Silent Hill: The Terror Engine , the second of the two inaugural
studies in the Landmark Video Games series from series editors Mark
J. P. Wolf and Bernard Perron, is both a close analysis of the
first three Silent Hill games and a general look at the whole
series. Silent Hill, with its first title released in 1999, is one
of the most influential of the horror video game series. Perron
situates the games within the survival horror genre, both by
looking at the history of the genre and by comparing Silent Hill
with such important forerunners as Alone in the Dark and Resident
Evil. Taking a transmedia approach and underlining the designer's
cinematic and literary influences, he uses the narrative structure;
the techniques of imagery, sound, and music employed; the game
mechanics; and the fiction, artifact, and gameplay emotions
elicited by the games to explore the specific fears survival horror
games are designed to provoke and how the experience as a whole has
made the Silent Hill series one of the major landmarks of video
game history.