*heavy SH1-3 spoilers*
Following my previous post, I've been replaying the first three Silent Hill games and I've gotta say, my judgement was wrong. The first game scared me a lot as a kid, but replaying 2 has made it clear that it's the scariest game ever made. The environments are less grossly visceral and much more sombre than those in 1 and 3, but I feel like that works out better for the horror. There's more of a sense of connection, even the otherworld of the second game is so similar to the quote-unquote normal world that it's difficult to tell, at points, which you're in. In fact, it seems to not be a binary thing, or even a linear scale, but simply an unpredictable distortion fuelled by some sort of unexplained malevolent force.
The intense otherworld of the third game feels unrelated to the normal environments such that it feels like an over-the-top level in a dark action game more than a horror setting. The otherworld is entirely a binary thing, something that either is or isn't there, and the transitions are always discrete. It simply doesn't have the same level of consideration. The otherworld is explicitly the result of the demon inside of Heather, who is awakened by Claudia. There is no mystery.
The first game still has its own value. It was the first of its kind, a fully-3D horror game with a psychological twist, and they did a very good job with the graphics. The industrial soundtrack might be my favourite, it fuels paranoia with its constant activity and suggests a mechanism behind the world, something that is mirrored by the industrial theme of the otherworld, especially in the central Silent Hill otherworld. The use of dreams and loss-of-consciousness mean that it's unclear whether what you're experiencing is real, or which world is real. The overall story is more compelling than in the third game in concept and you are required to complete a completely optional investigation quest in order to discover the truth, something that I still wish had been repeated in the following games.
I love this series, and after playing the three in the last week (they take around 2 hours each if you skip cutscenes and rush), I'd rate the series as such: 2>>1>3>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>4
Don't even get me started on 4