Game Of The Week: Silent Hill 3

*Warning- This review contains spoilers for the first three games of the Silent Hill series.*

Hello dear readers and welcome back to the game room. Now that I’m finished with school and I no longer feel guilty about playing video games and not studying, I’ve taken the time to sit back and catch up on all the games I’ve been meaning to play for a while but haven’t been able to. That being said, I’d like to start a little weekly segment in which I talk about a game I’ve been playing, since it’s a little easier for me to write about when it’s fresh on my mind. I don’t expect these will be particularly long but they will provide me an outlet to give a quick opinion on a random game, so every Sunday I’ll get around to posting one of these. 

This week’s game is Silent Hill 3, a truly excellent survival horror game and probably one of the scariest games I’ve ever played. Although I’ve previously mentioned in other reviews that my favorite of the series is the second game, I believe the third represents the point at which the series reached its absolute pinnacle. Released in 2003 for the Playstation 2 and later on for the PC, SH3 pushed the boundaries of psychological horror in a video game to new heights and greatly built upon what the previous two games had established beforehand.

SH3 is more or less seen as the “true” sequel to the first game, as SH2 had virtually nothing to do with the first. Picking up 17 years after the events of SH1, SH3 follows the story of a young girl named Heather, who as it turns out is the daughter of the protagonist from the first game, Harry Mason. To quickly recap the sort of complex and confusing events of the first game, Harry came to Silent Hill for a vacation but ended up being separated from his daughter and plunged into a nightmare world by a cult bent on resurrecting an ancient God that would bring about the end of the world. As it turns out, his young daughter Cheryl is one half of the spirit of a young girl named Alessa, who was ritualistically burned by her fanatical mother in order to bring about the birth of the God. Harry manages to the halt the dark plan, destroying both the God and Alessa in the process, but before she disappears Alessa produces a child with whom Harry runs off with. Like I said, complex and confusing. Anyway, that child is none other than Heather, now 17 years old and living the life of a normal American teenage girl, and by that I mean hanging out in malls all day. However, her strange and mysterious past catches up with her as she, like her father before her, finds herself trapped in bizarre nightmare world filled with horrific monsters.

SH3, by my evaluation, is pretty much the perfect mixture of the first and second games. It follows the story arc of the first game and picks up where it left off, but has the general gameplay style and even revisits some of the same locations of the second game. The nightmare world is much more similar to that of the first game; everything is blood and rusted metal and decaying corpses and other generally disturbing things. It’s wonderfully awesome and absolutely terrifying at the same time. This is in stark contrast to the nightmare world of SH2, which was much more quietly unsettling and a bit blander, if anything. As I mentioned in my review of SH2, this is more of a reflection on each games’ respective protagonists as they venture through Silent Hill, but I digress. 

The nightmare world of SH3 is the most intense and disturbing incarnation you'll face yet.

The trademark moments of the Silent Hill series to that point are back with a vengeance. The monsters are grotesque and otherworldly, most not even coming close to resembling anything human or animal. The music and sound effects are once again masterfully implemented, building up dread, tension, or haunting uneasiness, depending on the situation. Sometimes, it’s even just the complete lack of sound effects or music that adds to the horror. The story is a bit convoluted and even to this day I’m still not 100% sure I understand what happens, but it’s tolerable enough to follow along with and doesn’t detract from the overall experience at all. As was the case with just about all late 90’s/early 2000’s horror games, the voice work for the characters gets pretty hokey at times. For example, I know she’s just a teenager, but Heather is constantly pouty and sometimes downright obnoxious instead of scared out of her goddamn mind like any rational human being would be if trapped in a nightmarish hell world. It plays out like more of an inconvenience for her than anything most of the time. Again though, this doesn’t take away from the overall game, as the cutscenes with dialogue are pretty much few and far between. And yeah, I know the HD revision improved the voice acting, but I’m talking about the original here because I’m old and can’t keep up with the times.

