Silent Hill 3

aka: Jijing Ling 3, SH3
Moby ID: 9324
Windows Specs
Note: We may earn an affiliate commission on purchases made via eBay or Amazon links (prices updated 3/29 8:48 PM )
Conversion (official) Included in

Description official descriptions

In Silent Hill 3 the player controls Heather, a simple teenage girl. One fine day she goes shopping, but suddenly finds herself trapped in a strange, terrifying place - the eerie town Silent Hill. She hears footsteps; disgusting, creepy monsters attack her, and she has to defend herself. Exploring Silent Hill - and her own past - Heather must find a way to escape the dreadful town.

The third installment in the Silent Hill series is similar to its predecessor visually and gameplay-wise. Like the previous entries, it is a survival horror game combining action-based (predominantly close-ranged) combat and puzzle-solving. The game is somewhat more combat-oriented than the preceding installments. Heather is able to side-step and block some attacks, but in general shares with the other protagonists of the series their relative ineptitude in combat.

Spellings

  • サイレントヒル3 - Japanese spelling
  • 寂静岭3 - Chinese spelling (simplified)
  • 寂靜之丘3 - Chinese spelling (traditional)
  • 사일런트 힐 3 - Korean spelling

Groups +

Screenshots

Promos

Videos

See any errors or missing info for this game?

You can submit a correction, contribute trivia, add to a game group, add a related site or alternate title.

Credits (Windows version)

138 People (121 developers, 17 thanks) · View all

Graphic Engine Program
Character Program
System Program
Collison Program
Converter Program
Event Program
Monster Program
Shadow Program
Camera Program
Another World Evil Effect Program
Effect Program
Sl Tool Program
Sound Program
Character Modeling & Facial Motion
Monster Design & Modeling
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 80% (based on 44 ratings)

Players

Average score: 4.1 out of 5 (based on 121 ratings with 8 reviews)

Back in town

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.

Windows · by Cronos (4) · 2003

A masterpiece of Survival Horror and the last real Silent Hill.

The Good
From the very first moment I played the original Silent Hill, I knew that it was something special. The combination of traditional Survival Horror elements with a renewed focus on scaring the player with smartly written dialogue, intelligent camera use and a terrifying set of circumstances gave Silent Hill an edge that Resident Evil clones just didn't have. Silent Hill was a supremely negative experience, not in regards to the game but in regards to the atmosphere within it. Walls bleed and warp, disfigured enemies stagger from the shadows while your radio wails and Akira Yamaoka's masterful soundtrack pounds and shrieks in the background. It's a combination of atmosphere, soundtrack and aesthetics that helps the Silent Hill series transcend more mediocre Survival Horror pursuits.

Silent Hill 2 presented a more focused, cohesive experience with a more realized town to explore. Everything about the game was refined in relation to its predecessor. The mythology of the town was expanded upon in really subtle ways, expanding on our understanding of the underlying concepts and realities that the town was built upon, while incorporating an adeptly crafted story about a man who may or may not be suffering from a mental illness.

Silent Hill starts in a fairly unfamiliar fashion. Heather finds herself in a nightmarish Amusement Park. After escaping this nightmare she finds herself in a noticeably more mundane place; a Shopping Mall. It seems she fell asleep in a fast food restaurant. The way the game begins, with a horrible nightmare transitioning jarringly into this abject normality is part of the masterful psychological orchestration that runs through Silent Hill 3 like blood through your veins. Every meticulously crafted environment is filled with hints, mythos or elements to enhance the atmosphere. Using these elements Silent Hill 3 scares you in a decidedly unique fashion. Instead of relying on cliche's or cheap jump scares Silent Hill 3 relies solely on what your mind can compose from the elements provided for you. It's a masterpiece of mise-en-scene, with environmental details or strange creatures performing arbitrary activities while ignoring Heather augmenting the sense of dread provided by Akira Yamaoka's droning compositions. In many instances Heather seems to appear just when the horrific events have finished occurring. For instance, at one point she finds herself in a basement with a wheel chair lying on its side, the wheel slowly turning down while a trail of blood leads around the corner and into the open doors of an elevator shaft. The sense of dread accompanying this scene filled me with more fear than any pile of corpses of things jumping out of a closet ever could. The game lets your mind paint a picture and those with active imaginations will get the most out of Silent Hill 3.

Heather controls more or less like James from Silent Hill 2. The control scheme has essentially remained consistent since the original game. Holding R2 readies your weapon while pressing square while holding R2 allows Heather to guard herself from attacks. Heather quick turns, controls fluidly and using her feels like Team Silent polished the control scheme to perfection. There is not one aspect of it I can fault.

