Silent Hill 3

The Good
INTRODUCTION: If Muhammad doesn't go to SILENT HILL...
Puzzled, Heather steps in the amusement park.
"Where am I?"
Suddenly she notices her pocket knife in her hand.
The amusement park is a grim scenario. The floor seems to be made of a rusty grating standing over bottomless pits. A thick mist swirls and engulfs everything in the distance.
Inside a metalic cage, held by chains, there's a human body covered in dirty bandages. The image somehow awakens distant memories in her head.
Heather enters a door, and sees a dog... or is it a dog? The flesh of the animal seems to be corroded beyond the point a living tissue could probably sustain. The animal seems to start opening its mouth —instead, its head splits side to side. The dog is about to jump on Heather, when a huge monstrosity of a silouhette approaches her from the darkness. A steel blade rips through her flesh.

Heather wakes up confused.
Slowly, she begins to remember where she is. The dinner. The shopping mall. How long has she been sleeping? Dad must be worried.
She heads to the telephone booth and calls her father. "I'm coming home now".
When she hangs up, a man in a trenchcoat approaches her. He introduces himself as Douglas, and claims to be a detective, but he looks more like a crazy bum. He knows Heather's name, though, and he asks her to give him thirty minutes, as someone wants to talk to her. "It's about your birth", he says.
The sentence seems to have some effect in Heather, but she just tries harder to get rid of the man. She walks away, and as he follows her, she violently confronts him. "Do I have to scream?!".
The man backs up. "Fine. I'll be waiting here."
Heather enters the ladies' room and exits through the window into a narrow alley by the mall. Anything to avoid that creepy bum. When she's about to reach the street, she finds her way blocked, so she re-enters the mall.
It's only now that she notices the place looks totally empty. How late is it?
Only a boutique is open, so she enters. There's a handgun laying on the floor.
Suddenly, Heather notices she's not alone: There's a man laying on the floor a few meters away from her. The creature that just slashed her in her nightmare is chewing on the man's face.

SILENT HILL 3 is a horror/survival game. It's the third installment in a series considered as the answer —as well as the main contestant— to the RESIDENT EVIL series, the toughest kid of the block for some years.
Saying horror/survival should require no further explanation. This is a massively popular genre, albeit mostly between console-players: Third-person perspective where the camera doesn't necessarily follow the character, but instead it takes its own way with cinematic shots, puzzle-solving, some fighting, and above all, a gripping horror atmosphere.

THE GRAPHICS: She's got the look
Hands down, the first thing that draws your attention —no, the first thing that shocks you about SILENT HILL 3 is the quality of the graphics. I thought it couldn't probably get any better than the already impressive SILENT HILL 2, but this game proved me wrong.

Not only the poly count is as high as to represent perfect human bodies, but the textures for both characters and scenario take full advantage of hardware pixel shaders like nothing ever did before, specially the textures for characters' skins. You can see details down to a microscopic level: the shading, the wrinkles, the hair, the eyelashes, the glowing in the eyes... you can see the god-damned pores in characters' faces, man!!!
Phew
You can take a glimpse at the visual magnificence of this game in the SCREENSHOTS right there, but trust me when I say even that even those don't make justice to the game: you are missing half the shock until you see these in motion.
As with graphics and textures, so far I thought the model animation in SILENT HILL 2 was just as lifelike as it gets. Anyone who has seen the infamous Room 312 scene simply can't argue with this.
However, turns out SILENT HILL 3's model animation looks EVEN MORE REAL! Can it get more real than reality? I don't know, but it certainly looks so.

Now, background graphics. As you probably know one of the most distinctive events in this series is a constant shifting between daytime, in which the world is almost devoided of all population (other than some twisted demonic monsters) and a dense swirling mist covers everything; and something called The Otherworld, where the mist is replaced by a deep darkness, the number of monsters grow massively, their appearance turns more terrible, and everything seems to be corroded, derelict, like the place was deserted for hundreds of years. Chairs, tables, beds, and what all not is replaced by items designed by a decorator Satan himself fired for his bad taste. As the game progresses, the floors, ceilings, walls, and even the streets are replaced by rusty iron grating.
Daytime graphics really couldn't get better than it was in the previous game, and yet some points DO look more detailed, but the real deal is the Otherworld. Not only we spend WAY more time in it than we ever did before, but the graphics are UNCANNY. The rusty grating, the bottomless pits, the corroded walls —it's all back, it's all better, and it brought some company: Sometimes the walls pulsate like if you were navigating the entrails of an animal, sometimes walls bleed, sometimes the walls are slowly eaten by some kind of crawling darkness.
Words can't even begin to explain it, you have to SEE it for yourself... (hey, it worked for The Matrix, didn't it?)

