The Silent Hill sequence has been on the forefront of feel-bad survival horror storytelling for shut to 3 many years now, and with the success of 2024’s Silent Hill 2 remake and the latest launch of Silent Hill f, it felt like the correct time to have a look again by means of Konami’s catalogue of psychological horrors to see how every scarefest stacks up.
Now, admittedly the sequence hasn’t been proof against the odd misstep right here and there, and there have definitely been intervals of time the place issues have gone extra downhill than Silent Hill. Thus you gained’t discover the likes of forgettable mainline entries like Silent Hill: Homecoming and Silent Hill: Downpour right here, or the inappropriately aggressive shoot ‘em up motion of Silent Hill: The Arcade, or certainly the co-operative dungeon crawling of Silent Hill: E-book of Reminiscences that completely no one requested for.
With all that in thoughts, right here’s IGN’s picks for the perfect entries within the Silent Hill sequence, from transportable terrors to playable teasers.
9. Silent Hill: Origins
A Silent Hill journey that may match into your denims pocket and nonetheless scare your pants off? That’s Silent Hill: Origins, the 2007 prequel initially developed for the PlayStation Transportable and later ported to the PlayStation 2.
With its story happening a number of years earlier than that of the unique Silent Hill, Silent Hill: Origins places you into the footwear of Travis Grady, a truck driver who takes a fallacious flip into North America’s freakiest fog-shrouded city, and issues get appropriately hair-raising from there.
What makes Silent Hill: Origins stand out from different instalments within the sequence is the way it handles the exploration of the sleepy small city’s nightmarish otherworld. Not like most different Silent Hill video games that drag you kicking and screaming in the direction of the jagged edges of the commercial nightmare realm while you least anticipate it, Silent Hill: Origins offers you full management in figuring out when and the place you need to shift between realities through using particular mirrors scattered across the city.
On the one hand, this does diminish Silent Hill: Origins’ capability to shock you with scares, however then again it creates some uniquely creepy eventualities for puzzle-solving, equivalent to inspecting the plastic organs of an anatomy model in a single actuality, solely to seek out that it’s an precise corpse within the different.
Mixed with a dread-inducing environment on par with the foreboding really feel of the unique sport, Silent Hill: Origins on PSP made for some really terrifying practice journeys.
8. Silent Hill 4: The Room
Though it appears like some type of weird crossover between the much-loved survival horror sequence and director Tommy Wiseau’s notorious finest worst film ever made, Silent Hill 4: The Room isn’t fairly as wild a departure as that – though it does shake up the components fairly considerably. Shifting the phobia out of the foggy streets of Silent Hill and into the brand new setting of Ashfield – particularly the locked-down condo of protagonist Henry Townshend – Silent Hill 4: The Room alternates between claustrophobic, first-person exploration of Townshend’s dwelling and extra conventional third-person fight within the nightmarish otherworlds he can attain by stepping by means of the ominous holes in his condo partitions.
These otherworlds function small pocket dimensions, every visually distinct and with its personal story to inform, from the filthy, tiled round hallways of the water jail to the deserted hospital full of quite a lot of disturbing dioramas. Because the story progresses, the condo you come to step by step evolves from secure haven to haunted home, as Townshend’s monitoring of an undead serial killer step by step consumes his actuality and the sport’s skin-crawling environment grows all of the extra oppressive.
Whereas the sudden swap within the story’s second half to an annoyingly dragged out escort mission proved to be divisive amongst followers, there’s no query that its solid of genuinely disturbing creatures, haunting authentic soundtrack from Akira Yamaoka, and the individuality of its decaying condo hub made for arguably one of the crucial spectacularly tense Silent Hill adventures in your complete canon.
Silent Hill 4: The Room would additionally mark the fourth and last instalment within the sequence to return from Japanese developer Group Silent. That group would then disband, with its members happening to work on numerous different horror video games like Forbidden Siren and The Evil Inside, and it additionally noticed the event of subsequent Silent Hill video games shift into the arms of western builders with pretty combined outcomes… We’re you, Homecoming and Downpour.
7. Silent Hill: Shattered Reminiscences
Not all the western-made Silent Hills have been unhealthy, although. The one entry within the sequence to ever make it onto the Nintendo Wii, Silent Hill: Shattered Reminiscences from British developer Climax Studios reimagines the unique Silent Hill and options the identical premise: Harry Mason is the survivor of a automotive crash looking for his lacking daughter within the fictional American city of Silent Hill. Nevertheless, its plot unravels in a completely new method and the gameplay is dramatically restructured, shifting between first-person psychotherapy periods to the extra typical over-the-shoulder explorations of Harry’s harrowing journey by means of Silent Hill.
