The Silent Hill collection 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 fitting time to have a look again by Konami’s catalogue of psychological horrors to see how every scarefest stacks up.
Now, admittedly the collection hasn’t been resistant to the odd misstep right here and there, and there have definitely been durations of time the place issues have gone extra downhill than Silent Hill. Thus you received’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 person requested for.
With all that in thoughts, right here’s IGN’s picks for the easiest entries within the Silent Hill collection, from moveable 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 going down 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 collection is the way it handles the exploration of the sleepy small city’s nightmarish otherworld. In contrast to most different Silent Hill video games that drag you kicking and screaming in the direction of the jagged edges of the economic nightmare realm once you least anticipate it, Silent Hill: Origins provides you full management in figuring out when and the place you need to shift between realities by way of using particular mirrors scattered across the city.
On the one hand, this does diminish Silent Hill: Origins’ capability to shock you with scares, however alternatively it creates some uniquely creepy eventualities for puzzle-solving, similar to analyzing the plastic organs of an anatomy model in a single actuality, solely to search 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 prepare journeys.
8. Silent Hill 4: The Room
Though it feels like some form of weird crossover between the much-loved survival horror collection 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 system 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 condominium of protagonist Henry Townshend – Silent Hill 4: The Room alternates between claustrophobic, first-person exploration of Townshend’s residence and extra conventional third-person fight within the nightmarish otherworlds he can attain by stepping by the ominous holes in his condominium 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 a wide range of disturbing dioramas. Because the story progresses, the condominium you come to step by step evolves from protected 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 forged of genuinely disturbing creatures, haunting unique soundtrack from Akira Yamaoka, and the individuality of its decaying condominium hub made for arguably some of the spectacularly tense Silent Hill adventures in the whole canon.
Silent Hill 4: The Room would additionally mark the fourth and closing instalment within the collection to come back from Japanese developer Group Silent. That crew 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 palms of western builders with pretty combined outcomes… We’re taking a look at you, Homecoming and Downpour.
7. Silent Hill: Shattered Reminiscences
Not all the western-made Silent Hills have been dangerous, although. The one entry within the collection 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 wholly new approach and the gameplay is dramatically restructured, shifting between first-person psychotherapy classes to the extra typical over-the-shoulder explorations of Harry’s harrowing journey by Silent Hill.
Shattered Reminiscences is a tough instalment to rank within the Silent Hill collection, as a result of it’s so in contrast to another entry so far. It fully ditches fight, as an alternative 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 fascinating new methods. It additionally makes fairly sensible 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 collection’ 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 through the psychotherapy classes to make subsequent adjustments to degree 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 a substantial amount of inspiration from it given its related mixture of psychotherapy classes 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 search out appreciable success as an impartial developer together with his critically acclaimed works of interactive fiction: Her Story, Telling Lies, and Immortality. All three contain fixing a thriller by sifting by assortments of out-of-sequence video clips, which in a approach are their very own type of shattered recollections.
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 concentrate on melee-based fight to additional distinguish itself from the extra gun-centric assaults of the earlier yr’s Silent Hill 2 remake.
To be honest, the intentionally sluggish really feel of Silent Hill f’s preventing system won’t 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 collection, although fortunately minus the punishing problem. But regardless that your controller won’t be in any hazard of being smashed to bits after repeatedly dying to the identical boss, your lead pipe or crowbar definitely is because of the irritatingly brittle nature of Silent Hill f’s destructible weapons.
Nevertheless, in case you can embrace the clunky fight clashes – or just drive your self to endure them – there are big rewards for persevering as a result of Silent Hill f’s story is just some of the charming tales in the whole collection. 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 gas, 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 desires.
You’d suppose {that a} Silent Hill sport that doesn’t really characteristic the city of Silent Hill could be like a Resident Evil sport with out some form of resident evil in it, however Silent Hill f efficiently proves you could take the collection out of Smalltown, USA, however you’ll be able to’t take the spinechilling psychological horror out of the Silent Hill sport.
5. P.T.
Whereas in the end a proof of idea somewhat than a completely 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 plenty of extra headline-grabbing bulletins at Gamescom 2014, P.T. rapidly took social media and Reddit threads by storm as greater than one million gamers found it and collectively set about unravelling its most enigmatic puzzles.