SOUND, MUSIC AND ATMOSPHERE: Advice for the faint at heart
Unlike SILENT HILL 2, this third chapter is a direct follow-up to the first SILENT HILL. This is true not only story-wise, but also atmosphere-wise.
Whereas the second game of the series was a melancholic and heart-grinding love story, and it wasn't as straight-out scary as the first one, SILENT HILL 3 picks up the flag of the first game, building the same kind of hardcore pure-horror atmosphere, and even raising the bar to a new level.

For one thing, the kind of sound effects of the first game are all back and improved, as well as the strange environmental music a la Angelo Badalamenti.
When stalked or confronted by an enemy, the soundscape will turn into a mix between howlings, chains dragging, yelling, our good old static-emitting radio, and all kinds of tension-building noises, that will raise up the hairs of the back of your heart. As it happened in the first game, it will be hard to tell what is sound and what is music, yet one thing is for sure: the mix will create a breathtaking atmosphere.

As if mixing the best of both worlds, it's not all creepy noise: there are several dramatic scenes in which the music turns to a beautiful and touching tune, much like it happened in SILENT HILL 2. By the way, the game features no less than three vocal songs, a total novelty, and they are all beautiful.

Then, along come the random noises that fire up when you least expect them, the kind of "Boo!" sounds that make you jump off your seat. You'll be navigating a hollow hall, immersed in total silence, with the feeling of unspoken horrors lurking around the corner, when something as silly as a door slamming will force you to repaint the ceiling, to get rid of your own fingernails' marks.
Simple, but effective. Have no doubt.

We've seen the voice acting improving greatly from the first game of the series to the second, and the trend keeps on with this third chapter. Most of the actors are average-to-above (Douglas the detective being the weakest, pretty lame actually), but Heather (who is played by a girl called Heather, look at that ;-) ) is just AWESOME. Not only the tone of voice as well as every sentence spoken sound beautiful and totally convincing in Heather's voice, but she also has some heavily emotional moments, and totally succeeds in transmiting the character's feelings. This girl actually CRIES on-camera, and makes you believe it.

Now, the atmosphere is not only about the sound: SILENT HILL 3 has the most classy horror atmosphere I've ever seen, beating any horror game and even most horror movies by a fair margin. The game is full of what I call classy horror mementos. They are random, they have no connection to anything else, they can even be bypassed by the player in a rush, but they are effective and there's a lot of work put on them.
I wouldn't want to spoil any of them, but I guess I need to do it to make myself clear, so there goes one: You enter a room full of mannequins. The place is dark and every mannequin is missing their head, except for one. Upon examining this particular one, Heather comments how the fact of having a head makes it even more disturbing than the others. So you cross the room, and in a far corner you pick up some items. While at it, you hear a sudden scream. When you make your way back, you can see the mannequin's head on the floor, and a stream of blood coming out of its neck.
Gore-full, granted, but in a so exquisite way...

Finally, there is one more thing worth to mention, and it's the amount of humor present in the game, a first-ever in the series. Because of her true nature, or maybe just because she's a hardass girl, Heather has a fairly easy time getting used to the strange events in which she's suddenly immersed. She has no problems making some ironic remarks and even joking with the most disturbing things.
This kind of humor works nicely as a steam-blower after certain particulary heavy moments, but I'm not certain whether to consider it a good or a bad thing: It does somehow fit Heather's character, and it does relief a bit of tension; but on the other hand, SILENT HILL 2 didn't lean on any humor, and it worked out for a much more dramatic and intense atmosphere...

REPLAYABILITY: Where no man has ever gone (no sane man, that is)
Konami and Capcom have a fierce competition in several aspects, and one of the most outstanding ones, which set both companies way apart from any other in the market, is the replayability value of their games.

