Silent Hill

Despite the years passing, the first “Silent Hill” is still the best in the franchise and arguably my favorite psychological horror game out there. Most probably the first horror videogame to actually focus on atmosphere rather than taking a showy B-movie approach like "Resident Evil". There is something about that town that no one could recreate in later reiterations, not even the original team members succeded. The fog obstructing your view, the industrial sound effects, the haunting music, the memorable characters, the convoluted yet coherent plot full of occult references. The jump scares and horrific bits are timed perfectly, rarely resulting in cheap tricks. The art direction just had a depth that its competitors could have only dreamt of. The gameplay itself is not so different from the first couple of “Resident Evil” games, but the narrative approach and unique atmosphere manage to make the difference. The focus is more on exploration and puzzles rather than combat, with weird item combinations and detailed locations to explore with your map in hand. There are multiple endings to either reward or punish the player for the amount of effort they put into the game, even if most of the conditions required to get the good ending were far from obvious.