The Silent Hill games are still on my backlog, and I'll definitely check them out one day. One of the scariest and most unnerving levels of any game on gog atm is, I think, The Cradle from Thief 3. Unfortunately by now that level has been hyped to death so I don't think it still has the same impact. However walking in there the first time having never heard of the level and not knowing what to expect was one hell of an experience. It's the first time I decided not to fully explore a level because the suspense was killing me :P

There's one series still out there that I hope will provide the ultimate, like you put it, "urge to shut the game off and walk away" experience. The Fatal Frame series.

I think it actually retained quite a lot of the original Doom's spirit.
The original was a straightforward action game with horror elements. Doom 3 wasn't much different in that regard, it just put more emphasis on the horror aspect. At the end of the day, it was a fairly direct FPS in which you shoot zombies and demons, while trying to find a key to the next door. Compared to a lot of its contemporaries, Doom 3 was an extremely streamlined game.
Sure, the environments certainly were much smaller and less maze-like than in the old days, but they weren't completely linear, either.

To me, it definitely feels more faithful to the gameplay of Doom and, to a lesser degree, Doom 2 than the likes of Serious Sam or Painkiller, which are often hailed as the "true" successors to classic 90s shooters, enen though they have very little in common with those games.

Silent Hill does not have the most lasting gameplay, but the stories are still some of the best in this medium. Even if you don't find it scary, you will find it tense and thought provoking. SH4 had the only escort mission that I ever cared about in a game because it elicited the rare trait of empathy instead of just sympathy.

Absolutely, and yes I remember reading about how Serious Sam was reviving the feel of the old fps days, or something like that. Nothing was like that, not Doom, not Wolfenstein, not Quake not Duke3D. Perhaps people felt that way because Serious Sam's gameplay was pretty mindless and straightforward for the time, unlike several of its popular contemporaries. So by saying that Serious Sam was a true successor to such games, they were indirectly overstating the simplicity of those old fps games, because they remember them being far more simple than they they actually were.

Frankly I think that it's not the stories themselves that are so brilliant but rather the delivery and everything else about the presentation, the atmosphere, the aesthetics and the lasting impressions they provide. Truth is that the games would still be pretty great even without the cutscenes and notes explaining the story. Not saying that the stories aren't great or the characters superbly developed, they certainly are and work perfectly in the games, the writers are undoubtedly geniuses and created something that can still be discussed and analyzed fifteen years later, but I don't think that that's what makes the old Silent Hills some of the most remarkable games ever made. And I think that the same stories with the same characters could have easily ended up completely trashy if the presentation and execution had been worse. Also the plots are largely delivered in such a subtle and confusing manner that many players fell in love with the games without even really understanding them. I know that I totally didn't get what they were about the first time I played them, I only really understood the most basic facts and wasn't even sure I got those right - I was like "I have no idea what's going on right now but I'm loving it!", like when you first dig a band for the music and only understand the lyrics and their true meanings much later.

I'm also sure that it's not the plot that made you care about Eileen in SH4 but all the visual and acoustic impressions that made you connect with her emotionally. Who cares about the 21 Sacraments and the reasons Walter wants to kill her? It's the way that girl looks, moves and talks and the situations you've seen her in that made you care about her and it would have worked even if the story had just been about a jealous ex-boyfriend or something.

Presentation can often make up for or bring the qualities inherent with the design for sure. It all came together in SH"s case.

As for Eileen I would have rage quit like a boss if it turned to be something as shallow as an ex boyfriend. That would totally not have worked, I bet my right testicle on it.

I have to mention
Blade&Sword also.

Of course, but up to that point you still would have cared. ^^

Somewhat related, yesterday I finally fired up Silent Hill 2 again and for the first time in years I can fully enjoy it thanks to this rather new patch. Most of the stuff it does could already be achieved manually via some tinkering but this one makes it super convenient and most importantly it speeds up the screen transitions (which used to get slower the higher the screen resolution was). Also the widescreen support seems better here than with the previous resolution patcher, only the FMVs seem stretched (but more about that later). And it doesn't force the US version upon you which is good for people who want to use foreign subtitles. There's only a single texture issue right at the beginning of the game which I've been having for years but to my knowledge it's exclusive to a single wall so it doesn't really matter.

I've also discovered that someone who knows shit about video editing has re-encoded the best versions of all cutscenes from all platforms (and even other sources like making of DVDs) for use with the PC version. I haven't downloaded them yet but according to the description they are apparently meant for use with widescreen resolutions. I'm not gonna link to them, though, because that pack seems to be legally questionable, it even disappeared from a pirate torrent tracker "at the owner's request" (which is kinda ridiculous considering that all of the cutscenes can be watched on YouTube without any problems :P).

I should check that out. I still have my PS2 and Xbox Copy but the PS3 broke and the Backwards Comp for the 360 is absolute dogshit. There is a persistent lighting bug and at the end it just loops audio and cuts some out.

If GOG could come out with the directors cut I would be so happy.

I really liked Gothic 3 when everybody hated it. I have only played the game in vanilla and now Im going to play it again with the community patch.

I actually agree. Serious Sam and Painkiller are actually not much like Doom 1 and Doom 2.

Well, Serious Sam and Painkiller are certainly more inspired by Quake, particularly Painkiller feels like a spiritual successor to Quake IMO with its dark and abstract level and monster design, and especially the multiplayer always felt like it was built upon Quake's deathmatch experience. I never quite saw the relationship between Serious Sam and actual 90's shooters as its entire gameplay was based on its huge scale which had little in common with 90's shooters. Only Serious Sam's multiplayer is somewhat comparable to Quake but that can be said about zillions of shooters which had deathmatch multiplayer added just because. Painkiller's multiplayer on the other hand was clearly designed in hope it could become the next big competitive shooter, IIRC it even managed to briefly become an official discipline in the World Cyber Games.

I know feel ready to officialize the fact that I like so-called "walking simulators" in general.

Like what,Gone Home?

Yes. As a prejudice. I haven't played it, but I expect to like it just because it belongs to that genre (if it's a genre).

But, for instance, I am coming to terms with the fact that, deep down, I adored "Ether One".

Generally, all the descriptions of "walking simulators" ("you just stroll aimlessly through a given 3D-recreated environment, and occasionally find bits of stuff") tend to enthousiasm me. And actually, I may have spent a lot of time playing "Morrowind" as a walking simulator (what I used to call my 'tourist' approach to "Morrowind").