If you want to play the greatest horror games of all-time, play the Silent Hill games. Created by Keiichiro Toyama and developed and published by Konami, this late-90's video game horror franchise has done more for the genre than any game before or after it. Whether it be it's disturbing themes, nightmare inducing lore or it's classic monsters that are truly sickening.
This game has inspired so many horror game classics -- and while many have picked up where the game left off in 2014 with P.T. -- there's still nothing like Silent Hill. Today we're going to rank some of the best monsters the series has given us.
10 Abstract Daddy (Silent Hill 2)
There isn't just one single thing that has kept Silent Hill so great even after all these years, but if there's one many fans gush over it's the series' mature themes. In 20202 "Abstract Daddy" may sound more like the username of a Reddit user, but Silent Hill 2 fans know how dark the meaning is behind this boss.
Angela Orosco is a character you meet in the second game and as you discover more about her past you find out she's a rape victim. So when you run into Abstract Daddy you put the pieces together and see a mangled body on top of another and can put the pieces together from there.
9 Pyramid Head (Silent Hill 2)
Let's get this horror icon out of the way -- because he truly is one of the greatest video game characters ever designed -- but he's too popular to surprise anyone. Design alone Pyramid Head is one of the most badass Silent Hill monsters.
Monster designer for Silent Hill 2, Masahiro Ito wanted to make the creature less human by hiding its face. He realized that a mask wouldn't be enough to make the monster alien enough so he instead opted to further the idea by giving Pyramid Head, well, his iconic head. The rest is history, so go play Silent Hill 2 if you want him to traumatize your life.
8 Asphyxia (Homecoming)
Silent Hill: Homecoming is often seen as one of the weaker games in the series, but boy did it have some good monsters. The monster in a painful manifestation of Margaret Holloway's memories of her daughter Nora; and are meant to resemble the gruesome way in which she died by suffocation (the resemblance in both name and appearance).
The creature is just such a wonderfully terrifying design as it represents a human caterpillar (or centipede for you weirdos) and pays homage to the catapiller from Alice in Wonderland, Nora's favorite book as it's later shown. All-in-all a fantastic monster, and a reason to play through the mess that is Homecoming.
7 Twin Victims (The Room)
The Twin victims are enough to get you to turn off Silent Hill 4: The Room, remove it from your disk tray and rethink all the life choices that have brought you to his moment. Much like the Boys of Silence from Bioshock Infinite they mostly stay to themselves unless provoked, but that doesn't mean that they aren't absolutely terrifying to encounter.
Plus they have this weird whisper they keep throwing at you in the game while they point towards protagonist Henry Townshed like he's the last cookie in the jar that they just made claim to. They represent antagonist Walter Sullivan's seventh and eight victims, twins Billy and Miriam Locane.
6 Insane Cancer
Insane Cancer are just the worse -- and that's not only due to its repulsive, obese and puss-spouting body -- but also because they are a manifestation of something very sinister. These abominations represent cancer itself -- a sickly bag of filth whose only job is to spread corruption in the world of Silent Hill.
Even worse they attack by throwing themselves onto our protagonist, Heather mason. Can you imagine this blobby thing just sinking all it's weight onto you, just to be sucked into its rotten mass where you will likely suffocate? Yeah, me either, so do the right thing and shotgun them into a pulp.
5 Valtiel (Silent Hill 3)
Valtiel is as demented as you can get in a horror game (although there are four more who can certainly give him a run for his money). He's supposed to be an angel, yeah believe that, the eyeless demon-looking freak show is a servant of God -- for the love of all things holy we really don't want to see Satan.
His name quite literally can be translated to "Attendant of God" and it's later shown that he can take other forms, such as Pyramid Head from the other Silent Hill games. Oh, and in the picture above he's readying "God" for his resurrection through a cult-like ceremony that can only be done justice in a series like Silent Hill.
4 Helen Grady (Momma From Origins)
Our protagonist in Silent Hill: Origins finds out a lot of messed up things about his mother. For starters she tried to kill herself and her son during his childhood with poisonous gas, claiming the mirrors told her to do it. Hey, we've all been there before right... right?!
Well, that stunt was enough to get her committed Cedar Grove Sanitarium where she never saw her son again. Until he revisited the location through Silent Hill and found his mother as an unrecognizable corpse-like monster locked inside an iron cage. The same cage she felt she was confined to when she was committed and locked away from her son.
3 The Wheelman (Downpour)
The Wheelman might not be the scariest looking of the Silent Hill creatures -- even though there really is something about monsters confined to wheelchairs that gets the hair raising from my skin -- we blame Outlast and the first five minutes of Deadspace 2. Regardless, Wheelman has one of the most tragic stories of any creature on this list.
Wheelman symbolizes Frank Coleridge, a corrections officer who was beaten and left in a vegetative state until he died. His daughter Anne Marie talks about him looking like the monster before he even died -- and that's her with him above -- sad stuff for sure.
2 The Baby (P.T.)
The greatest game that never was featured one of the most perplexing creatures to ever be seen in a Silent Hill game. Resembling the baby from the film Eraser Head, this creature left a permanent image in the minds of all who viewed it. The baby is constantly crying to remind you of the constant agony, but you'd be too if you were an eyeless, crippled creature with its heart beating out of its chest.
It's something that can't be imagined and it's bringing up all those terrifying emotions while playing P.T. just thinking about it. It's theorized that it's the lovechild of the ghost in the demo, but we'll never know for sure.
1 Mary (Silent Hill 2)
The first Silent Hill is a good game in its own right -- but don't get it twisted -- Silent Hill 2 cemented the series' legendary status and it's final boss Mary has a lot to do with that. Mary Shepherd-Sunderland is the wife of our protagonist James Sunderland; we're shown that the two had a great time together, even vacationing to Silent Hill at one point.
But things went bad when Mary was diagnosed with a terminal disease that wrecked the final months of her life before her husband, James euthanized her. Boy was this such a crazy twist back in its day and it made for one of the most emotional boss fights and endings in any game ever.