When you play a Konami or a Capcom game you can be sure of one thing: you're extremely likely to be replaying it several times.
If not for the multiple endings, a replay of a SILENT HILL game is a whole new universe, in which the game trascends the limits of logic, mostly by giving you nearly-surrealistic items to play with.
This time, we get to dress Heather with no less than 20 different outfits ranging from a "Heather T-Shirt" (the one the SH3 crew used in interviews) to the classic japanese sailor schoolgirl uniform, we get to use a beam-saber (may the force be with you, if you know what I mean), and we get to see a new UFO ending (a classic in the series, this time dubbed by many as the revenge), among others.

The Bad
TECHNICAL ISSUES: Capable PC-programmer wanted
I hate to start the bad with this kind of thing, but here we go —AGAIN.
There is a persistent problem among console programmers porting games to PC, in which the games seem to have a more or less traumatic problems with video cards other than nVidia's. Maybe it's because they're generally ported from Xbox versions, or because the companies can't afford to buy several different graphic cards to test-drive their games (?), but there's one thing which is unacceptable, to say the least: there's always some kind of problem with ATi graphics card.
Come on, guys! It's not S3 we're talking! ATi has been leading the market for almost two years already! Will you keep up?
In this particular game, the whole Radeon series of chips suffer some random, persistent, and plain annoying glitches in certain areas, specially in character's faces. The game CAN be played without any major problem, and it's not like it happens ALL THE TIME —but it DOES happen, it IS annoying, and if you spent 150+ US bucks for a video card, you DESERVE the right to ask for a solid visual quality, goddamnit.
Konami already recognizes this issue in the game's readme, and they blow it off to ATi and their drivers. But the thing is, the last time they said this exact same thing, they ended up releasing a patch on their own. Hummmm...

THE STORYLINE: Silent Hill for MORONS
Oh yes, sports fans, this time the storline is in the bad, contrary to what everyone might have expected. In fact it's NOT that SILENT HILL 3 has a bad story: it's just not a worthy bearer of the series' name.
The thing is, Konami received a lot of whining about the cryptic storytelling of the first SILENT HILL, so this time they went all the way to the other side: in SILENT HILL 3 there is little to uncover once the game is finished, all the explanations are detailed, conclusive, and tell-all.
There IS room for interpretations of certain points, enough as to justify plenty of theory-building, forum-discussion, and some rich plot guides as always in the series; but compared to the previous games, this story is a walk in the park. So much so, it even goes to the lenghts of explaining all those things that some people didn't understand in the first game.
I know, some people (what do you mean, normal people?) prefer this kind of conclusive storytelling, but I do not. I like to have room for interpretation, as I always thought most SILENT HILL fans do.

Aside from that, the story of SILENT HILL 3 is —at its core— the first game all over again. Of course, there are enough differences as to tell both games apart, but for the sharp eye (and it's not like you need to be some Hercules Poirot to see this either) there are just TOO MANY similarities between the two stories. It's like a song and a remix of that song: It's not the same song, yet somehow it is...
Take for example the way the game starts, with some sort of nightmare which is not only a dream, and then the hero wakes up at a dinner.
Or even more clear, let's see the supporting characters: the semi-useless sidekick who only shows up every now and then to give the protagonist someone to talk to (Cybill/Douglas), the cult-leading wicked woman who wants to resurrect the ancient demon-god (Dhalia/Claudia), the cult's conspirator who starts to have second thoughts about the whole demon-resurrecting thing (Kaufmann/Vincent)...

As I said, this game's plot is not exactly bad, it's just too cheap for a worthy title of this series.

THE COMBAT SEQUENCES: We're going to war!
This is the point where the game starts to show a dreadful trend, which gives me the utter creeps, because it seems to lead down the Capcom path.
As it's of public knowledge, Capcom's most popular horror/survival franchise is WAY more nonsense-action-oriented than Konami's. To put it bluntly, Konami goes for the pshychological horror, whereas Capcom goes for the class-B-movie action-pounding kind of horror.
In a RESIDENT EVIL game it's only normal to find a guy who's an ex-air force pilot AND an ex-cop at the age of 25, or to fire a rocket launcher inside a house which would crumble down with the noise of a firecracker.
In SILENT HILL games, on the other hand, we used to find rather next-door people, and if they were lucky enough they got to struggle with a hunting rifle in order to deal with the monsters.

