Silent Hill, Finally
When I was about eleven years old, my brother and I bought Metal Gear Solid for PlayStation. No need to say that I was mind-blown by the story, the graphic, and the characters. Maybe that was the very first videogame that made me think “This is more than just a game”, which then happened with The Last of Us and other games.
Other than that, I clearly remember the CD case of MGS because it contained the demo disc of another game by Konami: Silent Hill. I recall playing it with my brother until the end, when a group of weird children assaulted the player with knives, and he fell unconscious. Black screen. WTF! That scene traumatized both of us so much that we never played the full game. Also, since then, I always had a reverential fear towards the whole series.
Until… I finally decided to try the games, a few weeks ago. Since I own a PS4, I went on the PlayStation Store, and… there are no Silent Hill games! 😤 So, I was aware of OpenEmu for macOS, and I gave it a chance.
First, the emulator itself is awesome: it’s super-fast, and it has a handy management of savegames1 and screenshots.
When I powered on the game (the North American version), I was thrilled to hear again the mandolin theme during the opening sequence. That was enough to give me chills. Then, when the game started, I thought the controls were a bit clunky, as with the first Resident Evil… but no! The movement is pretty fast and well-managed; the only big flaw for me, compared to modern games, is the inventory, which is very slow to browse.
The story itself is very interesting, but in my opinion not very well-narrated. There are pagan rituals, drug trafficking, very weird happenings… Everything I like! I got the sense of what was happening and the background, but… when the credits rolled, something was missing. Maybe it was me, but when I read the plot on Wikipedia, I asked myself: “Where the hell did they get some of those details?”
Anyway, that was literally a hell of a ride, and I hope to enjoy some other classics I have never played. At this moment, it occurs me only Ape Escape, another game whom I loved the demo, but I never tried the full experience. Maybe it’s a midlife crisis, but it’s nice deep diving in the past sometimes.
Here are the stats of my run.
🎮 Well…
🎧 An amazing album by Cortez
📖 Still on NOS4A2, about 75%. Dang, it’s long.
-
To be honest, even if you can just save the game with a key on the keyboard, I also saved using the old –emulated– Memory Card… because I felt nostalgic. ↩︎
When I was about eleven years old, my brother and I bought Metal Gear Solid for PlayStation. No need to say that I was mind-blown by the story, the graphic, and the characters. Maybe that was the very first videogame that made me think “This is more than just a game”, which then happened with The Last of Us and other games.
Other than that, I clearly remember the CD case of MGS because it contained the demo disc of another game by Konami: Silent Hill. I recall playing it with my brother until the end, when a group of weird children assaulted the player with knives, and he fell unconscious. Black screen. WTF! That scene traumatized both of us so much that we never played the full game. Also, since then, I always had a reverential fear towards the whole series.