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Silent Hill 3

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 86 / 93
Date: May 26, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I notice a lot of people have already reviewed & rated this game despite having not actually played it yet. I do own it (i live in the U.K. where it was released on May 23rd) & it's excellent. It's extremely similar to the 2nd game in terms of graphics & gameplay, which is a good thing as the 2nd game was extremely well done, & is one of the only truly scary videogames i've ever played. Part 3 lives up to this as well, offering a similar experience to the 2nd game, only with brand new characters, storyline & puzzles. A mention must go to the graphics. Like the previous game, they're excellent, with some brilliantly atmospheric lighting & shadow effects, which really help to suck you into the game. It contains some pretty gruesome images & the soundtack is designed to really amp up the tension. If you compare Resident Evil to a George Romero zombie flick then this can only be compared to something Clive Barker would have come up with. To sum it up, if you're a fan of the series, you'll love this, if you didn't like the first 2 games, then you won't like this one either. If you've never played a Silent Hill game, give this one a try, it's well worth it.

This one is going to be special

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 14 / 23
Date: December 28, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Needless to say, this is one of my most anticipated games in 2003. The beginning of SH3 isn't Silent Hill according to the director. It's a completely different town at first. But they said 'Since its Silent Hill, I guess its safe to say there will be a connection to the town.".

Now my speculation on it? The town you start out in is actually Silent Hill. The difference is that its not actually 'formed' yet. If you remember back to SH1, Silent Hill really got created when Allesa wouldn't agree to the demands of Dahlia and the member of her cult to do the ritual that rises Samael. So to get back at her they locked her in a room and set in on fire. The result was that half the town burned down, and that created Silent Hill. So what I think is that Heather is Allesas mum. You start playing as her and the game goes on a longer time period than the previous SH games till the point that Allesa is born. So we basically get to see what started SH from the beginning. The woman we've seen in the trailers, Claudia (she's the real white woman), is a younger version of Dahlia.

SH3 seems like it's really going to start showing some answers to the series, and the entire plot should be very interesting.
The visulas have also been vastly improved from SH2, and the monster design is extremely wicked. Suffice it to say, if you thought SH2 was scary, then SH3 will downright frighten you. Can't wait for this one.

mmm mmm good

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 9 / 10
Date: February 02, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I had just beaten Silent Hill 2 when I found out they were going to release SH3. I was beyond excited. This game has got to be the strangest and most imaginative thing I've ever played. It's not as creepy as SH2, but what it lacks in creepiness it makes up for in weirdness.

I can't even begin to recall what was going on, there are so many instances where I was blown away by how eclectic the concepts were that I was proud of the creative team that put it together. The mirror room alone would be enough to make me buy this game. I mean really, what in the hell? I was just running along, minding my own business and I step into that! Many times during game play did I have to sit back a reflect on what had just happened. Quite impressive. I loved the random rooms that had nothing to do with anything except to just creep you out and leave you asking yourself "what the hell?" Like the room with the strange "sour" smell wafting around and the black curtain in the middle. Nothing ever happened there, they just wanted to let you know that something was expired I guess.

The whole game was just alive. It had a pulse for god's sake. The walls seemed to be breathing and looking at you as you wondered around looking for the room with the guy with his blood let so that you could fill up your plastic bag with his blood to make a sacrifice and move on. Simple as pie! Everything was just so ridiculously weird like that. Fer god's sake! And while your nearing the end everything just gets out of control and the trippy, symmetric wall shows begin. I mean really, could the atmosphere of this game get any more absolutely insane? There are so many worth while situations to mention: the carosal with all the bloody horses; the fairy tale monster; the countless bottomless pits everywhere; the haunted mansion; the friggin' wheel chair scene; the subway; the amusement park... it was all very interesting, believe me.

The sound was great, fantastic even. Definitely responsible for all the tension in the game. Graphics were great too, of course there was a lot going on with them. I've never seen so much detail put into a game. The only big downfall was the superbly crappy ending. Seriously disappointing. I think that they must have so much going on that they just don't know how to end these games. SH2 was in about the same boat. I haven't gone back yet to replay it for some different endings, but the one I got was pretty sad. But it was worth it, I look forward to playing it over again. They've started on SH4: The Room and it looks like it's going to be excellent. I haven't been let down yet.

Silent Hill 3, finally it looks as good as the story is.....

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 9 / 10
Date: October 17, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Oh,oh my!!!! If you have ever played the other two Silent Hill games you are in for a TREAT!!!! We all know how AWESOME the story lines are of these games but the graphics finally step up to the level of the game! If youve never played a Silent Hill game, welcome to a new world of Survival Horror.

