I was first introduced to Silent Hill by a friend who owned a Playstation. At the time, I was unaware that besides being a generous friend, he was also too scared to go it solo. Several all-nighters later, we were ready to give our verdict ' the game was sick, twisted, and a whole lot of fun!

The Xbox sequel, Silent Hill 2: Inner Fears closely follows the same premise set by the first game ' it is dark, sinister, and you will have a difficult time getting out alive! For the uninitiated, Silent Hill is a quaint little lake-side resort town that boasts some beautiful sights, fresh air, and a truckload of evil. Shrouded in thick fog, the town itself is alive and bent on destroying its visitors by using their own fears against them.

You are James Sunderland, and you have arrived in Silent Hill in search of your wife. Your mission is made more difficult by the fact that your wife has been dead for years, and that the town is crawling with nightmarish creatures that have alarmingly familiar anatomies. Needless to say, things get very bad very shortly upon your arrival ' and to reveal more would spoil the disturbing events that ensue.

Silent Hill 2: Inner Fears is essentially an adventure game. With this in mind, combat takes a backseat to the puzzle-solving and plot development. Therefore, if you are looking for a Resident Evil clone that will have you blasting away at zombie hordes with a heavy arsenal, you will be sorely disappointed. However, if you wish to be immersed in a terrifying world where survival means conserving ammunition, quick wits, and the occasional beating hellish creatures with a big stick, then this is the game for you.

The puzzles in the game are clever but not always logical. Before playing this game, it would not have occurred to me that a possible solution to a clogged drain pipe is a six-pack of juice cans. Fortunately, you are never given a lot of objects in your inventory at one time and you can usually work out the puzzles after some thought. If you are still worried, there is the option to change the puzzle difficulty between easy, normal, and hard.

As mentioned before, the combat in the game is fairly understated. You have some weaponry at your disposal that includes a steel pipe, a pistol and a shot gun. This fairly weak set of firearms, coupled with the limited ammunition and the poor visibility throughout most of the game, greatly adds to the urgency and the terror you will experience in the game. You will not always have to fight, but can quite easily run away from many confrontations. When you do flee though, beware that you do not run head first into another even more terrifying creature around the corner.

Visually, this game is a treat to watch. The environments are perfectly textured for a survival horror game. Every surface is decorated with an appropriate amount of rust and decay that makes the player squirm in discomfort. The torch light that you carry around with you on your journey is stunningly effective in transforming the already creepy locations into something probably reconstructed from your worst nightmares.

The character models look and animate well to convey their own personalities, perhaps with the exception of the protagonist. James appears to require a few more polygons and more appropriate textures to make him look alive.

The story is told through both in-engine cut-scenes and some pre-rendered CGI snippets. I find it sometimes distracting to have an in-engine scene cut to a brief CGI shot and then back. But this does not take much away from the engaging story.

There is a distinct lack of music throughout most of the game, and for good reason. The ambient sounds coming from all around you ' a squeaking floorboard, heavy breathing, and many other indistinguishable voices and sounds all merge together to make you dread your next step forward. This is certainly Dolby Digital sound at its best.

Early on in the game, I found myself standing inside the entrance of a small apartment, frozen in fear as the sounds of vomiting emanated from the next room. It took several minutes for me to compose myself enough to investigate the source of the sound. There are many moments like this in this game that make you think that perhaps you have bought more than you handle with this game.