While not as compelling as Silent Hill 2, Silent Hill 3 is a fantastic game.
Silent Hill 3 is, as the title suggests, Konami's third entry into their survival horror series. If you plan on playing this game without having played Silent Hill 1, I recommend reading a wikipedia summary on the first game as the plot is important to understand SH3. You play as a girl named Heather, who is about to head home after a day at the shopping mall. However, as she tries to exit the mall, she finds herself trapped in a hellish alternative of the mall, with all sorts of mutated creatures roaming about. Thus, Heather starts her long and arduous journey.
The story of SH3 is not nearly as good as SH2s. Heather has no apparent reason for being pulled into Silent Hill. She has no past to atone for, she is merely caught up in the events of the game. While this is terrifying and makes you feel powerless, it also detracts from the compelling nature of the story. Heather is pulled in against her will and has no reason for going to Silent Hill (the eventual reason is just silly). Having said that, the story eventually takes off after exploring several areas without having any idea as to what your goal in the game is. When the story finally begins, things start to make a bit more sense but the story is really a continuation of ideas presented in the first Silent Hill, making for a significantly weaker story.
Luckily, the oppressive nature of Silent Hill is intact in this title. The environments are nicely detailed and their Otherworld appearances are quite disturbing, often consisting of walls made out of pulsating flesh. Likewise, the monsters are terrifying, even more so than in SH2. One of the main reasons for their increased fear, is that many of them are quite large and are also very strong, meaning combat is often not the best choice. Running away with powerful monsters at your heels does wonders to increase the tension that you feel. However, given Heather's involvement in the plot, the monsters don't hold the same kind of symbolism as they do for James in SH2, making them less thought-provoking and memorable.
While I'm on the topic of monsters, I should talk about the combat. The combat and puzzle difficulties can still be set independently of each other, which is a great feature is one simply wants to breeze through the game to experience the story. You still have a variety of melee weapons (including a katana!!!) and guns at your disposable to dispatch of the many horrors in the game. A new guard feature has also been added into the game but given the timing needed to successfully execute it, it is much more useful to simply dodge the enemy's attacks. As in past SH games, Heather is just an ordinary character and as such, has no combat experience, making each enemy encounter terrifying since they are markedly more powerful than you are. The radio also returns in SH3 which emits static whenever monsters are nearby. While the function of this radio makes it seem like it would take away all suspense, knowing when enemies are nearby, it actually intensifies it. You know there is something nearby, but you don't know what it is, or how many there are. The psychological horrors of the radio are able to get inside your head and freak you out, before you've even encountered one of the monsters. As I mentioned earlier, the monsters are not as symbolically thought-provoking as in SH2. The enemies like the nurses are recycled and don't make as much sense in their voluptuous physicality as they did in SH2. Also, since Heather is pulled into the events without any "sins" to atone for, the monsters symbols all relate to something else making them less personal. While the combat is a weak point of the game, it is functional and generally takes a back seat to the puzzle solving and exploration.
Throughout the game, you'll explore a variety of locales from an amusement park, to a hospital, to a subway; each environment holds its own horrors. Your best friend in these areas is your map, which Heather makes notes on to indicate where locked doors are, where puzzles are located and which passages are blocked, making going through an area multiple times more efficient. Having said that, one environment early on in the game, the subway, had a poor design choice. As you progress through the subway, you come to learn that running on the tracks too far is a great way to get an instant game over (instant game overs are irritating and occur multiple times throughout the game should you not do something in a specific manner, often without warning). So, you avoid going on the tracks. After wandering around for a long time wondering what to do, I eventually gave in and looked up the solution online only to discover that I had to jump off a specific track and run to a door that was obscured by the camera angle. While that was infuriating, most of the environments are not nearly as bad and are both suspenseful and terrifying to explore.
Of course, simply walking from point A to point B requires the solution to many puzzles. While the puzzles are generally straight-forward, a few of them seem a bit farfetched and may require simply trying certain items in a location until you find the specific location that it must be used in. The puzzles usually consist of items that you need to find and then combine with other items to progress, or consist of using items to obtain another item that you need. It works nicely and the puzzles are generally enough to make you think without getting too frustrating.
The visuals in SH3 are impressive given the times in which it was made. The Otherworld has details that make it more horrific to explore and monsters possess disturbing details while facial expressions on Heather are indicative of someone who is going through a traumatic time. As far as sound goes, the monster's groans and the sounds Heather makes as she runs and pants and attacks increase the immersiveness of the game. The soundtrack also adds tensity to situations while still providing more gentler tracks that stand strong on their own without the gameplay to complement them.
Overall, Silent Hill 3 is an excellent game; the mechanics work, the visuals are excellent, Heather's voice and tone fits, the atmosphere is here, the monsters are grotesque etc. It has all the makings of a Silent Hill 3 but the overall weakness of the story causes this game to have less of an impact than Silent Hill 2. However, if you're a fan of Silent Hill or horror games in general, Silent Hill 3 is definitely worth checking out.