This time around, Heather gets her hands on stuff as ridiculous as a VERY heavy spiked mace (which God knows how ended up in some sewers) and... gasp... a sub-machinegun!!
Wha—?
No way, this can't be true. A seventeen-year old girl who never got to even use her stun-gun goes blasting monsters with a piece of military hardware? How did you say this game is called, again? Residen Hill, it was?
Who-ever thought of this CRAP? For the love of God, Konami!! Fire that jackass right now, before the fourth game gets to evolve any further!!!
Ahem.

While we're at the combat issues, the classic awkward interface of horror/survival games rears its ugly head again! Since this game is much more action-oriented than its predecessors, pretty soon you'll be complaining about this kind of interface yet again.
When will gaming companies address this issue? Could it be that anyone finds this kind of controls any comfortable?

MONSTER DESIGN: The end of imagination
This series used to have a well-deserved fame for the creativity in the design of its monsters. From the zombie dogs, to the split-faced lizard, to the zombie nurses, to the mannequins, to —stand up, gentlemen— Pyramid-Head, hands down the coolest villain EVER; the monsters of this series are a trademark of imaginery and horror...
Until now.
In SILENT HILL 3 we get to see the zombie nurses again (of course), we have this enigmatic Valtiel character stalking Heather all the time, we have some creepy split-faced hounds... and that's it.
There are more monsters in SILENT HILL 3, but they're not only unworthy of the series' legacy —they plain SUCK.

There's not much to say in this regard: the textures do a fine job to make them look disgusting, the poly count and animation helps a lot too, but from a designer's point of view, the monsters are simply lame.

The Bottom Line
If you never played a SILENT HILL game before, you should go play both of them before going any further. In fact, you should have done so a while before reaching this point.
If you're not going to do so, I'm not talking to you. Period.

Now, for those of you who know both previous chapters of the series, here's the thing:
—If you thought the first SILENT HILL was the most scary experience ever, and you're yearning for a game that gives you the creeps like that one did, and you almost lost all hope of getting to know such a game, yearn no more: SILENT HILL 3 is THE GAME for you.
—If you thought the series grew a lot in SILENT HILL 2, and it was an immersive storyline with believable, deeply developed characters, and it was a big leap ahead from the first game, you might want to think it twice before going for SILENT HILL 3. This one LOOKS even better than its predecessor, but the story is a MAJOR step back.

Finally; if like me, you are a fan of the SILENT HILL <u>SERIES</u>, and you enjoyed each title so far, for each one's own highs, and you think the SERIES is above any other horror game, movie, book, or whatever —Well, I don't know what are you doing, still reading all this nonsense ranting. You have just lost some priceless SILENT HILL 3 minutes, man.
And you ARE going to get this game anyway, you know that already.

The Good

• Gorgeous graphics that hold up remarkably well 8 years later
• Akira Yamaoka's finest soundtrack; which is saying alot.
• Story is a valid and memorable extension of the original
• Memorable characters & writing overcome bad VO's
• Great boss fights
• Scary. Really, really really scary.
• Fantastic sound design rounds out production values
• Strong artistic sense thanks to Ito's twisted designs
• Almost perfect balance of atmosphere, psychological horror, and even some gross out/shock horror.

**The Bad**

• Voice work slightly improved over past games, but not by much.
• Weird performance issues even on modern computers
• Ugly lack of Vertical tearing, and no - forcing V-Sync won't work.
• Some enemies can be more annoying than anything
• Retreads some areas from the previous game.
• Story, while good - lacks the emotion and poetic nature of its predecessor.
• Same gameplay flaws as before