Set in a single, looping, L-shaped hall inside a suburban household residence, 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 stunning you with a murderous ghost named Lisa the second you dared to look over your shoulder. Very similar to the condominium sections of Silent Hill 4: The Room, P.T. additionally broke from the Silent Hill collection’ typical third-person perspective, presenting its horrors in a extra claustrophobic first-person view that made all of them the extra quick. It was compact, cryptic, and fully terrifying.
What additional provides to P.T.’s mystique is that it’s extraordinarily laborious to truly play at this level. After the cancellation of Silent Hills and Kojima Productions’ seemingly acrimonious cut up with Konami in 2015, P.T. was faraway from the PlayStation Retailer for good, making it not possible 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 approach to play P.T. as we speak is by one way or the other monitoring down a PlayStation 4 console with it already put in, or taking part in a fanmade remake such because the impressively trustworthy recreation in Media Molecule’s Goals. 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 some of the influential horror video games launched in latest reminiscence. Layers of Worry 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 dangerous 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 comply with – 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 an alternative. The third sport within the Silent Hill saga digs into compelling new particulars concerning the doomsday cult from the unique sport, in addition to introducing an virtually 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 lady as an alternative of a depressing, 30-something yr outdated man. Heather, who’s surname we’ll hold imprecise for story spoiler causes, got here as a breath of recent air by the fog and proved to be top-of-the-line written and most relatable leads within the collection’ 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 rely 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 looking back staying true to the appear and feel of the 2 most revered entries within the Silent Hill collection wasn’t such a nasty factor.
3. Silent Hill 2 Remake
In contrast to Shattered Reminiscences which fully 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 unique, 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 Worry and Observer. This expertise evidently served the crew nicely for the reason that Silent Hill 2 remake is by far and away its greatest triumph so far, 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, virtually 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 degree of element utilized to the dwellings you shuffle by make them appear infinitely extra dank and miserable, if not fully disgusting at occasions. The usage of mild is especially sensible, and being pressured to discover each inch of the Toluca Jail space in restricted bursts of illumination due to failing circuit breakers makes for some of the frantic and scary sequences the collection has ever seen. Or certainly, not seen, since so lots of its horrors are rapidly plunged into blackness.
Add in some superior voice appearing and a terrifying soundscape from Akira Yamaoka that may 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 – some of the dread-inducing locations within the historical past of survival horror.
2. Silent Hill
Take a splash of Stephen King, a splash of David Lynch, a flash of Francis Bacon, and filter all of it by the Japanese cultural lens of developer Group Silent, and you’ve got the twisted and really terrifying journey by the unique Silent Hill. Stepping away from the sometimes campy, B-movie type 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 leap scares, and establishing the tone for a collection that, at its finest, is one way or the other extremely uncomfortable but completely enthralling.
In contrast to 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 atmosphere rendered completely in 3D. Remarkably, this meant that the collection’ signature darkness and oppressive fog have been really borne out of a have to 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 collection so far.
Out of your first steps as Harry Mason coming into the eerie small city looking for his misplaced daughter, Silent Hill assaults you from all sides with its genuinely unsettling nothingness, and the worry 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 tug gamers into new depths of depravity and despair…
1. Silent Hill 2
The unique Silent Hill might have established the collection’ 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 lately widowed James Sunderland and set us on a tortured tour by his personal non-public hell, one crawling with terrible apparitions that symbolised his more and more decaying psychological state and the struggling of the folks round him.
Whereas the unique Silent Hill targeted totally on the corrupt spiritual practices of an area 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 this planet 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 is perhaps 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 some of the iconic antagonists within the collection’ historical past, if not survival horror generally. There are few enemies as shit-your-pants scary as Pyramid Head, an intimidating and unstoppable tormenter who stalks Sunderland at a number of levels by 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 taking a look at it, this pointy-headed predator’s efficiency was diluted considerably by subsequent appearances in weaker instalments similar 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 collection, and is due to this fact the plain alternative for the primary slot on this record.
And there we now have it: the 9 finest video games within the Silent Hill collection. Did your favorite make our record? Tell us what we forgot within the feedback.
Tristan Ogilvie is a video producer on the IGN opinions crew, based mostly in Sydney, Australia. He has over 18 years of expertise masking video video games. When he would not have a controller in his hand, Tristan is happiest taking part in guitar, taking pictures, or watching cricket.