Back to the Hill......are you ready to get scared...? (Silent Hill 3 (PS2))

Member Name: sparkymarky1973

Product:	Silent Hill 3 (PS2)
Date:	07/01/09 (40 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great plot that returns to the original game characters several years later...

Disadvantages: Some very nasty end-level bosses make this hard to complete

Silent Hill 3 is the third installment in this highly successful survival horror franchise and the first direct sequel to the original PSone game. Heather is a young girl with a mysterious past that she has largely forgotten, living out her teenage life in a small American town. When a private detective tracks her down on the behalf of some very nasty people, it sets into motion a chain of events that will have very tragic results for her and her dad who will be recognisable to fans of the first game. No sooner has Heather met the mysterious woman who hired the P.I to find her, then she finds herself caught up in something known as "The Otherworld" which has escaped the confines of Silent Hill and is now able to infiltrate the "real" world. This is a dimension haunted by frightful mutations thirsty for human blood; a darker, more disturbing version of our own world that exists alongside it and is able to cross over when precipitated by evil forces. The first two-thirds of the game then are not actually set in Silent Hill but beyond it's boundaries and concern Heather's attempts to make her way home.

One of the spookiest sections is when Heather reaches the local subway station. Hard-core gamers should take note- pay attention to clues that can be found literally lying around or else you will very shortly come to a very swift, sticky end at the hands of a vengeful spirit. Take care to hoarde those healthy packs too because, although there are save points a go go disguised as red ritual markings rather than the squares of red cardboard from the previous game, the end-of-level bosses can often be quite tricky even on normal setting and take a fair bit of patience.

In fact this is one of the few downfalls; where Silent Hill 2 was a little easy in places and end-bosses relatively swift to defeat, in SH3 the game goes the other way. Monsters crawling across the floor in some sections can also be a right royal pain in the proverbials and cause a fair bit of damage to the unwary!!! This can occassionally make gameplay a little bit of a chore and it is only the strength of the story that keeps the gamer hooked at times. But that is not to say the game doesn't have it's own fair share of brown-trouser moments also.

The last levels of the game see you returning to the town your character grew up in and revisiting some very familiar locations. Though some of the monsters are new, it is here that the gamer once again encounters those horrible nurses that come creeping from out of the darkness and a little tip of some note is that if you encounter large numbers of them, then you are probably in the wrong room. There are some quite tricky puzzles thrown into the mix as well though these are less prevalent than in the earlier games.

Although the game is much more like the original in style as well as content, this is not always a good thing. At times, the game feels a tad more Resident Evil than Silent Hill and I am not a big fan of the equipment/ health screen which returns to the original layout and was harder I found to navigate than in SH2! Also the buttons to reach it have been reversed so the start button on your PS2 controller now pauses the game which doesn't sound like much to complain about but having just played the previous game recently, I found myself continousally pausing the game accidentally when all I wanted to do was equip a new weapon or restore some health. This, for me, is enough to warrant dropping a star- that and the fact that the final end boss is paticulary hard to beat. Replaying this game for the second or third time, I found I had forgotten just how annoying this last set-back was!!

All in all, this is a good game and a great entry into the series but somewhat flawed in places for my own personal liking. Still worth a play though....if you like being made to jump out of your skin that is!

Summary: Another entry into a highly successful survival horror series...