Do you think Silent Hill should end?

[Salandrin]

Yes Silent Hill 2 is one of the best narratives in gaming history, but to be frank, since then, the Silent Hill series has always been a smudge under the mega blockbuster Resident Evil franchise. Silent Hill Downpour's catastrophic failure caused Konami to be quite silent on the series for a long time now, which makes you wonder if they're finished.

[Loaf Lord]

Yes. Put them out of their misery. Same with Resident Evil. Even though gameplay-wise I feel Resident evil has been better, the story has always been crap in my eyes and can't hold a candle to Silent Hill's. But at this point in time they both feel utterly bled of worth.

[Salandrin]

Yes. Put them out of their misery. Same with Resident Evil. Even though gameplay-wise I feel Resident evil has been better, the story has always been crap in my eyes and can't hold a candle to Silent Hill's. But at this point in time they both feel utterly bled of worth.

But Resident Evil is a media franchise, unlike Silent Hill. Everyone knows what it is, and it's importance is too great to let go of. I just hope they abandon the Resident Evil 4 mechanics that have been around since RE5, seriously.

[unholytestament]

What it needs to do is to stop trying to be a big budget franchise with mass appeal. Average gamers don't really care much for true horror games. That's pretty much why every good horror game has cult favorite status. They were popular, but only to the audience they were aimed at.

The downfall of pretty much every horror franchise (not just video games) is their attempts to draw in people outside the target audience. This usually results in bringing in talent that has mass appeal but just plain doesn't get the genre. The result is a more action oriented and dumbed down sequel that either just recycles the horror elements with no respect for them or introduces new ''horror'' elements that fail to do anything interesting and probably conflicts with older material.

In short, they need new talent that understands what makes a horror game and have them make a horror game. Don't try to shoehorn in anything to appeal to non-horror fans.

[Orlong]

What it needs to do is to stop trying to be a big budget franchise with mass appeal. Average gamers don't really care much for true horror games. That's pretty much why every good horror game has cult favorite status. They were popular, but only to the audience they were aimed at.

The downfall of pretty much every horror franchise (not just video games) is their attempts to draw in people outside the target audience. This usually results in bringing in talent that has mass appeal but just plain doesn't get the genre. The result is a more action oriented and dumbed down sequel that either just recycles the horror elements with no respect for them or introduces new ''horror'' elements that fail to do anything interesting and probably conflicts with older material.

In short, they need new talent that understands what makes a horror game and have them make a horror game. Don't try to shoehorn in anything to appeal to non-horror fans.

I agree. Its for these reasons I dislike Resident Evil and newer Silent Hill games. Id much rather replay Clive Barker's Undying (better than either Resident Evil or Silent Hill by leaps and bounds)

[Hraklea]

Resident Evil 6 is the best in the series by far, imo.

Silent Hill... it was good until The Room, didn't really liked the new ones. Yes, they should end it. And no more movies, plz, the new one is soooooooooooo bad.

[Deleted]

I can't get any new horror fix it seems.

Silent hill Downpour wasn't bad per se, it just wasn't as good as SH1-3. Still, it WAS better than the Room, or Homecoming (that one was a giant letdown, and made me question my decision to buy the PS3 in the first place)

The only other horror series I like was Fatal Frame.... which was hijacked by nintenDo'h! (and I hope they will rot in a very special and unpleasant pit of hell for this) and, to make things worse, made Japan-only. No US or european version. That can be remedied with a fanmade translation patch, but it still sucks hard.

So, the only horror I have when it comes to consoles is hearing about squeenix latest idiocy which, while frightening, isn't the kind of fright I crave.

[mvaliz]

But Resident Evil is a media franchise, unlike Silent Hill. Everyone knows what it is, and it's importance is too great to let go of. I just hope they abandon the Resident Evil 4 mechanics that have been around since RE5, seriously.

Ummm... How exactly does that work? o_O

---------- Post added 2013-05-29 at 05:12 PM ----------

As an old-school SH fan... I have to admit that the series can use a rest after their subsequent derps.

It really needs to take a break and, more importantly, recapture the essence of 1 and 2.

And that's the key - not just SH2... they need SH1 as well. SH1 was, at its time, one of the most terrifying games I've ever played (next to Fatal Frame). SH2 was a great subtle story, but kinda lacked in the "scary" department as well as the gameplay department... it was more "disturbing" than scary. Which did work...

But SH1 had both scary AND "disturbing". SH1 was the only game I could call "Unholy" in the SH universe... the rest are just very dark and dirty David Lynch movies...

But everything they're doing is getting kinda 'been there, done that'. Same "beatnik" music... same dirty walls... same toilets... same hospital/nurses. All the expectations with none of the "new" or "scary" attached to them... mostly because they're expected.