First I have to rave about this game a little before I get into the review. I picked up a copy of Silent Hill (the origional on the old Playstation)last year. I forced myself through it even though the graphics were old and it really seemed to impair my ability to get scared by the game. Even with the old graphics the mood, scenery, storyline and overall feel of the game scared the crap out of me! I then just finished Silent Hill 2, which was MUCH better in terms of graphics, though still behind the quality that I have come to love from say Resident Evil games on Gamecube. Now I get to Silent Hill 3 and I almost had the urge to cry and jump up and down with joy at the same time. FINALLY, FINALLY, FINALLY the graphics are beautiful! The backgrounds and settings can live up to the creepiness that it's supposed to have. And the charachters have the detail and movement that makes this one the most realitstic yet. Plus the sound, this one has the clearest most intense sound yet!

Ok,ok, Im gonna get on with it now.....

Silent Hill 3 opens with a bang! You have never experienced anything like this before with any Silent Hill games and I dare say Resident Evil.(Thinking back through my memory Resident Evil 2 does start out with some action but not quite like this)The puzzles in this game are dead on. They make sense and there isnt a ton of backtracking. The controls are great and Ive only experienced a few times where I couldnt get the camera angle to work to my advantage. This is the first Silent Hill game where you play a girl and I love it. The charachter has a smart mouth and you dont feel sorry for her but want to chear her on as she kicks butt.

Lastly let me just say this, Silent Hill games are SMART suvival horror games. The logic needed to solve puzzles ranges from easy to extremely difficult. Of course depending on the setting you choose. I find it really refreshing to have 4 or 5 choices of difficulty rather than just easy or hard. The story line will make sense (as much as it can for Silent Hill) and will make you think about the game long after you beat it or finish playing for the day. These games are truly made with a lot of thought to story and pulling all the details together as well as how to creep out the player without a bunch of silly scare tactics.

Im a big fan of Resident Evil games but I really feel like Silent Hill games just have something special about them that Resident Evil games dont have. If you have never played a Silent Hill game before I would suggest you start here. Even though there are things in this game that tie into the first two I still think starting here would be best. The graphics will help you enter this new world and once you see how different these games are you will be more willing to play the older games with less impressive graphics.

Stay away from this game, I'm serious

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 10 / 18
Date: February 16, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Silent Hill 3 is not a game, it's not a story, I just don't know what it is. Sure, I chose to play it so I can't "blame" anyone. But who made this? And what is it? If you play it all the way through, you'll know what I'm talking about. I do not need to watch violent movies after playing this. This "game" is not for people who are already suffering from depression or any mental disorder. I seriously considered taking the CD into the back yard and burning it to ashes after playing, and it wasn't even my game. If you can play this game alone, in the dark, then you are mentally sick. Not meaning to sound harsh, but I believe it's the truth. The human mind was just not made to see, hear, and experience the things in this game. I do not want to meet anyone who "enjoyed" playing through this game, as I believe they might kill me. I never want to see blood again after this game. After each level I said, "It cannot possibly get worse than this..." Worse, as in, bleeding walls, moaning lumps of flesh having a seizure on the ground, monsters that make the devil look like santa claus, and the like. But it got worse, and worse, and worse. I'd rather go to hell than to the last level again.

Beyond Frightening

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: January 29, 2004
Author: Amazon User

It's good that you took the time to read this review, beacuse if you are, like I am, a horror fan, this is a very fair warning.

PLAYING THIS GAME MAY SCAR YOUR HORROR LOVING MIND AND REMOVE ANY AND ALL ABILITY TO BE FRIGHTENED BY ANY MOVIE/BOOK/GAME IN THE FUTURE.

There i've said it. Yes it's that scary. Shortly after I played this game I went to see "28 Days Later" on Dvd. No effect. I hadn't seen Sixth Sense so I gave it a shot. No effect. In fact these movies were rather boaring, only after I played Silent Hill 3. Silent Hill goes beyond fear and no words in the human language could possibly describe it accurately. But here goes nothing.

Do you ever wake up at night from an increadibly scary dream, but you know it's a dream that shouldn't be scary, but it is? Something about that dream just scared the living S*it out of you and you lay there alone in your bed trying to push the horrifying images out of your head? That feelings comes up multiplyed by 10, when playing this game. Your palms WILL become sweaty, you WILL jump at the slightest sound in the real world even if it's your cat walking over that bag of doritos you had earlier. I could go on telling you how much this game will scar you mind, but i best get on with the details.