**The Bottom Line**
Awhile ago, I reviewed the brilliant Silent Hill 2: Restless Dreams and praised it for its tense atmosphere, disturbing psycho-sexual imagery, and most importantly - one of the, if not the, greatest story ever told in a video game. So what about Silent Hill 3? For some reason, SH3 is often ignored. People recognize the original as a classic and of course the start of the series, I am VERY far from the only person to praise the hell out of #2, SH4: The Room gets a lot of stick for being the weakest of the series and I'm pretty sure that 0rigins and Homecoming were just bad dreams and don't really exist despite people continuously mentioning them to me. I have to ask... why is SH3 the least talked about? I know that it wasn't necessarily poorly received, but it deserves more credit dammit. Do you want to know why? It scared me so damn much that my balls fell off and eloped with my manhood and left my as a whiny little child. While it certainly isn't as poignant or emotional as its brilliant predecessor, I consider it to be the most frightening of the series and no other game save for perhaps Amnesia has scared me as much as it has. After the surprisingly good Shattered Memories," I've been on a Silent Hill binge and recently replayed through Silent Hill 3, and guess what? It's still scary as hell and is very well made overall. Silent Hill 3 is a direct sequel to the original, and takes place 17 years after the Good or Good+ endings of Part 1 - in which Harry fights the Incubus rather than the Alessa Incubator, and after killing the Incubus and stopping him from impregnating Alessa with the god of the demented cult known only as "The Order," Alessa's spirit hands Harry a baby to help compensate the loss of his daughter Cheryl when she returned to Silent Hill and reunited with the other half of Alessa's soul. He names the new baby Cheryl, but after The Order makes an attempt on their lives - he flees and has her change her hair and go under the pseudonym Heather Morris. The game begins in a nightmare, where Heather visits a bizarre and twisted Amusement Park in the otherworld and is killed. She wakes up inside a Mall Diner, and is approached by an old man by the name of Douglas Cartland who wishes to question her. She thinks that he is lying about being a private investigator, and more an investigator of privates and ditches him by going into the womens lavatory and then crawling out the window and entering another part of the Mall. Yet strange things begin happening, a hideous monster is found consuming a corpse and Heather stops it with a gun, and as she moves on she soon learns that the whole mall is filled with monsters and after meeting the bizarre and mysterious Claudia Wolf, she takes an elevator which transports her into the otherworld and thus begins her descent into hell. It deals heavily with The Order as they chase Heather and do all in their power to fill her with hatred so that the god that has been in her womb since her "birth" can finally be born now that her 'time has come.' The plot isn't quite as brilliant as its predecessor - but it is much more well written than that of SH1's plot and SH3 also has the distinction of enriching the mythos of the series more than any other entry before or since. It explains The Order and their beliefs in much greater detail and fills in many questions about them and the incident in the first game and it makes them more memorable as villanous zealots, though that is also due in part that the witch Claudia Wolf; brainwashed by Dahlia Gillispie from the original game; is easily the most memorable "Human" villain in the series. Sorry Walter (The villain of Silent Hill 4.), I love you but Claudia wins out through being far more treacherous and while I won't spoil it for the good folks who haven't played this game through, what she resorts to at the end of the game is certainly memorable for all the wrong reasons; namely for making me wish I hadn't eaten before witnessing it. The "politics" of the otherworld are also expanded upon. It was made evident that The Otherworld is in many ways a version of hell, and that people are judged and punished there. We actually get to see this in great detail as the mysterious Valtiel (The hand of god) punishing various men and women. Valtiel is also important because while he is hardly the leader of the Otherworld, he is clearly a man of high power as he controls the change between our world and The Otherworld, twisting a valve that in turn - twists reality. He is also important in that while he does not have full control over what the monsters do (Which is why I claim he is clearly not the full overlord of the Otherworld.) he is there to protect Heather and grant her passage. Don't be fooled, Valtiel ain't the good guy and he doesn't care about Heather himself - he only cares that the baby god nestled in her womb makes it safely; and it can be assumed that he is more than willing to put Heather through eternal suffering to do so, due to the fact that if Heather dies in The Otherworld (Though not if she dies in the foggy world.) he will drag her body away and resurrect her. One of the standout elements of SH3 are its production values. I absolutely adore Akira Yamaoka's music for the series, in fact I'm listening to the games soundtrack right now and I'll probably turn on the SH2 soundtrack when its done. This is very high praise considering the high standards he has set - but of all the Silent Hill games (I'll even recognize Homecoming and 0rigins for his music, but ONLY his music. Well... okay, there was one disturbing monster in 0rigins, the Carrion. THAT IS IT.) I think that this soundtrack is easily the best. Not only does it introduce us to the lovely Mary Elizabeth McGlynn's voice, it is easily the most melodic and memorable beat-wise and the atmospheric tracks in game are superb as well. The graphics are also stunning - they were absolutely fantastic by 2003 standards, and believe it or not replaying it 8 years later I was still surprised. Silent Hill 3 has aged better than most any last generation game (Even Doom 3 and FarCry have aged somewhat less gracefully in my eyes. It helps that I was able to hack the game to run in 1920x1080 and witness it in full HD glory and that it has some fantastic lighting effects and high resolution textures. The models are memorable and characters are very well rendered and animated, and the monsters may not animate like proper humans.. but then again, why should they? Their bizarre movements are just as disturbing and bizarre as they are. The Otherworld sequences will give you some of the most shocking images ever seen in a video game, and many of them can easily be missed without the ability to view it in HD like I did. There are tons of great effects, generated by something in the credits that is somewhat laughably and blatantly named "The Evil Effects Engine." Yes, 15 technical directors were set aside to create an "Evil Effects Engine," in fact according to the credits there are 3 separate engines; the main one, the lighting engine (Which is carried over from SH2 - not that that is a bad thing.) and the evil effects engine. The Evil Effects engine really impresses, the otherworld is packed with slimy detail as blood realistically and continuously sweats out from pores, limbs twitch and flail, and later on a clever smudging tool makes it appear as if the skin of monsters itself is twitching individually. Two good places to see this effect are in the Otherworld Hospitals store room, where Heather will be locked in with a mirror. Very slowly, blood will seep and as it turns darker, the dark blood will turn into tentacles and the tentacles and blood will spread rapidly throughout the room and Heather's reflection soon begins to bleed and become covered in said tentacles, and once she is consumed - the real Heather will die. There's also a memorable moment near the end where various rooms are covered in a strange red haze that slowly seeps in and covers the room and strangely has an amount of depth to it. It's a shame these effects were never, ever used again. The biggest issue I have with the graphics is that being from an older period when widescreen and ultra-high resolutions weren't as commonplace, they didn't bother implementing widescreen or high resolutions. This means that you'll have to do what I did and change the resolution through the .ini and find a FOV hack to make the game not look stretched out. There's also an issue with vertical tearing, and