The Silent Hill Connection Review

Released to celebrate Silent Hill’s big screen debut, this limited edition

PS2 box set collects all the games in Konami’s bloodcurdling series – aside from the PSOne original, sadly – to allow players to reacquaint themselves with the gory goings-on in an isolated American backwater.

While there’s no denying the series has offered some of the most potent scares in gaming history - surreal, psychological terrors that are more David Lynch than George A Romero – or that its subtle blend of cerebral puzzle-solving and hardcore violence is still a winning combination, the leaden pace and outdated graphics in Silent Hills 2 and 3 pale in comparison to Capcom’s glorious Resident Evil 4.

Surprisingly, the forth instalment in the series – The Room, released in September 2004 – actually fares worse than its predecessors; despite taking positive steps to correct Silent Hill’s shortcomings, The Room still feels like it’s re-treading old ground and delivering frights that aren’t nearly as shocking as the grunting ape-children you had to beat to death with a lead pipe in earlier instalments.

As an overview of a series that helped refine horror gaming in the wake of Resident Evil, The Silent Hill Collection is an important document in the history of video gaming. But if you want to see something really scary, stick with Resident Evil 4.