The Silent Hill series is one of those game universes I hold in such a high regard that I considered getting a tattoo that carried a piece of the game’s mythos.

The psychological horror of the stories told within the town of Silent Hill is something that leaves an impact on your mind, and makes you think about the events of the game long after the console has been turned off.

The atmosphere is choking and claustrophobic, the themes are disgustingly dark and disturbing, and it’s all presented in an audio-visual package that, to this day, I struggle to play for more than a couple of hours at a time because, frankly, it creeps me the hell out.

I love it.

So why am I so torn? When it comes down to it, the Silent Hill HD Collection isn’t an entirely new trip into the doomed town, it’s a repeat of a journey taken years ago, in a shinier package.

It’s time to weigh-up your expectations, and determine exactly what it is you want out of this collection – because if it’s the same experience from years ago you’re seeking, you might fall a little short.

High definition

The Silent Hill HD Collection includes Silent Hill 2 and Silent Hill 3, as well as Silent Hill 2’s extra scenario, Born from a Wish. The collection is a remastering of the originals, featuring the original stories – and all the horrors contained there-in – as well as trophy support.

The most obvious update to the games – being a “high definition remastering” and all – comes in the form of the updated HD visuals.

Silent Hill 2 and 3, for their time, were actually some of the best-looking games available on the PlayStation 2 – it’s not saying much now, of course, but even with 80% of everything covered in darkness and fog, the claustrophobic environments and rusty, bloody textures created the atmosphere of utter horror.

In the HD collection, though, it seems the weather has cleared up a bit. While the darkness and fog are still there, their percentile has diminished somewhat to, say, about 60%.

As far as the textures are concerned, it seems the great cleaning lady of Silent Hill has made a sweep through the game world, as some of the new, shiny HD textures are a lot cleaner and lack a lot of the rusty detail that added to the dilapidated and neglected feel of the original games.

Neither of these things exactly destroys the atmosphere in the game, but it’s a little disappointing to see that the revamped visuals didn’t get the same detailed treatment afforded to the originals, and the wider view of environments does take away from the feeling of the unknown, encroaching doom.

On the plus side, though – the smoother, HD visuals look great; characters and monsters have more detail and look even more terrifying than before; and even the environments, which you can see more of now, look sleeker and may reveal things that you might have missed in the low-res excursions years ago.

Not so silent

Visuals aside, what has always been a much bigger part of creating the true “Silent Hill” experience is the sound. The original music/ambient soundtrack from both games is thankfully still very much present in the HD Collection, and the familiar industrial sounds of imminent doom linger around every corner.

Enemies sound positively terrifying – not only because the sounds they make are entirely grotesquely unnatural, but also because they sound very ‘last decade’ and serve as a stark reminder that games have made a lot of progress in nailing subtle horror effects.

I say “subtle effects”, but truthfully, hearing James Sunderland breathe in Silent Hill 2 is possibly more terrifying than being pursued down a hallway by Pyramid Head – the man sounds like he’s dying after a brief jog.

That is, of course, only if you opt to play with the original character voices – an option only afforded to Silent Hill 2. Both games feature freshly-recorded voices for the games’ cast. While Silent Hill 2’s new voices solve the dying James breathing effect, they do absolutely no justice to the rest of the script.

Silent Hill 3’s new voices – which are the only option – are thankfully of a much better quality, but Silent Hill 2’s new voices sound like they were recorded alongside Resident Evil 1’s script back in the 90s.

Stumbling through the fog

If you were a fan of Silent Hill’s gameplay – then here’s some good news: the gameplay remains unchanged. Yes, James and Heather are still clunky, combat is still clumsy and the camera angles still make the already-poor visibility even more broken.

Sorry, did I say good news?

It may be a bit unfair to shun the Silent Hill HD Collection for not being true to its visual and audio roots, and then shun it some more for actually keeping the gameplay exactly the same – but why take a game and spoil the looks and sounds with ‘modern’ updates, and not apply ‘modern’ tweaks (camera control, responsive combat controls, etc) to the gameplay?

Instead of feeding my hypocrisy on the matter, let’s just say that Silent Hill HD’s gameplay is “truly authentic”, while noting that it was never really that great to begin with.

One major issue that was experienced on the PS3 version of the game reviewed was the intense lag. While James stumbled through the fog, the PS3 decided to let him go on ahead and opted to catch up a few seconds later. In Silent Hill 3 – the PS3 decided to incorporate some Max Payne bullet time in larger environments with many enemies.

Hopefully this issue will be fixed through a patch. The Xbox 360 version reportedly doesn’t have this issue.

Let there be life

As far as HD collections go, Silent Hill HD has me torn.

Instead of recreating the best games the entire series has to offer and bringing them to a new generation, we’re treated to updated visuals that might actually remove some of the experience; sounds and voices that just don’t quite fill subtle shoes of the originals; and gameplay that will remind you why we call last generation games, last generation.

The HD Collection is a perfectly presentable update of the best Silent Hills in the series – but if you’ve played it before, it may feel as strange as the town itself.

If you’ve never played Silent Hill before, and want to give these games a go – I would recommend hunting down the original games and a PS2 console for a weekend or two and rather opt to play those. You won’t have the smoother HD visuals, but you’ll definitely get the truer Silent Hill experience.

No matter which way you decide to play – Silent Hill will creep you out, guaranteed.

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