Silent hill 1 is a great game,you must play it. But Silent Hill 2 is easily the greatest survival horror game of all time. The game is perfect.

SH1 is very good

but, be prepared for dated massively pixelated GFX ...

Skip 4 and perhaps Origins ("classic" gameplay, only so-so story), but for gods sake play Shattered Memories. Short of 2 it is the best in the series. That said, SH1 is awesome, sure the graphics are weak, but it still scares the shit out of me to this day. Brilliant!

Hmm some fair opinions- though I see it totally differently. Yes the puzzles and exploration were weak, I'll give you that. But the lack of the typical crappy SH combat seemed like a choice that should have been in implemented in SH1 way back in '99. Combat has always been a lowpoint of the series and dropping it or updating it seemed like a good choice. RE4/5 went the updating route and got lots of hell for it as did Homecoming. I think they made the right choice on that one.

They should have had the monsters roaming the levels though. But even without them the suspense of no ammo or weapons created fear in the way the haze did of earlier titles.

As for the broken mechanics of the running sections. I didn't have problems like some once I realized you actually have to do the motion on screen, not just a quick flick one direction or the other. I'll admit with the amount of lazy shovelware, spamming the controls is often the first way I try things.  But once you actually make the sweeping motions it works quite well (99%+ for me). As for the design of these sequences, they are take-it-or-leave-it. But yet again a carefull eye reveals the silliness of some of the comments I've read. For instance, many reviewers complained about getting lost. Apparently they missed the clear fact that large amounts of ice cover the proper door ways. I don't know if that was what you were refering to, but it's the critisism I hear the most about those sections and to me demonstrates an innattentive playthrough, just like the complaints about the fairly solid controls.

In the end ammo and controls were never a strongpoint of this series, and  even if you don't agree that they work well, its hard to argue that SH is all about the story. Something that IMO hasn't been done this well since SH2. Shattered Memories was the game SH1 should have been from the start. And yes I too was pissed about the lack of great puzzles.

I can see how opinions can vary, but calling this terrible makes me think you never gave it an honest shot in the first place.

Homecoming was an OK game, but was about as weak as they come in this series. The story was forgettable, the combat was terrible, and experience was totally un-SH in so many ways. It looked better than Origins, but was a less engaging experience. I don't agree with some that it looked bad though, it was quite visually appealing. A fun 5 hour romp but I struggle to remember much from my experience it was so forgettable. To go after Shattered Memories as before going after the RE4 styled Homecoming seems odd to me.

To each their own I suppose.

Yeah the hiding was hit an miss.I'm not sure if it was broken, but it was not implemented in a particularly meaningful way.  I didn't use it much myself. But like I said carefull observation will show that the correct path has way more ice around it than the wrong choices. Perhaps they should have made it clearer, but once you notice it the chases become really easy. To be fair it took me until the second instance to realize it. But it still surprises me that an pretty clear indicator like that was missed by so many reviewers professional or otherwise.