the damn game doesn't give you any ability to get rid of it. No V-Sync option, and don't bother forcing V-Sync in your video control panel. It won't work, and trust me when I say this isn't like a lot of games with vertical tearing that are only slightly noticeable, the tears are massive and annoying. There's also some strange performance issues on modern computers, the full 4096x4096 textures lag to high hell once you get out into the fog of Silent Hill or heavily detailed areas of The Otherworld (I.E., all of them.) and even lowering the texture details, it may do this. The graphics also work because the artistic design is fantastic. Like SH2, the artwork was done by the twisted genius Masahiro Ito (Look up his homepage if you like horror art.) and is as raw as the ESRB and CERO (The Japanese rating board.) will allow it to be. Like SH2, most of it relies not just on slimy grotesqueness - but also psycho-sexual imagery. I use that term because most of the monsters have some form of sexual attribute to them, more often than not a taboo or frightening aspect which shows that as beautiful as sex can be, it can also be very, very ugly. The "theme" they carry is a bit different from SH2 though, while SH2's monsters were meant to represent and demonize sexual abuse, dominance, and misogyny SH3 has a focus on sexual innocence and childbirth; and not the happy side of childbirth either. An example would be the Numb Body, one of the first monsters you face. They earn their name for staggering about misguidedly as if they are numb (At least numb in terms of connections to their limbs - their bone chilling cries suggest that they aren't numb to pain.) and the fact that they mock the human body through abstraction, and their skin is not unlike that of a rare, disturbing and fatal birth defect (Nameless here so that someone doesn't look it up out of curiosity and find themselves disturbed. Those who have seen the deformity I'm talking about will know why I draw the comparison) and represent the fear that Heather's baby will be born deformed and in agony. Rounding out the technical aspects of SH3 is the sound design itself. Sound is one of the most important aspects of any horror game, and SH3 gets it down pat. With the exception of the pendulum's screeching which is more migraine inducing than scary, all of the monsters make disturbing and bizarre sounds. The Numb Bodies and nurses probably freak me out the most with the Numb Bodies vaguely human, vaguely animal groans of agony or the nurses constant and heavy breathing. Whenever I hear that damn breathing, I imagine a nurse standing 5 feet behind me and panting over the idea of torturing or maybe even salivating over the idea of eating me. Yet the most disturbing sounds of course come from the atmosphere itself. The atmosphere is just as thick as its predecessor (Though in a more traditionally horrific way) and plays on the fact that less is more. Even something as simple as hearing the sound of thumping from another room or the ceiling is unnerving, and whenever you hear whispering or echoes of an unseen monster growling or wailing you suddenly get a feeling of dread that something is following you and that makes the actual appearance of a monster, even if it wasn't the one you heard, far scarier and eliminates the need of monster closets. Of course, the radio also returns - and like before, it warns you of monsters and sends you into bloody paranoia when you hear it crackling but can't see through the distance. Gameplay wise, Silent Hill 3 is more or less unchanged. That is both good and bad. Truthfully - gameplay isn't and never has been the series strength, controls are weird, camera angles are bizarre, and combat is frustrating and you'd think that swinging a pipe is like swinging a 100lb dumbbell by how long and clumsy it is. However, this DOES work to the games advantage in some areas - afterall, you aren't supposed to be Rambo. You are an average young woman, and the confusing cameras and harsh combat only serve to make the game more terrifying by inducing the feel of disorientation and panic that one likely would succumb to when in a horrifying nightmare battling a monster with giant penises of death on their arms (And no, I am not joking about giant penis of death arms. Go to the Silent Hill wiki and search "Closer.") and trying to run from a horde of murderous nurses with deadly magnums. There are some places though where the combat DOES feel unfair. On Normal difficulty, the game is much harder than any of its predecessors and being a survival horror game - that's fine, but some monsters simply make combat unfair. The worst offenders are the slurpers, with the pendulums in close second. The Slurpers scurry around on the floor and earn their name as they are the carrion feeders of the otherworld and slurp up all the blood and goo and the like, and when they see Heather - they will knock her down and then try to mount her. (Yeah, I know, eww. Then again it's supposed to make you say eww.) What makes them so annoying though is that you can't heat them with any melee weapon except the slow mace (Which despite being pretty powerful, is a worthless weapon since it takes so long to swing, and while its long reach may be advantageous if you master timing the weapon - more often than not while Heather begins the swing, the monster will be 2 feet and instead of receiving a mace they'll just got a tiny bit of steel rod and have time to mutilate her.) and I don't feel like wasting precious bullets on them. They really just attack with mosquito bites, although their... uhm.... humping can do a fair amount of damage, Heather can usually get to her feet before they mount her and knocking her other doesn't really damage her more than maybe 2 points, but it's damn annoying to be getting to an important area and get knocked down by a slurper and it is doubly annoying to get knocked down by one when you are out of ammo and a gaggle of the more dangerous monsters are following you. The Pendulums are also annoying. Not only is the noise they make migraine inducing and far too loud, they fly and cannot be hit by melee weapons and they chew bullets like candy, and often stun Heather or knock her down and their blades do heavy damage. The other monsters are more fair, and there are also some great bossfights. One complaint of SH2 was that the boss fights, while memorable for the disturbing creatures you fought, lacked the clever nature of the original SH1 bosses and really just came down to "Pump thing with bullets till it fall down go boom." and while it is true that you are still mostly just pumping lead or bashing the bosses, they actually have specific weakpoints and strategies like the first game and require more thinking. A memorable one is a fight with a monster (Though considering his name, humanoid figure, and not being a manifestation of Heather's mind and seen very clearly by Claudia - I believe he is either a mutated human or simply a guy in a weird costume.) known as The Missionary, who can block bullets with his blades and must be fought with well timed hand to hand combat. It was cool to use the Katana and have a match of blades. The level designs are good, but there is an underwhelming use of areas from past games; especially #2. Probably the biggest offender is the return to Brookhaven Hospital. The layout hasn't changed at all and there's a lot of deja-vu from SH2. To the games credit, it DOES focus mainly on areas that you couldn't explore in SH2 (Apparently broken locks can unbreak at will for other people) and The Otherworld of Brookhaven Hospital is reformed completely, not unlike "Nowhere" from the first game and is actually the most memorable trip to the otherworld next to the chapel towards the end of the game. It's still disappointing that they didn't take us to new parts of Silent Hill though, especially when there's a huge chunk of the south region that has never been explored. Once again, the games credit though - the first act and a half of the game is spent outside of Silent Hill which does add some fresh locales to visit. All in all - if you want a scary game to play in the dark, want to see some of the most twisted and sickening imagery ever put into a game, and enjoyed any of the other Silent Hill games - this is an extremely memorable and raw entry into the series. Don't let yourself be disappointed if you expect its story to stack up against its esteemed predecessor, and enjoy the game for what it is: Genuinely horrific.

