This is a great prequel to the Mason Arc, or to the first Silent Hill game. This was pretty good, and probably one of the only two good Silent Hill games that Climax ever worked on. The other one being the more recent Downpour.
Starting with the bad. I guess I could say that this is where the series strays from the originals by adding the huge monsters to it, as just normal monsters, or using some of the monsters as bosses and then just reusing the design with more common monsters. Sure it saves time, but it just seems lazy to me. Another thing I noticed was that they reused monsters from Silent Hill 2 in this, namely the nurses and the straight jackets. Another thing that I noticed was that this one only has two canon endings and a single joke ending that mixes the two from Silent Hill 2.
Now onto the good things about this game. The soundtrack was good, but I expect nothing less from Akira Yamaoka, one of the great game composers. The graphics were good for a PSP game and the story wasn't bad, then again this was a prequel. But what I really did like was the subtle bits of character development for Travis strewn across the land of Silent Hill and even in some of the bosses. As well as the alternate costumes and unlockable weapons. Oh, and I liked the fact that the weapons can break.
Final Verdict:
I thought it was good, and definitely worth the $10 price tag at your local gamestop.