Heather's weapon choice is somewhat more varied than in previous games, with access to the obligatory handgun and shotgun in addition to more exotic things like a maul or sub-machine gun. The guard move adds a degree of strategy to fights and as usual the level of light and movement from enemies affects Heather's accuracy when firing weapons. Finishing the game while fulfilling certain secret criteria allows access to more weapons upon completion of the game. I will not ruin these for potential players however. I will say though that they are interesting, useful and balanced in their own ways, with each one requiring a level of aptitude to be used effectively.

The way Silent Hill 3 flows is significantly different from both the original and the sequel. The first half of the game is fundamentally linear, giving the feeling of a series of "dungeon" areas being sewn together with a sensible flow that adds credibility to the narrative. The second half of the game does actually take place in Silent Hill and although your exploration opportunities are limited I preferred the focused feel of this game with slight exploratory elements rather than the exploration taking precedence over exposition. There are many familiar places to explore, albeit rendered with a proficiency unlike I have ever witness on the Playstation 2.

This brings me onto the sheer amazing graphical achievements pulled off on the console. Games like God of War and Final Fantasy 12 look amazing in their own ways however they do also seem far too cartoon like. Silent Hill 3 is the only game I have ever played on the PS2 where I've felt like what I'm looking at it is real. Heather looks beautiful (in every sense of the word) and has been rendered with such meticulous detail that she looks like something that belongs in a high end Xbox game. Every single supporting character and enemy in the game exhibits this same level of astounding care from everything from the eyebrows to the lips and tiny imperfections in the skin that could have easily been left out but weren't. Environments sit molding with brooding atmosphere under amazing lighting effects and brilliant volumetric fog. Neon signs glow with a dirty vigor, casting odd shades of purple and pink over blood stained chairs and desks. Walls seem to creep with a disgusting film of moving skin and a well used church sits empty with mutlicolored light cast through stained glass windows. The world of Silent Hill 3 is amazingly organic and this sense of realism augments the sheer creeping dread felt by the player as the wander the empty hallways of the abandoned buildings and slime encrusted tunnels.

Lastly I would be doing the great composer Akira Yamaoka a disservice by not mentioning his haunting yet beautiful soundtrack. Every track that accompanies Heather's journey acts to assist in endearing ourselves to her, emphasising her youth and inexperience or her inner turmoil as she struggles to come to terms with everything she is experiencing. The soundtrack is Heather, yet it is also the environments. The soundtrack fights you as hard as the shambling monstrosities that inhabit the otherworld that Heather wanders through. It screams and shrieks and bangs and fills your head with a sense of lingering negativity and fear.

The Bad
The lack of adventuring around Silent Hill may seem like a detriment to you if you were hoping for another extended jaunt around the empty streets. Within the portion of the game where you are given relatively free reign to explore there is very little to see and do.

Some enemies are irritating, badly designed and will constantly knock you down. You might say that you could simply kill them or use beef jerky to distract them but if you are like me and take the "Survival" part of Survival Horror very seriously you will be frustrated by the constant knock downs, which Heather is very prone to, while trying to run past or avoid them.

Some characters like Douglas could have been explored with a little more depth, there is a slight revelation about his past later in the game however it is more or less totally inconsequential.

The Bottom Line
Silent Hill 3 feels almost perfect when you are playing it. It's an amazing experience, filled with such unrestricted negativity juxtaposed against the occasional tender moment of raw human emotion. Heathers journey is frightening and harrowing and yet as a gameplay experience it is fulfilling, satisfying and addictive. There are so many extra's to uncover when you have finished the game from more than 10 extra costumes, weapons and difficulty modes.

The few minor faults present in the game are overshadowed by the degree of mastery expressed by Team Silent when playing the game, which you will be playing for quite some time after you finish it.

PlayStation 2 · by AkibaTechno (238) · 2010

The game where the Silent Hill series should have ended.

The Good
Silent Hill 3 is one of the best survival horror games on the PS2, and it shows. The game excels in areas such as graphics (which are so much more detailed and well executed than the ones in the previous titles, and are actually some of the best in the whole PS2 game line) and sound (maintaining the gripping quality we were used to in the series). The plot might seem a bit convoluted at first (particularly if you haven’t played the first Silent Hill, as this is its direct sequel), but in the end it does the series justice and actually provides interesting food for thought. What is probably the main attraction in the game though, is its constant feeling of dread and despair. Unlike Silent Hill 2, which provided a more subtle, psychological type of horror, Silent Hill 3 is actually very visually (and audibly) compelling in conveying its horror elements. It is graphic, it is gruesome, it is scary and it is wonderful. Everything, from the environments to the enemies, to the characters themselves, is incredibly dark and moody - including the main character. Heather looks like she was designed to pass on a feeling of stress and fatigue to the player right from the start of the game, with those big dark circles under her eyes. And of course, speaking of dread, one character cannot go by unmentioned - Robbie. That is the cutest-yet-scariest bunny I have ever seen in my life.