If you aren't new to the series, the controls are nothing new. The graphics take a huge leap. And the puzzles are just as satisfying as the last two games. The enemies are just as twisted, ranging from mutated, disfigured, things lurching down the hallway, to the gruesomely horrifying freaks that enjoy mutilating dead bodies in their spare time, when they're not trying to club you with rusty metal pipes. The story is very detailed and deep but, like all silent hill games, leaves off with pleanty to think about. The game starts off a little slow, but holds you long enough for you to really get into the meat and true horror of the series. New comers, stick with the game and make your way through it. Like any good book or movie, it does start off somewhat slow, but then grabs you by the neck later on and won't let go.

Everyone who plays this game, it is impossible NOT to get scared when playing, and if you don't find this game the least bit frightening... seek mental help... IMEDIATLY.

OH WAIT
i just found out a perfect word to describe this work of art.

DISTURBINGLY FRIGHTENING.

Five out of Five, the best game in the series yet. All other Silent Hill Fans, heads up, Silent Hil 4: The Room is coming out very soon as well.

Why review a game thats not released yet!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 14
Date: January 14, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Some people are complaining & giving this game bad remarks based on the screenshots! It's not even out yet and people are putting it down! The ONLY reason why I reviewed this game is to balance out the negative remarks and to give the game a fair shot when it IS released!

Based on the demo, SH3 should be the best in the series

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 20
Date: June 14, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I'd like to state at the outset that I have NOT played Silent Hill 3 in its final form-- it's currently available only in Europe, and I don't own a modded PS2 capable of playing PAL games. But I have played the demo, consisting of the introduction and the shopping mall level, and just from this short excerpt it's clear that SH3 will be the best installment in the series yet.

First, the graphics are dramatically improved from SH2-- there's much greater detail in the textures (check out the bookstore for a good example), and the lighting effects are fantastic, adding greatly to the game's creepy atmosphere. The designers have also decided to use the game engine for all of the cinematics, and these are not only superior to the in-game cut scenes in SH2, they look just as good as that game's brief rendered clips. I've never seen such a level of expressiveness in a character's facial features before-- the evil cult leader, Claudia, is particularly impressive in this regard.

Gameplay isn't much different from SH2-- you wander through mysterious environments, shoot hideous monsters, and solve arcane puzzles. The main difference is that the monsters are MUCH tougher than SH2's wimpy patient demons and mannequins. Even on the Easy action difficulty, the split-headed dog creatures take five pistol shots to bring down; and since you start armed only with a knife, rather than the series' customary plank or steel pipe (the demo ends well before you find the latter), melee combat is insanely hard. But you can still avoid combat much of the time-- indeed, the best way through the amusement park introduction is just to run from everything. Yes, you're armed with a submachine gun, but it's a waste to stand and fight.

If you didn't like the puzzles in previous Silent Hills, you probably won't care for these either-- the first involves grabbing a key with a pair of tongs from a bakery, the second requires you to figure out a lock code by placing Shakespeare books on a shelf. But these puzzles feel better integrated into the game than some of SH2's, and the Shakespeare puzzle on the Hard difficulty setting is a masterpiece-- it actually requires knowledge of the plays contained in each volume. I love the idea of a video game demanding a certain level of literacy on the part of its audience.

My only worries at this point concern the plot-- from the few cut-scenes in the demo, and information I've read online about the European version, it appears to revive the demon-cult storyline of SH1 rather than following the more psychological, Lynchian style of SH2. (There also seems to be little connection between SH3 and its immediate predecessor, apart from a few Silent Hill locales that feature in the new game.) But if Konami brings the same sort of emotional depth and character development to this tale as they achieved in SH2, it should still be compelling. I expect SH3 will be the finest survival-horror game released so far; why Konami is waiting so long to bring it out here is something of a mystery.

Nothing Compares...

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: October 08, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I played the first Silent Hill when I was 10. It was horrifying to me at that age. I could not play it alone, I thought it would make me go crazy. So years passed, and I noticed the sequel had come out. I rented it knowing if it was anything like the other game, I should be thouroughly freaked out.

And guess what? I was.

Silent Hill 2 was a very scary game, but it was different from the first. The first kept barraging you with a constant feeling of insanity, and never let go for a minute. I am glad it never relied on BOO! scary techniques, like resident evil always does. The second was more eeri and the monsters more disturbing, and was much more atmospheric.

