Silent Hill 3 Retrospective

Happy Halloween!

It has been awhile since I talked about Silent Hill. So in spirit of the season, let’s do that! Below are older posts for the previous games:

Silent Hill

Silent Hill 2

Silent Hill is once again published by … sigh…. Konami. It was originally released on the Playstation 2 back in 2003, but it got a remastered version along with Silent Hill 2 back in 2012.

 

-Characters-

Heather Mason is daughter of the original protagonist Harry Mason. After the rebirth at the end of the original game, the child grew up to be this independent young woman. She is the reincarnated form of Alessa Gillespie and Cheryl Mason. 

 

Claudia Wolf is the main antagonist of the game. She inherited the cult that as the center of the original game. She want to create Paradise on Earth by giving birth to God through Heather, thus needing Heather to return to Silent Hill.

 

-Story-

One day, when Heather was out at a mall, strange things start to happen, things that would only happen in town of Silent Hill. When she returns home, she find Harry murdered and finds out it was Claudia and the cult’s doing. Claudia tell her if she wants to find her, she has to come to the messed up town of Silent Hill. 

 

-Gameplay-

The gameplay is very similar to Silent Hill 2, there is still the tank control and you go around solving puzzles. The environments in the game are terrifying as usual, and there were several rooms that exist just to scare the shit out of the player.

 

As usual, the combat is not the preferred way to play the game. As you have limited ammo and the character is a civilian, she will miss some of the shots.

 

-the Bad-

Not sure if this is a thing to complain, but the gameplay really has not evolved since the original Silent Hill from the PS1 era, not that it’s bad, just that its not been worked on. I am not saying it should have combat combos like they did in Silent Hill: Homecoming, but maybe more risk could have been taken.

 

Silent Hill 2 is seen as the apex of the series in terms of story, and I can see that. The entirety of the second game was how the town of Silent Hill was mind raping poor James with Pyramid Head and Maria. On the other hand, Silent Hill 3 takes a little more conventional route with the cult making a return.

 

-the Good-

Although it is missing the terror that was Pyramid Head, I thought Silent Hill 3 was the scariest of the first 3 games. If you have played this game, you all must remember the mannequin room …. holy hell that was creepy.

What was terrifying about this room was that I hoped a monster came out and you get to fight it, then I would know the nightmare was over. But the monster never showed, and the feeling of this ever present dread lingered. That is how you do good horror, at least that is my two cents.

 

And as usual, there are so many goofy things in the game. The previous Silent Hills had silly things like the UFO endings and the Dog ending, well the goofiness returns. Silent Hill 3 has an “animated” UFO ending that follows the not-so-canon of the previous UFO endings. And in New Game Plus, Heather gets alternate costume as well as magic girl wand.

 

-How does it hold up?-

In my opinion, and shared by many, Silent Hill 1, 2, and 3 are some of the finest horror games to exist. Of the 3 games, I thought Silent Hill 2 had the best characters and story, but in terms of actually being scary, I thought Silent Hill 3 just nailed it.

Have you tried this game? Let me know what you though!

Gihoon