Silent Hill and true terror

I can't claim to be an expert on the brilliant survival horror franchise known as Silent Hill (and often referred to as "holy shit, what was that noise?"), as I have only played the third game and a little bit of the second. But as my interest towards the series grows, one certain thought keeps lingering on my mind: the game should try giving up the weapons entirely.

Let's face it: the action, while not that bad, has never been the franchise's strongest point. And when its biggest competition Resident Evil introduced the new, action-centered gameplay and smoother control in RE4, it made Silent Hill's combat seem awkward and slow in comparison.
However, what makes Silent Hill truly stand out is the way it manages to scare you. It's hard to shake away that disturbing feeling when you're walking down a corridor with the flashlight as your only guide, watching blood stains on the walls and wondering if that noise you're hearing is merely a sound effect or an approaching monster. Not to mention all the rooms and events which have a single purpose; to get your heart pounding.

But no matter how you view it, everything is just a tad less scary when you have a shotgun in your hand. Having to run away defenseless, on the other hand, can make you panic no matter what the situation, as Clock Tower for PS1 taught us. Although most of the game took place in broad daylight and the visuals were nothing like what you see these days, running away from a slow-moving man with scissors managed to freak us out badly.
I believe that kind of fleeing would fit the world of Silent Hill perfectly, and make it more realistic, too - what are the chances that you would find firearms and ammo lying around in a hellhole like that? And even if you did, a lot of people wouldn't know how to use them and most likely all of us would be too afraid to do anything else than run.

Taking away the weapons wouldn't take away all the action, of course. It would just be replaced with another form of defense; dodging and running. Dodging the attacks of the enemies could especially be made fun by the right kind of controls. And it could change boss battles, where most people use their collection of bullets anyway, into puzzles of a kind. Instead of killing them straight-forwardly, the player would have to trick the enemy into hurting itself or make it fall of a cliff, for example.

I'm not saying the whole series should take a weaponless direction, but it would be interesting to see at least one installment based around the idea.

- TM