Shattered Reminiscences is a tough instalment to rank within the Silent Hill sequence, as a result of it’s so in contrast to another entry up to now. It utterly ditches fight, as a substitute forcing Harry to flee in common chase sequences impressed by the unstoppable antagonists of slasher motion pictures. It swaps out the fog of earlier adventures for ice and falling snow to restrict participant visibility and construct an environment of dread in attention-grabbing new methods. It additionally makes fairly good use of the Wiimote, utilizing its movement controls to present gamers full command over the beam of Harry’s flashlight, and its built-in speaker for the hiss of the sequence’ signature radio static amongst a number of different unsettling bits of sound design.
Shattered Reminiscences additionally profiles the participant whereas they play, taking the solutions chosen in the course of the psychotherapy periods to make subsequent modifications to stage and enemy designs, in addition to altering how the story progresses and ultimately figuring out which of the a number of endings you’ll arrive at. Whereas this mechanic is but to resurface in subsequent Silent Hill tales, Supermassive Video games’ Till Daybreak seemingly took an excessive amount of inspiration from it given its related mixture of psychotherapy periods and slasher-style horror.
In the meantime, Shattered Reminiscences’ author/designer Sam Barlow (who additionally labored on Silent Hill: Origins) has since gone on to seek out appreciable success as an unbiased developer along with his critically acclaimed works of interactive fiction: Her Story, Telling Lies, and Immortality. All three contain fixing a thriller by sifting by means of assortments of out-of-sequence video clips, which in a method are their very own type of shattered reminiscences.
6. Silent Hill f
It took 13 lengthy years for a brand new mainline Silent Hill sport to emerge from the fog, however Silent Hill f lastly arrived in 2025 with a model new Japanese setting, a twisted and compelling story that continues to unfold and fulfill in subsequent playthroughs, and a strict deal with melee-based fight to additional distinguish itself from the extra gun-centric assaults of the earlier yr’s Silent Hill 2 remake.
To be truthful, the intentionally sluggish really feel of Silent Hill f’s combating system may not be to everybody’s style. With its combine of sunshine and heavy assaults, dodges and counters, and a reliance on the cautious administration of well being, stamina, and sanity bars, its monster-mashing appears impressed by the sluggish and weighty fight of the Darkish Souls sequence, although fortunately minus the punishing problem. But although your controller may not be in any hazard of being smashed to bits after repeatedly dying to the identical boss, your lead pipe or crowbar definitely is as a result of irritatingly brittle nature of Silent Hill f’s destructible weapons.
Nevertheless, in case you can embrace the clunky fight clashes – or just power your self to endure them – there are large rewards for persevering as a result of Silent Hill f’s story is solely one of the crucial charming tales in your complete sequence. The psychological results of excessive schooler Hinako Shimizu’s home abuse and bullying is really gut-wrenching to look at, the monsters she encounters present a full-fat dose of nightmare gasoline, and the world round her is an absorbing place to pore over, whether or not it is the misty streets of her mountainside village or the mysterious shrine realm she enters in her goals.
You’ll suppose {that a} Silent Hill sport that doesn’t really function the city of Silent Hill could be like a Resident Evil sport with out some type of resident evil in it, however Silent Hill f efficiently proves that you could take the sequence out of Smalltown, USA, however you may’t take the spinechilling psychological horror out of the Silent Hill sport.
5. P.T.
Whereas in the end a proof of idea slightly than a totally fledged Silent Hill sport – the P.T. stands for Playable Teaser – this standalone slice of psychological torment obtained followers’ appetites whet for a Silent Hills sport that sadly by no means noticed the sunshine of day. Quietly shadow-dropped as a free obtain on PlayStation 4 amidst quite a lot of extra headline-grabbing bulletins at Gamescom 2014, P.T. rapidly took social media and Reddit threads by storm as greater than 1,000,000 gamers found it and collectively set about unravelling its most enigmatic puzzles.
Set in a single, looping, L-shaped hall inside a suburban household dwelling, P.T. was able to delivering scares in methods each micro and macro; subtly rearranging the decor to unsettle you in a single loop, earlier than making certain you’d by no means sleep with the lights off once more by shocking you with a murderous ghost named Lisa the second you dared to look over your shoulder. Very similar to the condo sections of Silent Hill 4: The Room, P.T. additionally broke from the Silent Hill sequence’ typical third-person perspective, presenting its horrors in a extra claustrophobic first-person view that made all of them the extra instant. It was compact, cryptic, and utterly terrifying.
