Silent Hill 3

"Want a scary game? Here's one."

The game is far scarier than SH2 and SH, and the environments are gorgeous. The soundtrack is awesome as well. It is a bit different from SH2's music, except that it is a bit more soft rock-oriented. KCET has also added the songs with vocals in them. But overall, it is up to par with SH2's soundtrack, maybe better. Rather than having a story dealing with other characters' lament as in SH2, it follows the story of the original SH further, revealing more about the dark past of the town Silent Hill, and adding more than a tantamount of religious aspects than SH itself.

Story - It starts off with a character named Heather. She finds out that her past is somehow connected with a cult in Silent Hill. A detective named Douglas runs into her at times, and claims to know about her birth. He's creepy at first, but he grows on you. Sounds ominous, eh? The story is well weaved. They explain a lot of the religion of the cult members and do a great job with explaining the backstory to Heather and some other characters' past. What I didn't like about the game is that you go through buildings and not hear much of the story. You hear a little after like an hour, then progress, hear a little again after like going through more buildings. It seems like a clever ploy to get you to play the game some more and revealing more of its secrets. I can't really say anything more about the story except that it gets more deep and gruesome as you progress.

Graphics - The character models in this game significantly improved from the previous SH game, so have the environments. The characters are really smoothed out, not having that jagged feel in SH2 whenever you see the real-time graphics such as James's choppy looking complexion, especially the mouth. Maria's wasn't any better. Her self wasn't really smooth at parts like the elbows. But compared to those people, characters like Heather has finely detailed hair, face, and clothes. You can even see textures on their body not often seen in SH2, such as the freckles on Heather's face or the beard on Douglas's. But there are some parts in the game where Heather would run around in the mall or whatnot, and you could see some black spots near the end of the TV screen, which I guess is the game's problems with the loading. It only happened a few times in the game, but it didn't really bother me. When arriving at some areas of Silent Hill, you would encounter slow downs whenever Heather is running, sometimes making the game stop for a split second. That happens once in a while at times when trying to activate the elevator controls screen or opening a door. There are no FMV's in this game, but the improved graphics on the environment and the characters makes up for that. Come to think of it, the cutscenes in SH3 seem more detailed than the FMV's in SH2.

Gameplay - It's the same as SH2's, except they just changed a bit of Heather's running as in her running just a bit slower rather than significantly slower like James from SH2. You go through the same old thing, going through rooms and hoping that so and so room isn't locked, finding keys and backtracking, solving puzzles which appear less in SH3, but it's all good, and learning more about the fantastic storyline Konami has cooked up. The game focuses more on staying inside buildings, rather than running around outside, watching Heather slow down and take a breather (yeah, it's much faster just to keep running than to let her catch her breath). What's annoying are the parts whenever an enemy obstructs your path and you are in a situation where you want to save your ammo. The stun gun isn't very helpful whenever you're in a hallway with a giant enemy in the way, and is probably one of the game's most useless weapons. You shock it, it falls down, and it still blocks the path. You could use a melee weapon, but sometimes they get back up whenever you're attacking and hit you when you're in mid swing. There are a lot more monsters appearing more often to attack you, and some of them are damaging and have better AI than the ones in SH2. The voice acting has gotten better, except for characters like Vincent. His voice sounds forced and it seems like he's illiterate. There could be a reason why he talks like that, but other than that, I have no clue. Overall, the characters sound realistic, especially the scene where Heather goes back to her apartment.

Control - You have the same Silent Hill controls. Pressing up goes forward, back makes you take a step back, and left and right makes you turn. Basically the same as SH2's, except whenever Heather turns in place, it is like Resident Evil (GCN)'s turning. Whenever you hold down L2 to see what's in front of you, you cannot see where Heather is and also the camera stays in that fixed position as Heather runs, making it look awkward. Sometimes you cannot run right that way, and you have to run first and press L2 in order to see Heather and what's in front of you at the same time. In other words, L2 needs work. Heather can now reduce the damage to enemy attacks by holding square, and whenever Heather reaches the edge of a hole, she would teeter and regain balance.

Sound - If you were unnerved by the unpredictable sudden noises and background noises in SH2, there are more in this game. Heather would walk in some dilapidated hallway, and you would hear grotesque voices coming out of nowhere. For some people, they would want to leave the room as quickly as possible. The soundtrack can range from gloomy, melancholy, to even disruptive and haunting. There are times when you would see a conversation with Heather and Douglas and you would hear casual guitar music playing in the background and would make you think that this would be the type of music Heather would hear. At times, some of the music would be reminiscent of SH's soundtrack and would faintly sound alike. The addition of vocals in the songs adds a different feel to the soundtrack of Silent Hill. They are nice to listen to, and it gives you a different experience when playing SH3. As for the sound effects, they fit whatever it is, like the sound of walking on a sidewalk or running on metal floors.

Replay Value - Not much. There isn't much to go through in this game. Three endings (one of them of course is the UFO ending), new weapons to unlock, and if you missed any SH2 references, you can go play it some more to find them. There aren't any side-quests or extra items lying around. Now that I think about it, you get less items and more enemy encounters.

Anyway, Silent Hill 3 has what I consider the best storyline out of the other two Silent Hill games. It has better graphics with more details and smoother character designs, voice acting, and a soundtrack comparable to SH2's. SH3 seems like it has a bit of a different experience than the other SH's, not because you play as a girl, but you should just play it and the other Silent Hills yourself to see what I'm talking about. It would be a welcome addition to your survival horror collection. It is worth playing if you enjoy a convoluted storyline that delves deeply in insight, heavy doses of references to previous SH games, movies, and books, and reveals more about the world of Silent Hill and its religion.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 08/09/03