How a PlayStation Game Pulled Me through One of My Darkest Times
A video game proved to be more than just a good buy — it bolstered a 19-year-old’s mental strength to deal with isolation and depression.
Though it was originally released for the PlayStation 2 in September 2001, it wasn’t until the winter of 2016 that I actually sat down to play through Silent Hill 2. Living in a tiny one-room apartment with a heroin addict and a rock-bottom of personal depression, it’s a period of my life I’ll probably tell my kids about to scare them straight. Recently single in a new city, I had become an embarrassing wreck of emotional and physical problems. With a roommate that once smoked meth out of our smashed bathroom light bulb and regularly teetered on the brink of an overdose, our room felt like a psych ward in a submarine. After isolating myself from a group of beautiful friends and mentally dropping out of university, I spent my sentence in the hole by watching films, listening to unhelpful music and playing video games.
An interactive journey filled with every possible carpet sample of anger and sadness, it seemed like Silent Hill 2 had arrived in my life at just the point where it could be understood. Drawn to the Midwestern American town of Silent Hill after receiving a letter from his supposedly dead wife, the game focuses on the unassuming protagonist James Sunderland. An awkward, paranoid and slightly off-putting everyman, I reluctantly assumed the role of James as a vessel through the foggy streets and ruined buildings of the town. Obviously haunted, James must make his way through Silent Hill to discover the fate of his wife while dealing with Freudian monsters, emerging inner demons and other lost souls like himself.
Far more horror than survival, it quickly becomes apparent that nothing about Silent Hill 2 will be morally sound, no matter what the player does. A story of traumatic memory, emotional repression and dangerous sexuality, I don’t blame anyone who found the game to be ‘a bit too much’ and dropped out early on. But when you’re in a particularly grey period, like I was, living in a box with desires and memories becoming one and the same, sometimes all you can do is keep playing.
Although it may seem bizarre, sinking into miserable artistic works whenever we feel the blues is actually quite normal. Why listen to moody music, watch sad films or play frightening video games when we’re already experiencing negative emotions directly from our own lives? The answer is the power of catharsis through art. While it’s understandable to go reaching for something joyful or uplifting in times of low spirits, there are also many occasions when our lingering or oppressive negative feelings demand to be dealt with. We have to stomp around in our own little bitter swamp of depression before (hopefully) getting tired of it and moving on. In this particular time of my life, Silent Hill 2 served as the perfect chasm to hide myself in when many of my problems simply couldn’t be tackled head on.
While still featuring cinematic cutscenes like every other game of its era, much of Silent Hill 2’s story is told through the very town it takes place in. Streets and interiors are littered with sad little details, debated mysteries and dark metaphors that can often reveal more about the plot and characters than the in-game dialogue. Early on, the player can find a body slumped in front of a television inside an abandoned apartment. Though its face is hidden from view, the body bears a striking resemblance to James himself. With an apartment number the same as his previously ill wife’s hospital room, our trust in the very character we’ve assumed begins to uncomfortably dwindle. The monsters that James must face also follow the game’s suspicious pattern of showing, not telling. A cast of faceless nurses, crippled mannequins, flesh-covered beds, walking straitjackets and leather-bound butchers are each sexually suggestive as well as being indicative of the game’s larger focus.
It’s not until halfway through the game that we learn the truth about James’s arrival in Silent Hill. Sexually frustrated and emotionally battered by his sickly wife, we learn that she did not succumb to her illness but was instead murdered by him. Suffering from a mental breakdown and selective amnesia, James drives to Silent Hill unknowingly carrying his wife’s body in the trunk. Believing she has written him a letter after losing her battle with cancer, it’s not until later in the game that James comes to terms with his murderous actions. It’s a turbulent twist that ultimately completes the puzzle of everything we as the player have jut experienced. It becomes apparent that the torments of Silent Hill are all fabrications designed to torture James for the slaying of his wife. With everything the player has endured now having a sense of righteous justification, it’s hard for us to keep playing as James, let alone identify with him.
This sudden sense of personal betrayal at the hands of someone who had meant to be our righteous protagonist struck a deep chord with me. As a very socially inclined and outgoing person, to be suddenly hit with a wave of mental and physical problems in my first year living in a new city was devastating, to say the least. At the time, the only answer to these complications seemed to be complete social withdrawal from a group of wonderful new friends. With the sting of unexpected circumstance forcing me to behave in ways I normally wouldn’t dream of, this new feeling of self defeat was something that took me months to recover from.
With its static camera angles, dirty visual aesthetic and constantly claustrophobic environments, the world of Silent Hill relentlessly moves the player through an odyssey of haunting set pieces that all hint at moments of personal tragedy. ‘Close the blinds would you? I’m too hung over for this shit,’ my roommate would often say. Eventually the idea of natural light entering the apartment was abandoned, leading our tiny, broken-down living space to become just like an environment from the game I had become obsessed with.
In hindsight, simply talking to these people about what had been troubling me recently would’ve been met with a caring and understanding response. But to the tender brain of the nineteen-year-old male, opening up about embarrassing personal matters to your dorm-room buddies is easier said than done. Instead, I foolishly offered no explanation for my sudden disappearance into social withdrawal. When communication breaks down with a person or group, inevitably we begin to suspect the worst of the situation. ‘Would it be weird if I came back?’, ‘Have they forgotten about me?’, ‘Do they think I hate them now?’ Consumed by my own paranoia, it wasn’t until almost a year later that I managed to make amends and explain myself.
Although fictitious, sometimes a film or novel will draw parallels with our own lives that can touch a nerve and stir a genuine and embarrassing emotional response. While I’ve never murdered my wife or been to a haunted town, it was hard to deny my own emotional connection as I played Silent Hill 2 in this rough patch of my very short life. Waking up sometimes as late as 8pm, I spent a week or so playing the game, as my roommate would leave periodically in the night to go out and score whatever he could. Eventually beating the game, the rest of this era is mostly a blur of lying in bed and counting down the days until I could return to my home town for the holidays. On the day I moved my things out of Apartment 322 and gave back the key, I shook my roommate’s hand and told him I’d ‘see you when I see you’. I never did hear from him again, but whenever he crosses my mind I hope he got himself out of that terrible situation in the same way that I thankfully did.
Silent Hill 2 was a rare exception to the bad movies and corny records I was using to both distract and indulge myself; it gave me a sense of uncomfortable purpose. I had to see the game through, endure the horror and watch the credits roll. Not for bragging rights or the chance of seeing another plot twist, but because I just wanted it to end. I wanted my apartment lease to be up, to be away from my disturbed roommate, to be healthy again, and for James Sunderland’s torment to be over. Depending on the player’s actions in the final hour of the game, James’s ultimate fate comes down to two possible outcomes. The bad ending finds James unable to move beyond the darkness of his past and becoming trapped in the monstrously depressing world of Silent Hill for the rest of eternity. But in the good ending, we see James finally redeem himself of the past and escape his personal hell to live a better life.
We both got the good ending.
