Brain Junkfood: What's Wrong with This? 2: Silent Hill 2

It says something about me as a horror fan when I find something wrong with the fundamental plot of, not just a Silent Hill game, but the "best" Silent Hill game. See, I'm in the minority that thinks that Homecoming was actually not a bad game.And that's funny to me too, because... I'll admit something that I probably shouldn't be admitting. It's the same plot as Silent Hill 2. The only difference is that Homecoming explained some of the dumbest plot twists that Silent Hill 2 had. Do I think that Pyramid Head should have been in it? Well... No, but he also shouldn't have been in the second if I'm technical about it.

See, Pyramid Head represented James' guilt, and would torture him by chasing him around. He also represented Alex's guilt and chased him around. The difference is that Alex's punished the people in Alex's life, in front of him, where as James' acts as exaggerated version if himself. There's also the big issue with the game that I have that pretty much everyone disagrees with me about. The fact that, you know... it's not fucking scary!


The premise of the game, in case you've been living under a rock in the deepest recesses of the ocean buried under the corpses of primordial fish and dinosaurs, is that James gets a letter from his dead wife. At first, James doesn't mention that she's dead, but when this comes up, the player starts going "What the fuck?" The smart player starts saying that ten seconds after they get out of the bathroom you start in. You have to get the map from your car, and walk to the next town. It gets better. It's a straight shot to the next town, of Silent Hill, so James goes down a straight road, gets distracted by a red sheet of paper (more on that soon), and walks further down the straight road into a cemetery where he tells Angela Orasco that he's lost. He got lost... walking in a straight line.

Ladies and gentlemen, clue # 1 that James Sunderland is a moron.

He goes into town, finds a radio and a weapon, and eventually goes into an apartment building. He runs into Pyramid Head, who is raping two monsters. This is supposed to represent James' sexual repression. There are so many things wrong with this, that I don't even know where to start. Let's just say this first off: Why is Pyramid Head punishing James by assaulting the monsters? Secondly, and most importantly, it really has very little to do with the plot.

This is my first of many rants about this game, but only one of three that may be in here. There are only three mentions in the game of James' sexual frustration. First is this, second is Angela being raped by her father, and the third is Maria saying that James wanted someone like Mary who wouldn't yell at him, and could satisfy him. Yet, every monster is either oversexualized (nurses), or taken to mean that it's sexual. Abstract Daddy, I can see. But the lying figure and flesh lips? Let's see, Mary was coughing up a lung, and the lying figure vomits on you. And the flesh lips look like morgue drawers. Hell, even Freud didn't think every cigar was a penis!

Also in the apartment is Eddie Dombrowski, who's a little bit special. He's vomiting in the apartments, but eating pizza the next time you see him. If the cast also represents aspects of the main character, then Eddie must be James' lack of intelligence.He's made fun of to the point where he starts killing those who insult him. As he tells James this in the end of the game, James calls him insane. Yes, James, call the mentally handicapped man with a magnum insane and expect him to rethink his idea.

Of course, he tries to kill you. Clue #2 that James is a moron.

There's a little girl who is pretty much inconsequential to the plot, if you ask me. Sure, she gives you a letter, but most of the time you're chasing her to get information from her about Mary. Then, there's Maria, Mary's doppleganger. James keeps calling her Mary, and this pisses her off. She's the last boss, and "the key" to getting the best ending in the game. The more you protect her, the better the ending. But, as with anything in this game, there's a catch.

At one point, you find Angela attempting suicide. She gives you her knife, and walks away. If you examine the knife, you lose ranking for your ending. I protected Maria, but looked at the knife, and got the worst ending. This confused me until I found out about this today.

Most games in the series have you saving at symbolic points. Here, it's a red sheet of paper. This is supposed to represent the letter you have, but think about it. James picks fights with gun-wielding madmen, gets lost going down a straight line, and can't even think of why Mary and Maria look the same. He confuses them. but he doesn't get that they're the same person. Maria is, like, evil Mary. By the time he figures this out, he has been tricked into getting locked in a monster filled room by an eight year old girl, challenged a challenged person to a gun fight, mentioned time and time again that his wife died (one time, in front of him), but is still believing she's alive, and has fallen down eight bottomless pits. Seriously, one section has so many bottomless pits, that even he asks if he absolutely needs to go down them? Oh, did I mention the wallet?

Yeah, I forgot about the wallet in the puke-and-poo filled toilet. He sees it and decides to take it. Not because of the money, but because it was in there with a combination to the safe. The safe has money, right? No, it has ammo. At this point, I was carrying 120 pistol rounds. I ended the game with 260 Pistol rounds and 100 Shotgun shells. That's not counting what I used. Dead Space gives you less ammo, and that's supposedly action-horror!

Perhaps what really pisses me off about Silent Hill 2 is the fact that everyone makes James out to be evil for killing his wife. Out of the context of the game, this makes sense, killing is wrong. This is a gray area. She's dying anyway, and in pain. She asks the doctors and James to kill her. He finally does it, and people immediately think her disease killed her. Even though she allegedly said that she didn't want to die (I've played the game twice, and only heard James say that she wanted to live in the bad ending), you have to realize that James didn't want to watch her suffer more than she didn't want to suffer. Let's think about this.

James kills her and forgets that she's dead in the span of three years, much less that he killed her. She yells at him, berates him, and tells her to kill her. He has the intelligence of a toddler. My point: James doesn't know right from wrong! This renders Pyramid Head useless. What would have been better was locking James up in his room without dinner.

Or, take it another way. He thinks he failed at killing her, and came to Silent Hill to finish the job. That means that he didn't believe the doctors confirming she was dead. Which also means that if she's alive, the doctors lied to him. Wouldn't he be trying to kill the doctors (since he's too stupid to sue for malpractice)? Chances are that he's trying to legitimately get to Mary because he loves her, not because he hates her. And, yet, that doesn't explain the big issue: how did James forget that he killed Mary?

In Homecoming, Alex blocked that he killed his brother because of both shock and the fact that he never fully grew up. That's not even implied with James (though it is possible). Instead, we just have to accept that he forgot that he killed his wife, and went looking for her, despite knowing that she was dead. The addition of Eddie doesn't help things either. Nor do the joke endings. Seriously, a dog is controlling everything? What the fuck?

It also bothers me how upfront the game is about what they're trying to portray. Towards the end, James wanders through a prison. Subtle, game. It's hard to make him seem evil when all you can see is a misunderstood man who cannot tell what he did was wrong.

If I had to pick a way to close this article, it would be like this. Silent Hill 2 placed the series on the map, but critics feel the new games are taking away from the game entirely too much. Homecoming had the same plot. Downpour dealt with imprisonment. The Room had Walter Sullivan, who in the second killed himself with a plastic spoon. Take this on a deeper level. Maybe they're complaining about those games because they kind of point out how this one isn't really the best in the series. I figure it's this way:

Eddie: James' stupidity.
Maria: James' inability to distinguish right from wrong (hence she looks like Mary as a stripper, but acts "loving")
Laura: The child he could never have/ his mentality
Angela: Abuse and/or not understanding sex
Pyramid Head: Not so much guilt as it is repressed memory
Mira the dog: Escaping reality
Holes in the labyrinth: the plot holes in this game.

In speaking of plot holes, next time, we'll delve into why time travel rarely works  they way we think. Continuity away!