Five years ago, when Silent Hill 0rigins was ported to the PS2, despite being pumped about being able to fight barehanded, it disappointed me so much that I didn't touch the series for years, save for Shattered Memories on the Wii in early 2010. Today, after a hiatus longer than the one I took from the Mega Man X series, but not as long as the one I took from the Resident Evil series, I started the first game with the intent to do several things differently.
The first thing I did was turn around and explore a bit at the start. Turns out the Health Drink doesn't appear in the wreckage of Harry's Jeep until after you wake up in the cafe, trying to enter the store triggers the sound of Cheryl's footsteps, the game won't let you leave the alley once you follow her into it and a dead end appears back through the gate once it shifts to the nightmare world.
But the biggest change I made was actually using the Kitchen Knife, without which the game wouldn't let me leave the cafe, incidentally. After gunning down several Demon Birds, I finally came across a Demon Dog and equipped said weapon, full knowing what I was in for. From 1999 to 2008, I'd always gotten the Steel Pipe ASAP, killing the two I'd passed on the way with it when returning, but this time, I navigated the entire section of Old Silent Hill I was in, gunning down Birds and knifing down Dogs as I went. By the time I finally picked up the Steel Pipe, I'd killed all twelve of the latter in the area and was down to my last (at the time) Health Drink, but this time, that weapon got the sendoff it deserved after all these years.
The Kitchen Knife: It's not much of a weapon, but that's what makes it so badass when you take down, I repeat, twelve Demon Dogs with it.
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