Silent Hill 3

aka: Jijing Ling 3, SH3
Moby ID: 9324
Windows Specs
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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

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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 120 ratings with 8 reviews)

Hands down, the greatest horror atmosphere in the series. But this dreadful Capcom-ish feel is growing within...

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.

Windows · by Slug Camargo (583) · 2003

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 (473498) · 2014

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

[ 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

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Released 2004 on Windows

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  • MobyGames ID: 9324
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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.