The Good
For those who have some familiarity with the precedent Silent Hill series, this third installment is just like a walk in a known territory, only to discover this territory VERY upgraded with relentless fear factor turned up on max. If you were a previous vacationist in Silent Hill (namely SH2), coming back this vacation should feel like exactly like if you never left. So, has it been that long? The concept of this game is now up to date with the new graphic technology available. In character build, Konami tried to make this experience a bit less lonely than in SH2. Not that is a Swat-based game, though. You'll have the chance to meet some un-un-unusual types along the way, with their own agenda. You probably wouldn't miss chasing blonde little girl-brats around town, like in the previous game.

The monster concepts kept the psycho frantic head-shaking tortured appearance, looking like they were straight out of Adrian Lyne's motion picture "Jacob's Ladder". Actually there are more to this "climbing down Jacob's ladder" metaphor than only in the creatures. The whole approach of the game presents (or continues) the concept of the "Otherworld", with a lot of stairs and elevators-to-Hell and, of course, ladders. And when you see the Otherworld taking over, you can get to witness bucolic locations turning from "zombish" abandoned look, to utterly satanic with a little twist of religion on the side. The monster art again brings the deviant deformations of existing creatures, using mostly human figure to increase terror when you look at them, giving you the distinct impression that some monsters were (are?) human once.