The voice acting/writing isn’t all that great. I love this part all the way toward the end of the game where Heather just nonchalantly thinks she can call an ambulance in the nightmare world like that would work just fine. Like, did she even look around!? She’s been fighting monsters straight out of a David Lynch film and the entire world is made of a rusty chain-link fence!

Anyway, the patented disturbing nature that is so indicative of the Silent Hill series is ramped up tenfold in this game. There are so many little moments where you’ll come across something that has nothing to do with the story or gameplay but will just creep the ever loving hell out of you so much that you’ll find yourself not even wanting to play any further because of it. The best example of this I can think of is in the infamous mannequin room, which is what I’d probably consider the scariest moment of the entire franchise, maybe of any horror-themed video game ever for that matter. Just watch for yourself, if you’ve never played the game. It’s such a small, insignificant moment that has nothing to do with anything else happening in the game, but if you were actually able to keep your wits together the first time you turned around that corner and then came back to a decapitated mannequin with blood all over the floor, I thoroughly commend you. The lack of any cues to prepare you for that moment, the lack of any music or other sounds leading up to it, it’s pure evil genius, absolute mastery of horror as far as I’m concerned.

Yeah...I...I just don't even know what to say about this.

Despite the common ground it has with its predecessors, SH3 does much to distinguish itself from them as well. Perhaps the biggest difference I noticed in comparison to 1 and 2 was the difficulty level. I’m no master of video games or anything, but I honestly have never really considered the first two games in the Silent Hill series all that difficult. What I personally considered the true challenge of the games was to endure the psychological horror without jumping up and shutting the game off in the middle of your session (which actually did happen to me a few times). However, the games themselves weren’t very hard in terms of solving puzzles and battling monsters and bosses. Even on the harder difficulty levels, I never had all that much of a problem getting through either the first or second games. However, beyond the easiest settings in the third game, the level of difficulty can ramp up quite rapidly.  The lack of supplies is evident in SH3; even on normal mode, I felt like I was constantly low on ammo and health items. Enemies are also noticeably more dangerous and harder to take down than the previous games. The puzzles aren’t very numerous compared to the first two games (only four as opposed to eight and ten, respectively) but range from genuinely confounding on normal riddle mode to criminally insane on hard riddle mode. Upon beating the game you’ll be rewarded with a number of things like bonus weapons and bullet multipliers which make future playthroughs easier. Also, beating the game on both hard difficulty and riddle mode unlocks the so-called “extreme” mode, which is beyond my comprehension since I had a tough enough time making it through hard mode as it was. Oh, yeah, and beating extreme mode unlocks “extreme 2” mode, and this keeps going all that way up to “extreme 10” (!) mode.  I can’t even imagine what that must be like.

At any rate, some new gameplay mechanics do help with the increase in difficulty. For one thing, the camera system is a bit more responsive than the first two, allowing you better control over seeing what’s ahead of you and dodging potential incoming threats. Also, a new blocking mechanic aids greatly in squaring off with monsters. By holding the R1 button and pressing square, Heather will briefly hold up whatever weapon you are equipped with, and if timed right you can effectively block monster attacks. Blocking reduces damage taken to only 10% of normal, and if equipped with the bullet-proof vest item, no damage will be taken at all. It takes some practice, but blocking is extremely useful in conserving health items and all but mandatory on harder difficulty levels.

The blocking mechanic adds a whole new layer of strategy to the combat system that was absent from the previous games and greatly enhances overall the experience.

In all, SH3 may not be my favorite in the series, but it’s definitely a close second. It’s a shame to me that future games in the franchise didn’t follow suit in what this game established. I can’t speak about any of the later entries (i.e. Downpour, Homecoming, etc.) having never played them, but I have played others such as 4, Origins, and Shattered Memories, and I know that none of those games have lived up to the legacy those first three games left for us. It’s also a shame that the series has experienced controversy in recent years, with the strange and sad tale of what could have been in the cancelled “Silent Hills.” At any rate, I still have hope that the series can make a return to its roots, just as I hope for franchises like Resident Evil. Only time will tell. Anyway, if you want a true dose of psychological terror, check out Silent Hill 3, you won’t be disappointed.