Welcome

What a lovely looking little lakeside town! I sure hope this isn't another manifestation of my fears and guilt like that last town... What a terrible experience that was. Hold on, is that an air raid siren? Crap.

Welcome to Silent Hill everyone. I guess I should start with a brief introduction so you have some idea as to what's going on here. Firstly, I am a SH fan. I love the series and mark Silent Hill as the first time I was ever told a story by a videogame that was the least bit compelling. I have become a fan of certain types of horror as a result of playing the Silent Hill games, but it is worthy of note that I was not the least bit interested before playing SH1 and I consider this a testament to its storytelling prowess. At this point I also became truly excited about games as I assumed that I would become increasingly compelled to play videogames for the purpose of experiencing their stories. Sadly, for the most part, this has not proven to be the case. With respect to the SH series in particular I would say that there have been ups and downs, but that the general trend has been downward after SH2. I intend to play through all the games in (basically) chronological order to investigate what the games do or did well, what they do or did poorly, and the state of the franchise at this point. I should note that I do this with some trepidation as I played the first SH game in 1999 - ten years ago. As both technology and the game industry have progressed a great deal in that time, I'm expecting to be let down in many ways.

So, a brief warning: there will be spoilers on this blog! I'm investigating storytelling and will be including some form of plot summary in most every post. Also, in the interest of full disclosure, I have already played Silent Hill 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 and so already know everything that happens (at least, as much as I can remember). Furthermore, I probably won't be strictly talking about the story. I'll throw ideas out there on anything that piques my interest, from gameplay to architecture. I'll be playing all the above games in order but starting with Silent Hill: Origins. The reason is that I think it may soften the blow of being confronted with Play Station era technology in approaching SH1, and that it is technically a prequel in terms of the storyline. Also, I haven't played it yet and I want to - so there.

Finally, Opinions - I have them. So consider yourself warned: a great deal of what I say will be my opinion, and I am opinionated. Please feel more than free to disagree.

So cheers and I hope you enjoy following along and commenting - all you readers I don't have!