What The Fuxk Was That?!

Silent Hill started on the PSone and went on to do a sequel on the PS2, which was awesome and then after a couple years of waiting, the third game in the series comes out and I have to say that I am impressed. Lately, horror games have been the craze and the “in thing”. If you look at it, there’s been a huge wave of horror games in the past couple of years like the Resident Evil series (probably the most famous and the most well know), Fatal Frame, The Thing, and a ton of other games that are actually made to try and scare people. I’ve played all these and although they are spooky and out of the ordinary, not all of them has freaked me out as much as Silent Hill 2 and Silent Hill 3. There were times when I was playing this game where I had to take a breather. Every hour or so I would take a break because it was so much to handle. It’s not that I’m a wuss or a wimp (since I am definitely not), but it’s because of the heavy gore, creepy noises, and just jump-out-of-your-seat moments that are associated with the series. I wasn’t really frightened by the first Silent Hill game, but I was spooked by the second. With the third, it breaks all the boundaries and weaves together a story that’s just as terrifying as the monsters the roam the game. The Silent Hill games have all had weird, confusing storylines, and Silent Hill 3 isn’t different at all. You have the role of Heather, an out-of-it youth who finds herself in a deserted amusement park (and mall) in Silent Hill (a small spooky town) and she doesn’t know what’s going on. I really can only tell you that, but I have to tell you that it gets much more interesting as the story goes on and gives you enough incentive to keep going through until the end (which is a short time away).

I bought Silent Hill 3 just last week and finished it yesterday, but my time was six some hours and I was deeply surprised. Games should not be this short. Companies always do this. They did it with Onimusha: Warlords. They did it with Devil May Cry. I hate it. I buy probably two or three games a month and I want the games that I buy to last at least twenty hours and have a lot of replay value. In Silent Hill 2, when you beat the game then you could unlock alternate endings and stuff like that, but in the third outing all you get when you play the game over again is a new mode (“Boxer Mode”, which I haven’t played yet, but my friend says it sucks) and different costumes and more weapons. That’s about it, but if I beat the game again soon (which I will because I just started playing it again) then I’ll update this review if anything new is unlocked. The game has some hard puzzles, but they don’t take much time to complete. I’m a moderate gamer meaning that I’m good at games, but not a wiz at them like Rocky (AKA Jeremy AKA Rock_On) or Slusy yet I finished in a short amount of time and that’s not a good thing at all. Video games nowadays are fifty bucks and when you make a commitment to buy something so expensive then you want you money investment to be well worth it and although I had a great time playing the game and loved it, I am very disappointed by how short it is (like the first and second game in the series). In case you are wondering, all of the Silent Hill games don’t really have a lot to do with each other so you don’t have to play the first and second one in order to have a good time with the third. And for your information, I have to say that Silent Hill 3 is my favorite game in the series.

Something that has always been wrong with the Silent Hill games (and the Resident Evil series, but that’s a different story) is that the controls suck. I’ve had a lot of experience with the horror/survival genre yet it still takes time to get used to them since they are so difficult because of the 2D like overview. If you’ve played a Resident Evil game then you might already be accustomed to the controls, but Silent Hill 3’s were so hard that it took me a basic hour to get used to them. The camera angles are still fixed and itchy and a drag if you are trying to defend yourself against monsters in. The aiming is also a little off. I found at times that it took my five or more minutes to kill a rabid dog-looking-creature with a lead pipe when the dog is directly in front of me. Timing is everything and even if you have great reflexes, it won’t always help you. Turning corners or circling around to get the camera centered ahead so that you could where you’re going is extremely difficult and was probably the leading cause for me getting game over millions of times because it wouldn’t show the monster you’d just have to come across it, circle around and then try to dispose of it, but then again, running away is what you will need to do in some instances. There’s a lot of cool weapons in Silent Hill 3 like guns, lead pipes, knives, flame throwers, and various other harmful materials and each time that you want to use these then you have to have a good strategy on how to take a monster out. Since ammunition is limited, then that should be your last resort. In other words, if you’ve tried stabbing a big fat zombie for a minute and it doesn’t look like it’s slowing down then bring out the gun and shoot off a couple bullets into his fat gut or save the gun for boss battles (which are frequent). Silent Hill has always been one of those series with mind-twisting puzzles, which is its signature and although there were three that I can think of that I had a hard time with, they weren’t at all as frustrating as past puzzles. In fact, this time around, the puzzles make sense and you actually understand why you have to do them and they are just more fun to perform instead of a mindless task.