The Bad
The main negative aspect of Silent Hill 3, if one might call it so, is a rather curious one - it is simply the fact that the previous entry was the pinnacle of the series. While this may seem like an unfair derogatory comment, the fact of the matter is that Silent Hill 3, despite having made certain improvements, still isn’t as gripping as its predecessor - while Silent Hill 2 made me dwell on it for quite some time after I had finished it, finishing Silent Hill 3 just didn’t have that long-lasting effect. Aside from that, it simply suffers from the usual Silent Hill problems, such as not-so-great controls and sometimes poor camera angles. However, these are minimal issues that do not detract from the experience at all.

The Bottom Line
Thus, Silent Hill 3 is not without its flaws, and certainly seems to lack a certain something the previous title possessed that contributed a lot to the mystique of the series. But when all is said and done, the game essentially marks the end of the GOOD Silent Hill games, not only providing a satisfying conclusion to the first game in the series, but also standing proudly on its own as an excellent survival horror game - in fact, one of PS2‘s finest.

PlayStation 2 · by Rik Hideto (473497) · 2014

[ View all 8 player reviews ]

Trivia

Budget

The budget was US$3Million.

DVD

A DVD was also released on the same day the game was released, called Lost Memories - The Art & Music of Silent Hill. The DVD includes illustrations, sounds, trailers, production materials, and the hidden endings of all the Silent Hill games - all in all 200 minutes of footage. The disc also features unlockable hidden bonuses.

Extras

The US and Japanese version ships with a bonus soundtrack CD which features music from the game. The CD has five tracks, which includes a track that was not used in the game.

Graphics

In the PC version of Silent Hill 3 the rendering resolution can be increased up to 4096 by 2048.

References

  • The game starts with a nightmarish sequence, after which Heather —the main character— wakes up at a diner, in a shopping mall. When she gets out of said diner, we can see its name: "Happy Burger". In Silent Hill 2 there was a local called Happy Burger, in the corner of Sanders St. and Neely St.
  • Two of the stores encountered in the mall are named after women from Goethe's Faust: Boutique Marguerite and Helen's Bakery.
  • Near the end of the game, the player will encounter areas identical to the end of Silent Hill. This includes camera positions, captions and even notepads (used as a save point in Silent Hill). These notepads have messages on them from Silent Hill's protagonist, Harry.
  • The game features numerous references to Silent Hill 2 (2001), including several small Silent Hill 2 posters in the Mall. When playing the game with a Silent Hill 2 save game on the memory card, other references appear:
    • In the Mall, you are given the option to retrieve something from a dirty toilet. When doing so, Heather will crouch and hesitantly move her hand towards the toilet, accompanied with suspense music. At the last moment she comes to her senses, turns to the camera and says "Gross. Who would do something like that anyway?". (In Silent Hill 2, the player had to retrieve a wallet from a clogged toilet).
    • When examining your mailbox in the apartment building, Heather comments that there is no mail, not "even from a dead wife". Silent Hill 2 starts with the player receiving a letter from his wife who has been dead for three years.
    • When examining the fence on the roof of Brookhaven Hospital, Heather says "it doesn't look like it's about to break". James from Silent Hill 2 was thrown through the fence off the roof.

Awards

  • GameSpy
    • 2003 – Scariest PS2 Game of the Year

Information also contributed by Dr. M. "Schadenfreude" Von Katze, Karthik KANE and Tiago Jacques

Analytics

MobyPro Early Access

Upgrade to MobyPro to view research rankings!

Related Games

Silent Hill
Released 1999 on PlayStation, 2009 on PSP, PlayStation 3
Silent Hill 2
Released 2001 on PlayStation 2
Silent Hill 4: The Room
Released 2004 on PlayStation 2, Xbox, Windows
In Silence
Released 2020 on Windows, Macintosh
Silent Hill: The Arcade
Released 2007 on Arcade
Silent Hill: Complete Set
Released 2006 on PlayStation, PlayStation 2
The Moment of Silence
Released 2004 on Windows
Dead by Daylight: Silent Hill
Released 2020 on Windows, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch...
S3: Silent Storm - Sentinels
Released 2004 on Windows

Related Sites +

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 9324
  • [ Please login / register to view all identifiers ]

Contribute

Are you familiar with this game? Help document and preserve this entry in video game history! If your contribution is approved, you will earn points and be credited as a contributor.

Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Unicorn Lynx.

Windows added by Slug Camargo.

Additional contributors: Macintrash, MAT, Jeanne, Paulus18950, Patrick Bregger, Rik Hideto.

Game added June 5, 2003. Last modified January 27, 2024.