Interesting this thread came up as I just played throught Restless Dreams on the Xbox a matter of weeks ago. I agree with everything the OP said. Before I go into it, I must say that while I still intend to play through the rest of the series in hope of experiencing something positive, SH2 felt extremely overrated to me. I have played through the original as well and I had similar feelings about both games. I guess its just me but the story didn't make all that much sense to me. I do like the direction of the cutscenes and the music, though. The gameplay is just boring. For both Silent 1 and 2, the only thing about the gameplay that really amused me was the fact that the low visibility and eerie sound effects made me feel a little tense walking around, but thats about as scary as it got. The enemies and combat? BORING! Like you other guys here, I wonder which designer made the bone-headed decision to not use an on-screen mini-map or at least make the map screen transition very quick. It was so annoying having to wait 3-5 seconds every 30 seconds to bring up the map, then another 3-5 seconds to resume play. Its probably just me but I don't really care for the riddle-based puzzles. They ended up annoying me more than anything. I remember all the excitement and fuss over this game when it first came out years ago. Maybe it just hasn't aged well but I litterally felt underwhelmed throughout my entire experience with the game. I also quite litterally nearly fell asleep on more than one occasion because the gameplay was so boring to me. Again, I still fully intend to play the rest of the series because I do like the cinematics and musics and maybe I just have yet to truly discover the beauty of the series, but Silent Hill 1 and 2 did nothing special for me. I've had loads more fun with the Resident Evil and Fatal Frame series (easily the most scary i've experienced thus far). VMan

A Fatal Frame fan. I played a demo of either FF 1 or 2 (I forget which) and the photo based gameplay didn't work for me. I'd rather beat something down with a hammer than Kodak it to death.

As for RE, its a good series that mainstreamed survival horror games (anyone that claims it invented them is unfamiliar with the original Alone in the Dark which RE1 stole shamelessly from). I really, really, really hated the cinematic cameras though. Walking into a zombie who is offscreen but two feet in front of my character (and conversely, sometimes being forced to retreat in seach of a good camera angle) is just plain bad game design. I think RE is more shock action (the really great moments are when the zombies the other zombies had been feasting on gets up, the dogs jump through the window and a tyrant busts through a wall) than survival horror though.

For that reason I was less shocked and horrified than many by RE4 (which isn't any more action heavy than its numbered predecessor, RE3 and is only slightly more action heavy than RE2) which improved the camera, picked up the pace, and boasted more interesting stages than its predecessosr.

SPOILER ALERT

I don't get scared when watching horror games or horror movies, but I do kind of emphathize with the characters (that's what made the Sixth Sense such as awesome movie for me, and why I yawn through a lot of what some people consider horror such as Friday the 13th or The Devil's Rejects). James of SH2's realization that he murdered his sick wife, putting an end to the painful cycle she was going through (begging him to stay one minute because she doesn't want to die alone, driving him away the next because she didn't want him or anyone else to see her wasting away, begging for death one minute, clinging to life other minutes) was really, really huge. And then there was the scene where James found the massive creature attempting to smother or maybe rape Angela and her subsequent breakdown (though all of the scenes featuring Angela, including her last, were really well done). And any and every scene with Pyramid Head was disturbing.

Unlike other games in the series, Silent Hill 2's strength is not its gameplay (the beauty of most of the SHs is the fact that the character's clumsiness with weapons, lack of ammo and strength/number of enemies makes combat something one doesn't want to engage in on a regular basis) but the story is incredibly good. I like SH1 and 3 better, but SH2 (and Eternal Darkness) areas survival horror gamesI enjoyed despite their gameplay (the monsters are all really gruesome looking, but they weren't designed to kill).

END SPOILER

But if masters of unlocking, massive zombies with tentacles, lovestruck Stephen Dicaprino clones and kodak moments compromise your idea of survival horror, to each his own.