Do we like them?

Do we like Pyramid Head?

A character from Silent Hill 2 (2001)

Our score: 2 out of 10. He's a relentless, terrifying stalker who hurts nearly everyone he meets. He does have a purpose, but we wouldn't back him.

Pyramid Head (the game's internal name is Red Pyramid Thing) first appears in Silent Hill 2. James Sunderland gets a letter from his dead wife Mary asking him to meet her in Silent Hill. He arrives to find the town shrouded in fog and full of monsters. Pyramid Head is among the first and most feared of them: he is tall, silent and faceless behind a metal pyramid helmet, and he drags a huge blade.

He was designed by Masahiro Ito as a monster with a hidden face. The game's designers describe him as a distorted memory of the town's executioners. He doesn't talk and he doesn't explain himself, so his looming, stalking presence is what makes him unsettling.

We score him low because, whatever he stands for, he does harm and no good. He is a threat to James and to other creatures, and he never helps anyone. Fans value him as a great piece of horror design, but as a character we'd back, he gets a 2.

Within the story he is read as a manifestation of James's guilt and need for punishment, an executioner that James's own mind has made. He is not a villain with his own plans. He is closer to a consequence that follows James around.