Difficulty:

Just Right

Time Spent:

10 to 20 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Old-school"

I'll make this quick and easy, since this is my first attempt at a review (I'll make more detailed reviews for newer games further down the line as I get the hang of this). Downpour is a fantastic and sadly underrated return to form to the old-school mechanics and style of earlier Silent Hill games, albeit with a few detractors that hamper the overall experience.

Pros:
Story: Downpour is, hands down, the best Silent Hill story since Silent Hill 2. The characters are great, full of depth and complicated emotions, adding to the confused and insane atmosphere of the ever-morphing titular town.
Longevity: There are full side quests that had me spending over 15 hours during my first playthrough. Each quest is creepy and captivating, adding a little more mythos to the dark back-story of this evil town.
Open-World: Some people think there's too much time meandering in the streets of Silent Hill, but I found it to be a more rewarding experience, although I would have liked more open routes to make traversing the town easier.


Cons:
Combat: While serviceable, Downpour's combat is largely a disappointment. However, because of the nature of combat in the early games in the SH franchise, this does add the nostalgic "better to run than deal with this crap!" mentality of older survival horror games.
Monster design: This is the worst one. Silent hill is a series renowned for its terrifyingly grotesque monsters, which usually are steeped in metaphor related to the main character. This game... well... you just have crazy zombie-monster inmates, claw-women, and these tall-lanky-bat-people things. Thank god the story and atmosphere are good, because the combination of these stupid monsters and poor combat against said monsters could have brought the whole thing down.

In the end, I would recommend this game to anyone who enjoys atmospheric or old-school survival horror games. There is plenty of creepiness to be found, and the town is fun to get lost in. Just don't come in expecting a good action game.

Side Note: Why the hell can't we have new paragraphs in these reviews? it makes them tedious and hard to read!