Anime Forum Games Links Movies Music Profiles Survivor TV Shows Turn the lights off and the surround sound up because it's that time again. Silent Hill has been my favorite survivor horror series since I played the first game. It relies on messing with your mind while other games, like Resident Evil, rely on using loud noises and things jumping out. Silent Hill 3 is obviously the third game in the series and is actually a sequel of the first gaem, part 2 was pretty much a stand alone game. The game starts off with a girl in a twisted and dark amusement park, no clue how she got there and why she is holding a knife. She soon wakes up in the mall where she calls her father to say she's on her way home. An older gentleman approaches her and we learn her name is Heather and that someone wants to talk to her. Well, Heather runs away and ends up in a twisted version of the mall, full of monsters. That's how the game starts off and to be honest the plot doesn't go anywhere after that for the longest time. However, the plot does pick up halfway through the game but it serves it all to you on a golden platter with garnish. I enjoyed the connection between this and the first game but beyond that I felt there wasn't any true mystery which is disappointing because hr Silent Hill games have always had an excellent story. The graphics can be a mixed bag, depending on you. There's a noise effect in the game that makes it look rather drab and grainy. You can turn this off in the secret options menu (Hit L1 or R1 in the options menu). When it's off the graphics are much cleaner and makes it easier to see the details of the game. My biggest complaint in the graphics area is the fact that Heather's mouth in the CGI scenes look like a large gapping black hole that stretches way too far to look like a real mouth, it's actually kind of scary. I love the control of the Silent Hill games. You can choose between the Resident Evil controls which I don't really care for or you can choose from 2D controls which make Heathers turning seem more natural. It's easy to check for stuff and attack. The button placement is fine and I had no problems. A big factor in this series is the sound. First of all the music this time around is really good and the game comes with the soundtrack, I can't comment on that because I only rented the game and it didn't come with the soundtrack. I really enjoyed all of the songs that had vocals. The sound effects are very well done yet again. There is one scene that just creeped me out, Heather enters the basement of a hospital and you hear this weird sound, it turns out to be an overturned wheelchair and as you walk past it the wheel slowly stops spinning and the area grows utterly quiet. Now the voice acting is a mixed bag, Most of them seem good enough, Heather's being the high spot of it all. Douglas has the worst voice actor ever. He's emotionless and doesn't deliver the lines very well, such a shame too because Douglas comes off as an interesting character. The game play is pretty much the same as before. You wander around locations, trying to find your way out by solving puzzles and killing monsters. There's just one problem. This game is very linear and I actually only killed 2 monsters excluding bosses in my game. You can run past most of them without taking any damage and by the end of my game I had a crap load of ammo and healing items left over. The weapons are pretty much the same thing as usual. You get a handgun, sub machine gun, shotgun and then there are melee weapons like the knife, pipe, katana and maul. I pretty much stuck with the handgun except during boss battles since it seems the shotgun was the best option for those. When I say the game is linear, I really do mean it. You head from one area to the next and you never get to explore, even once you reach Silent Hill. This is kind of disappointing but it does keep the game moving faster which is good since the plot takes a back seat a lot in the first half of the game. The game offers the player the option of choosing how hard enemies and puzzles will be. Playing on Easy gets rid of some puzzles and items. Playing on hard adds more parts to the puzzles and some deadly tricks in the later part of the game.I also have a problem with the enemies, there just isn't much of a variety and they really aren't that disturbing. The replay value is actually really high. There are four ending and the only way to get the final shirt in the game is to beat Extreme 10 times. Right there is a big enough challange to keep any gamer busy for a while. You can also see some new scenes in the game if you play with a completed Silent Hill 2 file on your memory card. Out of all of the survival horror games I;ve played, this one offers the most in replay value. I went in expected another great story and I came out slightly disappoited. The game is good but it just doesn't deliver the scares or story o the first two. I also felt that the normal areas felt a lot like nightmare versions, of course the hospital is disturbing beyond words in the nightmare version. Fans of the series should check it out for sure but if you're new to the series, it's best to go rent the original for the Playstation 1, that way you can get the full story but if you don't want to you can always have it revealed to you in this game; since it does explain it all. Control: 9 Game play: 8 Graphics: 8 Replay value: 7 Sound: 7 Story: 7 Final Score: 83/100 Reviewed by Americanpieflute Reviewed on January 2nd 2004