So a thing you should know about me is that I am crazy about Silent Hill and have been since day one (well almost, I was about a year late actually playing it myself, as a very toxic and deeply wrongbrained ex demanded he try it first and proceeded to get so violently angry when the grey children kept killing him right at the start that he threw the controller and console across the room…dear reader, you are supposed to die there, it is inescapable lmao). Yes, my fanaticism has resulted in some psychological strife over the years when new titles are announced and inevitably make no sense, are mid to awful, or look tantalizingly brilliant only to be pulled from the edge of our grasp and hurled into the void for no good reason. Fuck Konami, dear lord lol. Do I take it too seriously? Perhaps, and this shall continue.
..Ok fuckit, this wasn’t supposed to be a game review/rant post but some quick thoughts on the most recent Silent Hill offerings;
Short Message – Gorgeous creature design (seeing Ito back in the saddle had me frothing at the mouth) but otherwise largely forgettable.
Silent Hill 2 remake – Surprisingly good but it did kinda fall into the whole action gamey “run run aaaaagh so many monsters, brap brap, paniiic!” schtick, which I personally dislike in Silent Hill games. Panicky insta-death running sections work when it’s like the Borley Mansion in SH3, it was a terrifying anomaly that left you wondering if it would happen again, and the fact that it didn’t keep happening is what kept it more unsettling than tedious, or the Pyramid Head chase in 2 where Maria gets shanked, it had weight because it wasn’t happening throughout the game; they were proper “OH FUCK” moments. Brilliant acting though and I did appreciate some of the new puzzle elements, and of course it looked great.
Silent Hill f – Again fantastic acting and some astounding and well thought out enemy designs, albeit heartbreakingly reused to death, especially as mini-bosses.. Unfortunately I didn’t enjoy the meat of the story and a lot of the areas felt like the same thing over and over, and this is coming from someone who enjoyed the retreading in The Room lol. It felt Silent Hill adjacent but didn’t hit the marks for me and I really couldn’t get into the designs of the final bosses.
Silent Hill: Townfall – Very very very very pretty, surreal having Silent Hill atmosphere in a place so familiar, I admit I did laugh when you have to top up the ‘leccy meter by card lol, immediate flashbacks to my first flat. Plot-wise…I guess I liked it? It made sense as a Silent Hill story but again felt very detached from anything Silent Hill for me, if that makes sense? Dunno, need to go through it again, honestly I may just prefer Silent Hill being a single somewhat isolated place with cursed physics rather than a state of mind lol.
Ascension? Don’t even talk to me lol, what the hell are we doing here, they need to go to their damn room and think about what they’ve done lol. So stupid.
PT was fucking incredible and we were robbed, blessed be the folks who preserved and reverse engineered it so people can still experience it. Fuck Konami.
1, 2, 3, The Room and to a certain extent Origins remain the pinnacle for me, the latter wouldn’t have made the cut back in the day but the sheer amount of fucketry, pachinko and shenanigans since it came out pushed it into the VIP section lol. And yet, my love endures and I’m still waiting…in our special place.
ANYWAY, I didn’t come here to rant about games, I came here to play some goddamn dress up!
So without meaning to it seems that my most revisited costume theme for Halloween is Silent Hill, valid honestly, and seeing as I found the process pics from when I made my first one back in 2006 I figured their potatoey pixelly goodness should be shared and preserved.
My ex and I had swung by Sainsbury’s and they had these bigass cardboard ad displays on every checkout, my jaw must’ve hit the floor because there was barely a moment of concern for social awkwardness before I was bounding up to an employee asking if I could take one. She was like “Heck yes you can, but…why?” and I remember trying to explain it was for a costume of a horror character with a triangular head, an answer she seemed amused and satisfied by, but damn today I could just say “Cosplay!” and save a few sweaty minutes lol. Ah, the march of progress.
Seriously though look at this damn thing, it’s like whoever was designing the ads had Silent Hill fans who had been eating up the newly released film in mind, all I had to do was cut some panels out, slap on some foam card to strengthen the structure and add some detail, tape some tubes to it, insert wire mesh with sheer black fabric behind it, and paint the damn thing; NO MATH lol, all I had to measure was the panel rims, love it. I did also make the knife after much faffing about trying to make foam card thin but rigid enough to be almost the same height as me.. you couldn’t properly whack anyone with it but you could stand around looking cool just fine.
I also repurposed the skirt into a last minute Valtiel dress. We love a versatile flaying.
The comics are understandably kinda Marmite for a lot of people, but even when the plot wasn’t sublime some of the art was fantastic and some of the panels of Dahlia in particular (not the game or film version, yes it is confusing) are delicious, so I figured I’d attempt to recreate one of my faves (and my avatar on basically everything for yeeears lol). This one is definitely more of an instagram look, as most of it relies upon having the right light and my eyes closed, but I had fun with it lol. It was basically put together with craft box dregs; some cheapo liquid latex, tissue paper and false nails for the jaws (the pic here is from afterwards, so they look much more haggard than when I applied ’em), a lil flat marble and some glue for the necklace gem, the remnants of a black tab of Snazaroo and some eyeshadows. ….and excessive use of the darken tool.
And the most recent was one I had been thinking about doing ever since I saw some plastic baby face masks in a store some years ago but didn’t actually get around to until the mania finally gripped me; the twin victim from Silent Hill: The Room. I love it. It’s cumbersome, imperfect, yearns to snap in the middle and the sewing on the hood is remarkably bad, but dammit I love it lol.
Man, Silent Hill makes me so happy when it isn’t making me sad lol. Will I ever do a nurse? Nope, but I would totally do a truth puzzle wall man from The Room, underrated kings just hangin’ out. …ok yeah, if I can conjure up a pair of workable arm extensions this may actually have to happen next year.
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