Silent Hill 3 is by far the best Silent Hill game, as well as one of the best survival horror games ever made.
Until now.
Silent Hill 3 places you in the boots of a teenage girl named Heather. Heather, like the Silent Hill protagonists before her, is a seemingly normal person who lives an average life, in an average town. Of course, that wouldn’t make for a very good horror game, so Heather’s world turns upside down, and things start to become very horrifying, very quickly. While the game doesn’t actually start out in Silent Hill, don’t fret; Heather will travel to the haunted town at the middle of the game.
I usually save these kind of sentences until the end of the review, but I’m just going to not beat around the bush: Silent Hill 3 is, by far, the best Silent Hill game. It is one of the best survival horror games ever made, and it is among the best games you can possibly buy for your Playstation 2.
So, why is this Silent Hill so much better than its predecessors? Let’s begin...
Silent Hill 3, like Silent Hill 2 before it, does not make many changes to the Silent Hill formula. You’re still doing a lot of the things that you’ve been doing in the last two Silent Hill games, such as wandering through dark, abandoned locales, fighting strange and nightmarish creatures, solving puzzles, and staying alive all while trying to maintain your sanity. The difference? It has NEVER been done this well. The gameplay in Silent Hill 3 feels SO much better than any of the gameplay featured in SH 1 or 2; just about every aspect of the series has been immensely improved.
First of all, the combat is far tighter and responsive than it was in Silent Hill 2. The combat system, while very simple, is perfectly fitting for this style of game. Each melee weapon has 3 standard ways of attacking, as well as a heavy swing for finishing off downed enemies and a blocking system that absorbs most of the damage from an attack. The blocking system is what I believe to be the biggest improvement over the combat, as it proves to be a literal life-saver in some tense situations.
Heather has a wide range of weapons at her disposal, such as a lead pipe, a standard pistol and shotgun, a katana, and even a sub-machine gun. If it sounds like Heather will be packing some serious heat by the end of the game, that’s because she will be. However, in this game you’ll need everything that you pick up. The enemies in Silent Hill 3 are very well designed, and you’ll face a large variety of surreal creatures who want to take a bite out of Heather. The monsters in this game are a real threat, and since many of the environments are closed-in there aren’t many opportunities to simply run past a fight. Health and ammunition are much harder to come by than in previous Silent Hill games, meaning you’ll have to conserve ammo and use healing items wisely. You do not have an onscreen health meter in Silent Hill 3. Instead, you know how much damage you’ve taken based on how fast your controller is rumbling. Once Heather takes enough damage, the PS2 controller will begin to mimic a beating heart, and it gets faster as your health gets lower. It’s a very neat mechanic that feels perfectly placed.
Of course, this is a Silent Hill game, so fighting isn’t the only thing you’ll be doing. Silent Hill 3 is laden with puzzles to solve, doors to open, and hellish environments to escape. The environments in Silent Hill 3 are an absolute joy to explore, as the game moves along at a decent pace and features some of the eeriest and most unnerving levels that I’ve ever experienced in a videogame. Usually, you’ll enter an environment that seems normal enough, but it’s never long before things take a viscous turn into nightmarish territory. For example, the game starts you out in a shopping mall, but after only a little bit of playing you’ll find that the mall has transformed and become a living nightmare, a place devoid of light, warmth, and other human beings, instead inhabited by shadows and haunting wails that may or may not be coming from some hideous monster not far away. Although it’s easy to get lost in these places, the game features a handy map system that marks off places you’ve already entered, and also points out rooms and places that contain key items. The ambiance and presentation in Silent Hill 3 is simply top-notch. The level designs fill the player with an almost overwhelming sense of despair, hopelessness, and imprisonment. This is an experience that you won’t forget anytime soon...whether you want to or not.
Like I said, the puzzles in Silent Hill 3 aren’t in short supply. A large portion of the game is spent trying to figure out what exactly you need to do to progress into the next unexplored area of the game. Most of the puzzles are challenging yet solvable, just be sure that you don’t set the puzzle difficulty to HARD at the start of the game, unless you like sucking the fun out of the experience. But I’ll cover that later.
Although the puzzles are, for the most part, solvable, not all of them are that exciting. There are some puzzles that take advantage of the genre, such as one puzzle that requires you to fill a hospital blood-bag full of fresh blood...by dipping it in a bucket of blood underneath a corpse hanging upside-down. Another puzzle found later in the game is solved by butchering the horses on a merry-go-round. (The horses are alive, by the way.) However, not all of the puzzles are this well implemented. There is the occasional, “find the key to this door” or “solve the brainteaser” puzzle. They aren’t impossible, they just require some thinking.
The graphics in Silent Hill 3 are, again, the best in the series, not to mention some of the best that you will see on PS2. I’m still amazed at how this game’s graphics can top a lot of games that are currently being released for PS2 three years later. Character models are extremely well-detailed, and facial expressions and animations are believable and lifelike. While the cutscenes and character models in Silent Hill 3 are very impressive, the high point of the graphics are definitely the enemy and level designs.
The enemies in this game are exactly what you’d expect from a Silent Hill game, which is a very good thing. Enemies range from the Numb Bodies, which are bipedal fish-like creatures with rotting flesh and a huge eye for a head, to Insane Cancers, which are sickening, obese monsters that won’t hesitate to pummel Heather if given the opportunity. Other enemies include Nurses, a Silent Hill favorite, and Double-Heads, which are zombie-dogs whose bodies and heads have been split in half and bandaged back up again...badly. Ok, so maybe the zombie dogs are a bit generic, but they look very cool and provide some genuinely nerve-racking moments when they chase you.