What additional provides to P.T.’s mystique is that it’s extraordinarily laborious to really play at this level. After the cancellation of Silent Hills and Kojima Productions’ seemingly acrimonious break up with Konami in 2015, P.T. was faraway from the PlayStation Retailer for good, making it inconceivable to reinstall even when it was hooked up to your PSN account. There are some questionable PC-based workarounds to regain entry to it, however in any other case the one strategy to play P.T. immediately is by someway monitoring down a PlayStation 4 console with it already put in, or enjoying a fanmade remake such because the impressively trustworthy recreation in Media Molecule’s Desires. Or maybe by breaking into that very same warehouse that the Ark of the Covenant was stashed in on the finish of Raiders of the Misplaced Ark.
As for its legacy, although, P.T. has gone on to be one of the crucial influential horror video games launched in latest reminiscence. Layers of Concern ran with P.T.’s looping environments to unsettle gamers exploring its artist’s mansion setting, whereas Resident Evil: Village terrified followers with the P.T.-esque tight hallways, combat-free puzzle-solving, and nightmare-inducing deformed fetus present in its Home Beneviento part. That’s to not say something of the numerous P.T. pretenders that proceed to flood Steam to at the present time. Not unhealthy for a playable teaser for a Silent Hill sport that by no means was.
4. Silent Hill 3
The storytelling brilliance of Silent Hill 2 made it a tough act to observe – and we’ll get to precisely why in a second – however Silent Hill 3 distanced itself barely from its landmark predecessor by positioning itself as a direct sequel to the unique Silent Hill as a substitute. The third sport within the Silent Hill saga digs into compelling new particulars in regards to the doomsday cult from the unique sport, in addition to introducing an nearly completely new line-up of nightmarish creatures, delivered to bowel-loosening life by visuals that pushed the PlayStation 2 {hardware} to its limits.
Its greatest departure from its two predecessors, although, is the truth that its protagonist is a plucky teenage woman as a substitute of a depressing, 30-something yr outdated man. Heather, who’s surname we’ll preserve imprecise for story spoiler causes, got here as a breath of recent air by means of the fog and proved to be among the finest written and most relatable leads within the sequence’ historical past. To not point out that up till the discharge of Silent Hill f, she was the one playable feminine lead within the mainline entries (until you depend Maria within the Director’s Minimize of Silent Hill 2).
Upon its launch, Silent Hill 3 was criticised for missing gameplay innovation and being a bit too just like the primary two video games, however given the string of subpar Silent Hill video games launched within the aftermath of Silent Hill 4: The Room, maybe on reflection staying true to the feel and appear of the 2 most revered entries within the Silent Hill sequence wasn’t such a nasty factor.
3. Silent Hill 2 Remake
Not like Shattered Reminiscences which utterly overhauled the construction and dramatically altered the plot of the unique Silent Hill, the 2024 remake of Silent Hill 2 preserves the story, characters, and vibe of the PlayStation 2 authentic, however updates all of it for contemporary audiences with excellent visuals, anxiety-inducing audio design, and controls that permit for much extra fluid participant motion and stock juggling.
Developer Bloober Group wasn’t precisely new to the horror style nor the method of remaking of horror video games, having beforehand each made and remade its personal spooky tales within the type of Layers of Concern and Observer. This expertise evidently served the group properly because the Silent Hill 2 remake is by far and away its greatest triumph up to now, dramatically enhancing the unsettling and claustrophobic environment of the unique, and increasing the small city setting to make it completely absorbing to pore over for returning followers.
Crucially, nearly each modernisation made right here has resulted in Silent Hill 2’s overwhelmingly shuddersome setting seeming all of the extra immersive and alarming. The volumetric fog feels thicker and extra oppressive than ever. The brand new stage of element utilized to the dwellings you shuffle by means of make them appear infinitely extra dank and miserable, if not utterly disgusting at occasions. The usage of mild is especially good, and being compelled to discover each inch of the Toluca Jail space in restricted bursts of illumination due to failing circuit breakers makes for one of the crucial frantic and horrifying sequences the sequence has ever seen. Or certainly, not seen, since so lots of its horrors are rapidly plunged into blackness.