When someone says that they are scared of a video game then you must think that they are dorks, but honestly, the game is friggin’ scary and one of the scariest out there with moments that will make you jump (literally) out of your seat. All of the creepy noises you hear as you go through the game, all of the horrifying monsters you encounter, and all of the gore will mess with your mind indefinitely so, of course, the game is not for kids. The gore is heavily used with your adversaries blood spilling all over the floor when you kill them and even your own. Plus a lot of disturbing images like a barbecued dog, body being chopped off and worse, and even shapeless monsters coming towards you where you don’t know where the creature begins and ends. It can traumatize anyone and that might be a turn off for some people. If you don’t like scary movies or if you are sensitive then Silent Hill 3 isn’t for you, but if you like whack sh!t like that then go ahead and have fun because the game is fun despite all of the horrible images that are displayed. What makes the game scary is that monsters tend to jump out at you and a majority of the game has you walking through cramped areas in pitch black with only a small flashlight (which you can turn on and off to conserve battery power) while you hear terrifying sounds that you can’t put your finger on. The huge amount of gore doesn’t help things either. If you are easily grossed out by blood and worse then you will hate the game since gore is a major factor and it is generously used every chance you get.

The music and sound FX in the game are just short of phenomenal. They capture the whole mood of the game: desperation, despair, and terror. The voice-overs by the vocal cast were good this time around. In Silent Hill 2 they were good, but they weren’t nearly as good as in this game. I am a little annoyed by Heather’s voice, but she still gets the job done with good vocal choreography. The voice-overs are probably the best of the genre and really put Resident Evil’s voice actors to shame. The sound effects and music carry the game along with creepy sounds echoing through halls and scratchy noises when monsters come close along with sickening sounds of bloodlust like the squirting sound of blood being squeezed out of a body and a knife slashing through human flesh. The blood-curdling sound effects are backed up by some of the eeriest music on earth. The sounds are catchy and never get too annoying and they have a lot of variety to them. Konami (Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (PS2), the developer and publisher of the series, loved the soundtrack so much that they even included the game’s soundtrack with the game free of charge, which is a great bargain. Although the soundtrack is awesome, you won’t be on the bus home from school rocking out to it on your Discman. Now, the graphics are a different matter entirely. In my review of Final Fantasy X, I said that that game had the best graphics on the PS2, but now I have to switch and say that Silent Hill 3’s are much better. The graphics are gorgeous and so beautiful that your jaw will drop to the floor when you see them. The frame rate stays afloat at a steady rate and never flounders when a lot of action is holding on screen, but the most remarkable thing about them is the lighting FX. The best place in the game where you see the light effects to their utmost maximum limit is when Heather is sitting in a diner at dusk and the blinds are down and the light and shadows are casting light across her face and each time a car went by then…well, you understand. It was lush and rich with color and it was just the best. The character animations are pretty good although some of the timing of the lips and the voice-overs are a little off, but who cares about that? I don’t. Another cool thing about the graphics is that when you step on your fallen enemy and then walk away then you have bloody footprints and it amuses me so much that I did it as a ritual every time I killed a monster.

Seriously, WHAT THE FUXK IS THAT?!?!?!?!?!?!

Overall I was really satisfied by the outcome of this game and I think that it’s the best PS2 game this year so far and blows all the others off the shelf. Silent Hill 3 holds it own against big name games coming out this year like Soul Caliber 2, Final Fantasy X-2, and Tony Hawk’s Underground and is probably the finest survival/horror title on the PS2 right now and I am glad that I was able to play this. From the first monster I killed up until the last boss I defeated it was a good experience and fun as hell to play despite the shoddy controls. If Konami set into effect a fully customizable control system and got rid of the “pick-your-own-difficulty” demand, then I think that the series would be far superior then Resident Evil and step out of that big franchise’s shadow. I am satisfied with my purchase of Silent Hill 3 (because I love the game a lot), but I think that if you are tight with money (especially now that the new expansion to Warcraft III has come out along with Knights of the Old Republic and Final Fantasy Tactics Advance) then you should definitely give Silent Hill 3 a try as a rental because I think that it should definitely be played by horror movie buffs and action/adventure video game fans. It’s a truly awe-inspiring game and I can’t wait until Silent Hill 4 comes out…I just wish that the wait won’t be as long as it was. So until Resident Evil 4 comes out later in the year (or next year, whatever), I will be replaying Silent Hill 3.

Jay




Similar Reviews:

Onimusha: Warlords (PS2)
Devil May Cry (PS2)
Devil May Cry 2 (PS2)
Silent Hill 2 (PS2)
Resident Evil (GC)





Recommended: Yes