Grange Hill, more like. No, not really.

Scarier than a noise in the... Hang on, did you hear that?
Ben Vost

Resident Evil? Bananas in Pyjamas, more like. Silent Hill will tickle your adrenocorticotrophic cortex like no other game. We've spent many a long hour nervously peering around the next corner of the misty streets of Silent Hill (where the game's set, logically enough) and have been deliciously terrified throughout.

The game's look is highly Metal Gear Solid-y (although it was developed by a completely separate team, innermost workings of Konami fans) but even better than that is the sound. From the incidental music of seeping dread - you just know you're not in a good place - to your radio emitting static to warn of nearing monsters, it's precisely unsettling. This is game polish at its shiniest.

It's hard to know what's going to come next in Silent Hill, because so much of it is bafflingly ungraspable. Right from the start you're kept off-balance. The intro sequence shows a motorbike cop zipping past you on the road to Silent Hill. A little later, you drive past her crashed bike, before shockingly getting in a smash yourself. Your daughter goes missing. You find the streets leading back out blocked by what appears to be severe earthquakery. Wandering into a dark alleyway, you're attacked by mutant zombie children - yup, monster children: Silent Hill really pushes game horror - but just as all seems lost, the motorbike cop springs in to save you.

And then she leaves you alone in the town.

And all this in the first ten minutes.