The small village where I was born and spent the majority of my young life used to come across to me as a pretty creepy place to be at night. Apart from being the centre of the universe for the elderly, strange mists used to just form in the middle of roads for no good reason, and weird concrete constructions jutted out at all kinds of angles. It would go from being a hive of activity during the daytime to some sort of ghost town at night, with barely a soul around. I actually grew out of being wary of all this some time ago, but recently I’ve gone back to noticing it.

Silent Hill 2 is to blame. Never before has a game made me so wary of strange, hauntingly quiet places or bizarre fogs. Bits of static on radio and television shows now have me expecting some kind of forlorn, disfigured creature to come lurching around the next corner. How is it that a seemingly simple adventure title has managed to give me such a brain judder?

Simply put, Konami have designed Silent Hill 2 to do exactly that. The whole game is a mind warping rollercoaster plunging straight downwards into the lead character’s increasing despair and isolation. You play the part of James Sutherland, an otherwise normal chap who has come to the town of Silent Hill to try and find his wife Mary. Things start giving strange sensations as soon as you are told that Mary died two years ago, and that James has only just received a letter from his deceased other half summoning him to the town.

At its very core, the game plays out as fairly traditional puzzle adventure title. As you guide James through Silent Hill you’ll need to pick up items, battle strange monsters and solve riddles to unlock doors or gain new stuff. It is rather akin to a slower Resident Evil, although the lack of pace does nothing at all to harm the game at all. James is a very vulnerable figure indeed, and with a meagre selection of melee weapons and a few handguns with scarce ammo drops littered around, caution is your best friend.

This becomes especially apparent when you start encountering the monsters that inhabit the town. Taking the form of bizarre, staggering mannequins made of human flesh, each will attack unrelentingly and will need a good few doses of pain to take care of. Early in the game James realises that his little pocket radio, normally silent, begins crackling with static any time a monster is close by, and you’ll quickly begin to get used to the tingling sense of fear and anticipation whenever the radio begins to make some noise a few metres away from a darkened room or unturned corner.

To further darken the atmosphere and present a sense of the surreal, a graining filter has been added to the game to give the graphics a washed-out and faded appearance. Fog stretches far into the distance when James it wandering about, with the mist concealing a host of nasty surprises for the player to encounter as he delves deeper into it.

During the game, James certainly has a lot to delve through. From a battered, empty apartment block to an utterly horrid hospital seeping with rust and blood, each location is rife with a sense of emptiness and pain. This isn’t just confined to the indoor sections either - whilst strolling outside, strange smears of blood paint the roads and broken pieces of woodwork and metal lay scattered on the ground.

As if all this wasn’t enough, the game throws all sorts of sounds at you to throw you off kilter. Monsters groan and scream with frightening ferocity when they attack you, whilst the classic horror staples such as bumps, crashes and clangs all make appearances at various well-timed spots. Despite that, one of the most striking elements as far as the sound goes is just how quiet it can all be at times. Most of the exploring takes place without any sort of backing music or theme, something that adds to the feeling of isolation immensely.

I’ve purposefully tried to steer clear of the story throughout this review, mainly as it is such a deep, complex one that I couldn’t even start to explain its intricacies even if I tried. There are plenty of twists and turns for you to take James through, with a wide selection of unique characters who each have their own troubles. The game also offers six different endings for the game which are triggered dependant on doing various things during the game, so there’s a good dose of replay value packed in too.

Silent Hill 2, then, is a great way to spend a dozen or so hours. As a piece of psychological horror it is unparalleled, serving up a chilling story and setting to absorb the player. What’s even better news for fans of the horror genre is that Konami seem to be content to head in their own direction, offering players a unique experience. With the jump in hardware capability and Silent Hill 3 already in the works, the future looks great for those who enjoy scaring the living heck out of themselves.