8.11.03

Although it was a nice change of pace to play a game that is highly polished and glitch free, Silent Hill 3 (SH3) just didn't meet our expectations. If you recall, Silent Hill 2 was a frightening quest to find your dead wife, Mary. Very freaky. It gave me goosebumps. However, in SH3, you play as Heather, a 17 year old girl who is trying to stop the reincarnation of God. God? Yes, God. Or the Devil. It's never really explained. This fact makes the game more religious super-natural fable than disturbing psychological thriller. Not scary. Just odd.

Sure, there are a fair share of disturbing images throughout the game like a man hanging upside down dripping blood into a bucket or club-wielding Nurse Zombies in the Psych ward of the Brookhaven Hospital, but they are so disconnected that there is no common thread of fear or anticipation. It's as if the developers just closed their eyes and clicked a mouse button to put "x" monster in "x" room.

Also, Heather, our 17 year old main character, is rather lame and is simply not likeable. I'll come out and say it: she's dumb. Her reactions to seeing hideous creatures and bloody zombies are annoyingly nonchalant and not appropriate for the situation. In fact, Heather's attempts to make cool and witty commentary fall flat and this speaks to a script that just doesn't know where it wants to go. That's not to say that the voice acting wasn't very well done. But, when you don't have a good script...well, look at Gigli.

Let's delve into the game play itself. If you've played SH2 you know what to expect. Basically, your job is to search a building/area looking for a key or an item, and once found, go to another part of that building/area and use said key or item. In SH2 and in other survival horror games such as the Resident Evil series this searching/using can be quite complicated and often involves a lot of puzzle solving. At any one time you may have half a dozen items and just don't know what to do with them. However, in SH3 this is simply not the case. You find an item and use it almost immediately or it is so obvious where you need to use said item that it is not really a challenge at all.

Speaking of things that aren't challenging, let's talk about the puzzles. Let me say that we played the game on "Normal" difficulty. We have to do this because most of the people who play this game will be playing it on "Normal" and it follows that if we're going to help you through the game we should try to experience it the same way you do. That being said, the puzzles could have been more difficult. In addition, there simply aren't that many puzzles. So, what you have is a combination of bland puzzles and not enough of them at that. That came out weird. In other words, I want better puzzles and more of them.

One aspect to the game that works quite well is the map. The map of "x" location lets you know where you've been, what doors are inaccessible and what doors are simply locked. However, such a good map is almost part of the problem. The map makes it easy to see where you've been and where you need to go. It takes some of the fun out of getting lost and running into a zombie which you didn't expect. That's not to say that I didn't love the map, because I did. It's just that if you're going to give me such an excellent map then I expect the game to be up to the same level.

At this point you're probably thinking that this is the worst game out there. It isn't. And, despite all of its problems it was actually a decent gaming experience. Sure, Heather is not a likeable character and the story line is disjointed but somehow it overcomes all of that and, in the end, is a relatively satisfying game.

Part of the reason that we stuck with it is that the game's graphics and controls are excellent. Heather's hair is amazing as you watch it fluidly move and twist. You can see thousands of individual strands and the texture of her face is simply mesmerizing. The controls are intrinsic and fluid. There are two controller configurations so that you can customize it to your liking. The movie sequences are technically very well done...if only they could have put a better story in there.

Silent Hill 3 gets a thumbs down from both of us but it is a very marginal thumbs down. It could've gone either way but, to be true and honest to our adoring readers (you are adoring, aren't you?), we had to give it the ol' thumbs down. Perhaps the reason is that our expectations were so high, perhaps it's because we just came off of playing Star Wars KotOR, a truly brilliant game with very hard puzzles, perhaps we're just jaded, or perhaps we just psyched ourselves up so much to be scared and weren't. Whatever it is, Konami sure did make a technically solid game with all the bells and whistles. But at the end of the day bells and whistles don't satisfy the primal urge to be scared poopless.