The game design, as most aspects of the game, is more-of-the-same with map-based exploring, checking out locked or opened rooms, looking for keys and figuring out some puzzles that vary from "Dumb" to "Einstein", including an interesting Shakespearian book puzzle. The main props are all the same. You get to have the sam'ol radio and the good'ol pocket flashlight, and the guns are mainly the same also (9 mm, shotgun), except for introduction of a katana sword, with a lot of damage points (yes, you actually can defeat a boss with it), and a huge maul that is very hard to use. In the replay mode you find a submachine gun in the inventory, but is more to make a cathartic effect. Many times in this game you WILL say "MY, oh my. if only I have a machine-gun..."

Graphically speaking, looks like Konami is using the same Capcom quality especially in human skin figures. You can actually see the expression/emotion face lines even from a distance. I'm talking in-game here, guys. Not only in cinematics. The set design is more or less the same, although is less grainy than in SH2, but the human characters gained more skin texture making Konami turn to Vertex/pixel shader technology that is available only in Geforce4 Ti, GeforceFX and Ati Radeon graphic cards. That is the issue that no doubt is the most question-raising in the game. Even the demo in early November already announced. Some say this demo was really a scared warning from Konami that really didn't know how gamers would react to it.

The sound in SH3 is suitable for those with a big sound rig at home with any sound card that supports Live 5.1 audio. The voice acts are not Oscar worth except for the Heather’s voice actress that really delivers even when she dies, screams or cries. The detective’s voice should have been my father’s. And he’s not an actor. The role of Claudia, despite the fact she’s a true carbon-copy of Cate Blanchett’s “Galadriel”, is fairly voice acted. But the true triumph in SH3 is the sound effects and ambient music (?). It boosts up to orbit the fear factor. Is like in a David Lynch’s twisted backward played opera, using human organs for instruments.

The Bad
Watch spoilers ahead! The storyline is unfortunately one downer in SH3. Then again is not that of a big downer. Is just doesn’t keep up to the other Silent Hill games. The Demon possession-based with New Order Satanists trying to bring the Paradise plot is not really the most inspired background. Even so the game actually does not start in Silent Hill, so there is another town with the same curse that has relation with the curse in Silent Hill? Is confusing. But this is background only. The way this story develops throughout the game, unfolds a gruesome sheet of subplots that smoke-screens the uninspired storyline a bit anyway.

The Bottom Line
Silent Hill 3 is definitely the most gruesome, dark satanic game to the date. Make no mistakes; it WILL chill you to the bone. Expect human slaughter houses, torture chambers, ornaments made with human parts, child-mummification, evisceration, amputations, driven to both Silent Hill and Resident Evil gamer. No similarities between these two games involved. The game is a slow-paced work of gothic art with the wit of the occult. Not a futuristic-weapon loving trained chick fighting science aberrations. This is to say that SH3 and Resident Evil are alike, but different, and will please the same kind of gamer that is looking for plain fear.