Now, I'm not saying to get rid of them... they just shouldn't make them so obvious? If they threw in some more mystery... some more exploration... some more smaller sub stories of the entire town of Silent Hill and it's citizens and the depravity and insanity that went on... that would go MILES more than what they're doing now.

[Deleted]

I don't mind if they reuse some of the stuff (like the hospital from 2 reused in 3 for example), as long as they do it right. Both hospitals were scary in their own way, and to this day, I'd still feel uneasy when I'm there (SH3 even more than 2). That means they are doing the whole frightening right, not relieing on cheap shock effects, because those would only work once or twice.

Same goes for Fatal Frame btw. I love/hate the Kiryuu house in FF2 ... the twin ghost & twin doll combo gives me the creeps....... me gusta

[Belloc]

I will agree that the Silent Hill series has had some hiccups, but it's still a good series. Two was great, 3 was great, 4 was great (even if it wasn't originally a Silent Hill game). The games since then haven't been all that good, but there's always a chance that new games in the series could be highly successful.

Also, I'd like to point out that the Silent Hill films are vastly superior to the Resident Evil films. The first Silent Hill movie took some liberties that I didn't quite like, but it was still a great movie on its own and it stayed close enough to the story of the games to make me somewhat happy. The second movie took a lot of the things that I disliked about the first movie and... fixed them! I was really surprised by how faithful the second film was to the SH3. I think a Silent Hill film franchise could be fantastic... if they started creating some original stories and tried to make them a bit scarier.

[Solidito]

Don't understand things like this, don't get me wrong some of the newer ones are abosolute dog shit. But as long as some people enjoy them why change it? If you think the new ones are crap (which they are) it shouldn't matter to you, just remember the good ones.

Same goes for TV shows etc, never understood the 'it's bad they should just stop it now'. If you don't like it don't play/watch it.

[Belloc]

Don't understand things like this, don't get me wrong some of the newer ones are abosolute dog shit. But as long as some people enjoy them why change it? If you think the new ones are crap (which they are) it shouldn't matter to you, just remember the good ones.

Same goes for TV shows etc, never understood the 'it's bad they should just stop it now'. If you don't like it don't play/watch it.

I agree. And you can expand it even further. Love Spider Man comics but hate the movies? Then just ignore the movies -- they obviously don't exist in the same continuity! Love your favorite book but hate the movie version? Then forget about it and just keep loving the book!

I loved SH2 and 3 and I really liked 4. I don't care what came after, it's not going to change how I feel about those games.

[logintime]

I'd like to think there's always a place for a good horror game, especially since the genre has largely been dying these last few years. Unfortunately, I don't think Silent Hill can ever be the standard bearer again. Those first two games were fantastic, but then the third one slipped a bit, and The Room... well, let's just say that title lives up to its movie namesake. I haven't even bothered with the ones since then- they've all looked deeply flawed.

Really, the only good survival horror game I've played since Fatal Frame 3 was released has been Amnesia, and that was a PC title only. Kinda depressing to see how badly the genre has fallen these last seven plus years.

[Deleted]

I've never played myself but I used to watch my sister playing it all the time, mainly SH2. From what I've heard, they've been dropping in quality since SH4, and it that's the general consensus, then yes it should probably be put out of its misery

[Razael]

Resident Evil 2 & 3 , and Silent Hill 1 & 2 are among some of my favorite games. After those imo, each franchise has been Mehh.

[VincentWolf]

I think third Silent Hill is best in series, however after that it went completely downhill and now it's just a pure garbage. It's really not a cow you can milk for too long and it's been milked dry. You cant even reboot it. They should just friggin' stop, unless they can come up with a good enough story, design and characters.

[Resentful]

After Resident evil 4 and Silent Hill II yeah all the other games have been pretty much shit like really as you've stated. It does need to end haha

[Nerevar]

Yes. They started milking it after SH4. SH right now is on the same level as CoD for me. Just ridiculous.

[WarpedAcorn]

What it needs to do is to stop trying to be a big budget franchise with mass appeal. Average gamers don't really care much for true horror games. That's pretty much why every good horror game has cult favorite status. They were popular, but only to the audience they were aimed at.

The downfall of pretty much every horror franchise (not just video games) is their attempts to draw in people outside the target audience. This usually results in bringing in talent that has mass appeal but just plain doesn't get the genre. The result is a more action oriented and dumbed down sequel that either just recycles the horror elements with no respect for them or introduces new ''horror'' elements that fail to do anything interesting and probably conflicts with older material.

In short, they need new talent that understands what makes a horror game and have them make a horror game. Don't try to shoehorn in anything to appeal to non-horror fans.

I agree with this 100%. I wish the EA execs that have been slowly killing Dead Space would read this and take note. T_T

[Antbregante]

As long as they replace it with a new horror series I'm cool with it ending. I really liked all the Silent Hills. Even those most people didn't like.