like Konami's previous epic, those hours are filled with something special. You can work your way through the whole game in about it hours.but. Those of you who moaned endlessly about the length of Metal Gear Solid will no doubt have more to whine about with Silent Hill. (Of course, there are a number of canyon-sized potholes blocking your path, but you wouldn't want them to make it too easy, would you?) Other puzzles involve playing a piano to retrieve a special item and unlocking the clock tower that serves as a doorway between the two parallel universes.

Written in a child's scrawl on these pages are such clues as 'to school.' Armed with such a clue, all you have to do is check your town map to find the location of the school and head in that direction. As Harry wanders the treacherous streets of Silent Hill, he occasionally comes across pages from his daughter's sketch book. Like Resident Evil, Silent Hill requires the player to solve a number of puzzles in addition to disposing of enemies. Many of these characters provide you with useful information, while others are decidedly less helpful. As in Resident Evil, Silent Hill also is home to a handful of human survivors, including an elderly antique store proprietor and fortune teller, a hot-tempered physician, an attractive nurse and a mysterious young girl. Populating this surreal dreamscape are small creatures resembling either skinless children or inside-out dwarfs (you decide which is more disturbing), flying demons, giant cockroaches and skinless dogs.

Without divulging too much, there actually are two Silent Hills-one is the 'real' Silent Hill Harry first entered after his car accident, while the other is a surreal shadow of the lakeside resort town, in which wood and peeling paint are replaced by corroded steel and dried blood. Silent Hill's story and nightmarish imagery have been compared to such movies as Jacob's Ladder, Hellraiser and the more recent Dark City. ( Resident Evil used typewriters as an equally contrived save mechanism.) Silent Hill's controls are extremely similar, too while the camera angles may change dramatically, pressing Up on the control pad always makes Harry walk forward, while Right and Left make him turn clockwise and counterclockwise, respectively. To save, you must find a guest ledger to record your progress. While a bit overused, the effect is perfect for a horror game and really heightens the tension.ДЄside from the 3D backgrounds, Silent Hill is a thinly disguised knock-off of Capcom's famed spine-tingler you begin your quest armed with (bet you can't guess.) a gun and a knife. The real-time environments also allow some extremely atmospheric (not to mention creepy) directional lighting effects, such as those seen in Tomb Raider II & III most interior environments are lit solely by Harry's trusty flashlight, which creates plenty of shadows for all manner of creatures to spring from. Building upon the cinematic look and feel of the Resident Evil series, Konami has taken the genre a step further with Silent Hill by including real-time, 3D environments, which allow impressive camera movements while dramatically reducing disc access, one of Resident Evil's few but glaring shortcomings. New king of survival horror, it definitely looks like it's going to be something special. Six months later, has received a 75 percent complete version of the game, and, while we feel it's a bit premature to proclaim Silent Hill the That game was Silent Hill, which was instantaneously proclaimed a 'Resident Evil killer' by some and was mentioned in nearly every major video game magazine's 'Best of Show' list. When E3 attendees flocked to Konami's booth last summer for a first-hand look at the highly anticipated Metal Gear Solid, many were surprised to discover a game of equal promise tucked away in a corner of Konami's sprawling, fortresslike display.

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