No matter how good the enemy design in Silent Hill 3 is, none of them measure up to the awesomely disgusting and surrealistic environments. Heather will explore many seemingly mundane locations such as a subway station, a theme park, and a hospital, and let me tell you: mundane they are not. As I mentioned earlier, environments have a tendency to morph unexpectedly, and when the effect takes place players will be both dreading it as well as eagerly anticipating what horrors await them. It feels strange to call something as unwelcoming and horrifying as Silent Hill 3’s environments “beautiful”, but I can’t resist. The unwelcoming and horrifying environments in Silent Hill 3 are...wait for it...beautiful. (Man, it feels good to get it out of my system.) Seriously though, these levels are truly something to behold. Rust covers the walls and ceiling, and blood is smeared across doors and tile. Elevators become cages that plummet deep into the ground, what was once a normal window becomes a festering mass of blood and gore, entire rooms and hallways pulsate as if alive, veins appear from nowhere and cover the environments. The very air seems pervaded by a tense and unnerving sense of insecurity. Just in case you couldn’t tell, I like the environments a lot. What makes them even better is the fact that they’re all very dark, forcing you to resort to your flashlight in order to get a glimpse at whatever’s ahead of you...though you may not want to.
The sound design in Silent Hill 3 is absolutely on par with the graphics. In fact, both the sound and graphics go hand-in-hand to contribute to the game’s overall scare-factor and further immerse the player. Some sound effects in the game are staged, but a lot of them still make me jump, or send shivers down my spine, whenever I hear them. The monsters’ sound effects really need to be heard to be believed. The lumbering beasts of Silent Hill 3 all have appropriate and fitting grunts, screeches, roars, and so on. One monster in particular, a creature that crawls on all fours and resembles a skinned alligator, makes a loud and disgusting (almost annoying) slurping\crackling noise. Also, the way the zombie-dogs howl...let’s just say it’s nothing you want to think about when trying to get some sleep.
The voice acting, while still not the best you’ll ever hear, is solid, and I was relieved to find that I participated in none of the eye-rolling and sarcastic snorting caused by the dialogue and “acting” in the early Silent Hill and Resident Evil games.
It’s not just the sound effects in Silent Hill 3 that are a success; the music is exceptionally well-done. From the low, ominous drum beats of the Hospital, to the soft, lonely sounding ballads of the abandoned amusement park, Silent Hill 3 delivers in spades as far as sound goes.
I wish I could give this game a 10, I really do, but I have to admit that the third installment in the Silent Hill series has some skeletons in its closet. The biggest problem is the length of the game. While not too bad for a survival horror game, Silent Hill 3 clocks in at about 8-10 hours the first time through, and about 4-6 hours once you know exactly what to do. If you’re hardcore, you can speedrun through the game in about 3 hours. It almost makes me cry to realize that there isn’t more of the game. Luckily, Silent Hill 3 boasts some replay value to make up for its length. (Or lack thereof.) With extra difficulty modes, unlockable weapons and costumes, and hidden endings to unlock, you’ll probably be coming back for more.
Another problem I had was with the game’s bosses. The combat in Silent Hill 3 has improved a lot, but this still isn’t an action game by any means, and if you’re going add sequences to your game that are focused only on action, they’d better be impressive. And they aren’t. Although the bosses look good, the actual fights are too simplistic and tedious. Also, only having 4 bosses isn’t bad when considering the game’s length, but like I said, none of the fights are that inspired. One of the bosses, found inside the game’s hospital, is actually pretty lame.
My final big gripe with the game would be the HARD puzzles. At the beginning of the game, you have the option to choose your puzzle difficulty. The three puzzle difficulties are: EASY, NORMAL, and HARD. Although, in my opinion, they should be: EASY, NORMAL, and OH FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, WHO COMES UP WITH THIS BULLS***? The hard puzzles are just too hard, and the reward for finishing them isn’t at all worth it. In order to complete these puzzles, you better have a full college education as well as a working knowledge of Shakespeare’s works and ornithology. Yes, ornithology. There’s a puzzle about birds. If you must play on the HARD puzzle difficulty, or if you selected it by accident, do what I did: Swallow your pride and look up the solutions on the internet. Trust me, it’s not worth the energy to stop enjoying the game and figure out some near-unsolvable, nonsensical brain-teaser.
Despite these few complaints, I still believe that Silent Hill 3 is an utterly amazing game. I recommend it to anyone who is a fan of survival horror, as well as gamers who just want a change of pace. If you’re willing to try a slower-paced adventure game with a good amount of puzzle-solving, pick up Silent Hill 3. Horror fans, you NEED this in your collection. I wish it were longer, but the experience is truly unforgettable.
I once saw an advertisement for Silent Hill 3 that stated “Don’t bother closing your eyes. What you see isn’t half as disturbing as what you don’t.” Now that I’ve played the game, that makes a lot of sense. Konami seems to understand that it’s the unknown that truly terrifies us, and Silent Hill 3 uses its ambience and tension to build fear in our minds, so when we hear that distant, menacing groan, we’ll imagine a danger far more horrific than any videogame monster could be. This is why Silent Hill 3 stands out from other games on the market, and it’s why I refuse to sell it, even though I don’t play it much anymore. Thank you Konami, you got it right with this one. For the first time in I don’t know how long, I look forward to seeing more iterations in the Silent Hill franchise.
PROS AND CONS
PURE HORROR
+ Unnerving, haunting, unforgettable and sometimes terrifying ambience and environments.
+ Amazing graphics and lighting effects
+ Impressive musical score
PURE BORE
- Extremely short
- Boss fights aren’t very impressive
- Some puzzles are too damn hard