The third brings back the insanity that the first had, along with the erriness and atmosphere of the second. This game is THE SCARIEST GAME EVER MADE. Sound is used masterfully used, as in all the games, the lighting is absolutly genius, the monsters are just disturbing (the best in all the games I think), and all this together plus a few more things, makes for a truly terrifying, and moody, and atmospheric game. Even comparing it to anything else in any of these categories, is an insult to this game. This game is not for people who are expecting something that is anything remotley like RE, aside from the difficulty of the puzzles. This game will bore anyone with a short attention span, who is only looking for lots of action and blood.

This game is perfect for anyone who wants a horror game with substance, and is tired of Resident Evil getting extremely repetitive and boring.

The most disturbing one yet...

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: January 24, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Here's an excerpt from my full review of the game:

"(STORY)The events of this game take place seventeen years after Silent Hill. You are Heather Mason, and you wake up in a shopping mall diner only to be accosted by a detective named Douglas Cartland. He is supposed to bring you to meet someone, but your spunky character doesn't trust him and runs off to a bathroom. From there, you escape him and enter an empty mall. Of course the game would be too easy if that was the end of it. You start to encounter strange monsters before meeting Claudia Wolf, a strange woman who claims that Heather "will lead us to Paradise with blood stained hands."

Similar to previous installments, this game focuses on a few important characters, but I won't go into many details so as not to spoil anything. I think the characters present themselves rather well, and the development is interesting. The interactions are really solid and clearly present to you what their inner workings are really like. Unfortunately, I think the game takes a little too long to really get you into the story. Once you find yourself, as the commercials have hinted at, it gets increasingly scary. From there, the storyline pulls you in deeper and deeper. And even though more is made clear in this game than the previous games bothered with, the plot leaves much to question. I like that about the game and that there's no true answer to it all. Essentially, the story itself is a puzzle. When you read notes, you're able to infer much about the characters and the storyline. In the end, it was all very enjoyable and handled very well. The buildup was nice and they really delivered on giving you something freaky.

(GAMEPLAY)A combination of the eye candy and the sheer fear of it kept me interested in it. This is NOT an action game. You're not meant to go in with guns blazing. Even more so than Silent Hill 2, Konami has emphasized the survival aspect of this game. There are certain monsters you'll have to kill in addition to the bosses, but there are others that you can just let alone. The key to the game is conserving ammo and health supplies. This means you'll use your melee weapons quite a bit and try to run a lot also. I really thought that this was all fun though. It required some actual strategy to get past certain monsters and surviving was really a challenge. This was meant to be an adventure game, and it really did accomplish this.

There are plenty of puzzles to boot. And almost all of these puzzles make total sense. It really isn't hard in most places to put two and two together and figure out a solution. In other parts you'll have to take clues into consideration when trying to figure out something, and they may not always be crystal clear. You should be able to beat the whole game without having to refer to a strategy guide though, unless you're playing on the hard riddle level.

I do have one gripe about gameplay though, and that would be the camera. There were a few parts where a monster hit me merely because it was hard for me to maneuver with the angle the camera was in. You can use L2 to control the camera view, but you don't always have time for this. The problem wasn't very extensive though, and was mainly a problem in the hospital. The controls were good for the most part, but the main character was purposefully rather clunky. You're not controlling a spry action hero, you're controlling a confused teenage girl. She can only move so fast, and the game really strives for this kind of realism.

The arsenal you have at your disposal includes a knife, a steel pipe, a maul, a kitana (very very cool), a stun gun, a shotgun, a handgun, and a submachine gun. So while action isn't really emphasized, you have some great ways to get the job done. Don't fret though, when you unlock some of the secret weapons by beating the game, you will have much fun taking revenge on these monsters. I, for one, have begun replaying the game for the sheer joy of slaughtering these monsters who I had to previously run away from. The hidden weapons are very cool and worthwhile.

(SOUND)There's not a whole lot to say about sound except that I loved it. The soundtrack was very interesting and some of the rock ballads really fit. Of course most of the game is filled with strange sounds, from a screaming woman to a moaning nurse. You'll think you heard something you really didn't hear, or you may not trust your ears like me at some points and get mauled by a twisted creature. If the environments don't keep you on your feet, the sounds definitely will. It's hard to describe how crazy the sounds are, but they really do start to get to you after a while. The only real gripe I have when it comes to the audio is that at a few parts the quality of the voices in the dialogue is diminished. The voice acting overall though has taken a pretty big leap since Silent Hill 2, especially the main character. You really believe their emotions, and I think that's important to truly understand the main points of this game."

Additionally, the monster and character design and detail is indescribable. A must buy for prior fans, and warrants a hard look from newcomers to the series. Its style of psychological horror will keep you on the edge until you finally beat it. There are 3 endings in all to the game. You can see my full review at gamefaqs.com.

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