Hey everybody, This is an archived review I wrote back when The Silent Hill HD Collection Came Out. ….
Let me start this review by explaining my past-experience in the desolate town of Silent Hill. I played through most of the original Silent Hill on my PS3 thanks to the magic of PsOne Classics being available for purchase on the PlayStation store. (I definitely recommend this game to fans of horror films/survival horror games it’s only $5.99 USD) There is only one point I want to express about the original. IT WAS SO AHEAD OF IT’S TIME. The one thing that held it back was the technology of the time, but it still made due with the resources it had.
Now onto Silent Hill 3. THIS GAME IS ABSOLUTELY HORRIFYING. I have never played a game that psychologically broke me, made me turn off the system, and call it a night. This game is definitely not for kids nor is it for people who are easily scared, It has an artistic style to it that holds up to this day and I feel it always will.I will continue to articulate as I get more in depth with this review.
Story: You play as Heather Mason, an average teenage girl who’s father is Harry Mason(The protagonist of the original). After spending a day shopping at the mall Heather is approached by a strange detective named Douglas who wants a moment of her time. Dismissing Douglas as a creep Heather attempts to ditch him by sneaking out a bathroom window and ultimately ends up on a vague adventure to find out what the hell is going on. The story doesn’t make much sense but in my opinion that makes the game more creepy, this game will make you ask “What the hell?” quite often with it’s bizarre dialogue and dramatic cutscenes.
Presentation:The environments consist of:An Amusement Park, A Mall(after closing), An Office Building, A Sewer, A Subway Station, A Hospital, and a few more. the coolest thing about Silent Hill is that the plot takes place in three different worlds. Let me break it down for you.
1.Normal World-Everything Is Normal, there are no monsters or threats and nothing out of the ordinary happens. I would estimate that 10-15% of the game takes place here.
2. Fog World-The environment is similar to the normal world except there is a lot more Fog(outdoors) Darkness(indoors) and enemies. Here you will most likely have a flashlight on for the most part. About 50-65% of the game takes place here.
3.Otherworld-This environment is the scariest in the game. The walls are covered with what appears to be rust/dried blood and random characters. Everything get’s a lot darker. Enemies appear more frequently. There are dead bodies hanging all over. 20-30% of the game takes place here.
The enemies in this game are ugly, scary looking creatures. Each one has its own individual movements/attacks. For example this little a**hole. The Slurper. Crawls around on the ground and grabs on your knees and bites until you kick him off.
These creatures add to the atmosphere by making an ungodly “Slurping” noise. While playing this game you will learn to dread exploring a hall when you hear it.
Gameplay
This gameplay is a total hate it or love it scenario. The object of this game is to explore and find key items/solve puzzles to get from point A to point B. Sounds simple enough right? Wrong. There are a bunch of monsters in between you and your goal, and in this game it is not wise to try and fight every monster you encounter. This game is all about survival. You’ll find yourself constantly running past enemies, saving the big guns for the bosses. A lot of people think that makes the game too hard or less fun, but honestly, I feel it makes the game a ton more scary to play. This game gave me anxiety at one point because I was too afraid to explore a new area when I was low on health. I had to turn the game off and play it the next day. The main character in the game is a teenage girl, it seems the developers really knew what they were doing because when I play this game it totally emulates the feeling of being hunted and trying to find a way out as opposed to killing all the bad guys and fighting your way out(like Resident Evil)
What I didn’t like about this game
This game was great but that doesn’t mean it isn’t flawed. All of the issues I encountered in the game can be summed up by this short list
- The game lagged for the most part. It wasn’t unplayable but it was very annoying.
- The voices were sometimes dubbed wrong in cut-scenes, as were the subtitles.
- For an HD Re-Make it felt quite lacking. It merely seemed like a polished update of the PS2 version. They could’ve done a lot more.
- A Patch was released on 3/21/2012 That supposedly fixed the bugs, however after downloading said patch, my game still had all the problems.
The Final Word: BUY IT
If you do not already own this game, or are new to the series I would say BUY IT. Just to warn you ahead of time be prepared to grind in this game if you aren’t planning on using a walk through, on normal difficulty you are likely to hit many points in this game that seem like brick walls, but with dedication you will find this game a unique terrifying experience with plenty of replay value.
Now I have to start working on my Silent Hill 2 HD review. I don’t have a promised date but expect to see regular news updates until I finish it. -Thanks for reading, Mavizzle
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