sexualized nurse with a swollen, vinyl-covered head and what appears to be an infant’s face. The Abstract Daddy, which appears to be two figures intertwined together on a bed. There’s the Mannequin, which is essentially just a female torso and four human legs. And of course there’s Pyramid Head, the game’s most iconic monster - a massive, muscled humanoid with a butcher’s wardrobe, a large bladed weapon, and his iconic pyramid helmet. From a pure visual standpoint, these monsters are terrifying. They take the shape and appearance of the unimaginable. To make matters worse, they all have humanoid appearances, only grotesquely distorted. This design helps lend the game its signature nightmarish tone and appearance. Like a nightmare, the town and its events seem real, but there’s an obvious form of distortion that lends it surreal or otherworldly qualities. And while the physical design of the monsters is imaginative and horrifying, they are made even scarier through what they represent. “Silent Hill 2” is a very personal game, and it uses the monsters’ visual designs to make thematic statements about James’s mental state and hidden subconscious. The Bubble Head Nurse represents various aspects of James and Mary’s personal life - the nurse uniform represents his sexual frustration while Mary was in the hospital, the infant’s face their desire to have a child, and the enemies’ constant jittering the act of Mary being suffocated. The Abstract Daddy symbolizes Angela’s abuse at the hands of her father and brother combined with Mary being bedridden in the final part of her life. The Mannequins quite obviously represent James’s sexual frustrations (again), as they are composed of a female torso and sensual pairs of legs. And Pyramid Head is perhaps the most meaningful of all, a representation of James’s inner torment, guilt, and desire to be punished - not to mention the fact that he executed his wife. Pyramid Head’s actions are also a way for James to reckon with his past decisions. Pyramid Head is introduced abusing two mannequins, an image of the overt masculine desecrating the helpless feminine, which itself is a metaphor for James forcefully murdering his innocent wife. Pyramid Head also repeatedly kills Maria, who herself is a manifestation of Mary. By repeatedly killing her, Pyramid Head is visualizing James’s buried guilt at killing his sick wife. In these ways, “Silent Hill 2” ventures deep into the psyche and produces some of the greatest psychological horror ever put to gaming. Psychological horror would mean nothing without venturing into the personal and the darker aspects of human life. “Silent Hill 2” embraces the idea that humanity is inherently flawed and broken. Mary’s Letter begins as a hopeful item, a beacon of happiness within the dreadful, foggy, and empty town of Silent Hill. But as the truth of James’s past is slowly revealed, the letter changes form. The writing disappears after the fight with Eddie, the paper disappears after viewing the video, and the envelope disappears after fighting Pyramid Head, revealing that the letter never existed in the first place. Each moment is tied in some way to James’s killing of his wife - Eddie tells him that they’re similar people, the video reveals the horrifying truth, and Pyramid Head represents James’s desire for punishment. As James learns the truth of his violent past, the hope he harbors disappears - both literally and figuratively. Even the people littering the town of Silent Hill are marred in violence, darkness, and repressed memories. James killed his wife. Eddie Dombrowski shot a bully in the knee and killed his dog. Angela Orosco was assaulted by her father and brother before snapping and brutally butchering her father with a knife. Even the only innocent character of the game - Laura - is there to remind James of his flaws and past transgressions. The game has a very pessimistic outlook on humanity, and Silent Hill can be seen as some sort of Hell or purgatory where people venture to explore and contemplate their past - the grime of the town representing the grime of the soul. “Silent Hill 2” is so scary simply because it does everything that a great piece of horror should. It’s scary on a simple surface level, complete with grotesque monsters and an oppressive atmosphere and town. It has creepy music. It gets to more primal and universal fears such as claustrophobia, creepy sounds warning of danger, and both the unexplained and unseen. But perhaps most important of all, it reaches into the psychological, deftly mixing the personal with the surface level to comment on humanity’s inherent darkness. Nearly everything about the game - from the monsters to the town’s visual design to the human characters - represent some form of rot. Rot of both the physical and the soul. “Silent Hill 2” is so scary because it shows humanity at its most rotten, its most unforgivable, its most oppressive. And there’s nothing scarier than that.