Add in some superior voice performing and a terrifying soundscape from Akira Yamaoka that can have you ever doubting your personal sanity, and there’s no query that the Silent Hill 2 remake is one of the simplest ways to go to – or revisit – one of the crucial dread-inducing locations within the historical past of survival horror.
2. Silent Hill
Take a splash of Stephen King, a touch of David Lynch, a flash of Francis Bacon, and filter all of it by means of the Japanese cultural lens of developer Group Silent, and you’ve got the twisted and really terrifying journey by means of the unique Silent Hill. Stepping away from the sometimes campy, B-movie model widespread in ‘90s survival horror, Silent Hill plunged you into beforehand unseen depths of psychological torment, placing the emphasis on correctly disturbing environment in favour of low-cost bounce scares, and establishing the tone for a sequence that, at its finest, is someway extremely uncomfortable but completely enthralling.
Not like prior survival horror video games like Resident Evil and Parasite Eve that relied on pre-rendered backgrounds, Silent Hill bucked the pattern by placing you into an setting rendered completely in 3D. Remarkably, this meant that the sequence’ signature darkness and oppressive fog have been really borne out of a must masks the meagre draw distance and ugly graphical pop-ins that plagued the unique PlayStation, turning the system’s {hardware} limitations into a robust instrument for terror that has remained a continuing within the sequence up to now.
Out of your first steps as Harry Mason getting into the eerie small city looking for his misplaced daughter, Silent Hill assaults you from all sides with its genuinely unsettling nothingness, and the concern of not understanding what’s ready for you within the fog is arguably extra petrifying than the precise beasts that lie in wait. This endless sense of unease was solely intensified additional by ingenious atmospheric thrives, just like the screeching static from Harry’s radio that hissed with extra urgency as you arrived within the neighborhood of some unseen mess of pissed-off polygons.
Silent Hill ushered in a chilling new customary for slow-burn survival horror, and its affect can nonetheless be felt many years later within the likes of The Medium and Alan Wake 2. But it solely took Group Silent a few years to pull gamers into new depths of depravity and despair…
1. Silent Hill 2
The unique Silent Hill could have established the sequence’ mixture of overwhelmingly bleak environment and disturbing grownup themes, however 2001’s Silent Hill 2 perfected it. A totally absorbing and emotionally-draining examination of grief and guilt, Silent Hill 2 put us into the position of the just lately widowed James Sunderland and set us on a tortured tour by means of his personal personal hell, one crawling with terrible apparitions that symbolised his more and more decaying psychological state and the struggling of the individuals round him.
Whereas the unique Silent Hill centered totally on the corrupt non secular practices of a neighborhood cult and the way it completely altered the city’s actuality, Silent Hill 2 offers with themes that have been extra nuanced and very taboo on the time, no less than on the earth of gaming. Sexual abuse, suicide, and self-harm are all explored as Sunderland encounters different survivors trapped inside the foggy lakeside city, with every type of trauma made all of the extra confronting by the twisted creatures they manifest as. 2001’s Grand Theft Auto 3 could be extensively thought to be the primary correct online game for grown ups, however Silent Hill 2 arguably beat Rockstar’s opus to the punch only one month prior.
Silent Hill 2 additionally launched one of the crucial iconic antagonists within the sequence’ historical past, if not survival horror typically. There are few enemies as shit-your-pants scary as Pyramid Head, an intimidating and unstoppable tormenter who stalks Sunderland at a number of phases by means of the story, and who additionally does unspeakable issues to mannequins. Ominously dragging one half of a large pair of scissors and with an angular cranium so rusty you want a tetanus shot simply from it, this pointy-headed predator’s efficiency was diluted considerably by subsequent appearances in weaker instalments equivalent to Silent Hill: Homecoming and Silent Hill: E-book of Reminiscences, however his significance to Silent Hill 2’s sustained sense of dread can’t be understated.
From its tragic story to its provocative symbolism and no scarcity of real scares, Silent Hill 2 stays the bone-chilling benchmark for the sequence, and is due to this fact the apparent alternative for the primary slot on this checklist.
And there we’ve it: the 9 finest video games within the Silent Hill sequence. Did your favorite make our checklist? Tell us what we forgot within the feedback.
Tristan Ogilvie is a video producer on the IGN critiques group, primarily based in Sydney, Australia. He has over 18 years of expertise overlaying video video games. When he would not have a controller in his hand, Tristan is happiest enjoying guitar, taking photographs, or watching cricket.