Silent Hill 3

 

Silent Hill 3

Spoilers a plenty!

Such a delight to go back to the horrors of Silent Hill 3 after playing Silent Hill f which I had enjoyed very much. I had to take a break from the pretentious arguments, on both sides of the aisle, revolving around the Clair Obscur game… I have known all the Silent Hill games to a degree, but I have not played all of them myself. Silent Hill 3 is, overall, a fine addition to the series, and provides a closure to Harry Mason’s adventure that started in the very first game. I had a great time with it, although I think the game is rather short. SH3 does not have the same emotional heft as SH2 and perhaps given how gruesome and tragic SH2’s story was, SH3 decided to add some comic relief and turn its gaze to Silent Hill’s famous underground occult and its alluring mystery once more.

Story

The Lakeside Amusement Park by the Toluca Lake of Silent Hill cuts the ribbon and introduces us to a confused teenager, Heather Mason, wearing a white jacket with a beaming flashlight, wandering aimlessly among some disfigured giant rabbit costumes. The very first room is uneventful, but the next one has an annoying fisty and feisty creature who may or may not kill us, depending on how daring the player wants Heather to be. If Heather ignores the creature, she eventually goes up to the rollercoaster area where the tracks are all beaten but there is no sight of the coaster. As Heather continues with her unsure steps, we hear the whistle of the coaster and Heather screams and dies. Soon after, we find out this was a just dream and Heather is sleeping in Happy Burger, a diner in a mall. We leave the ironically named restaurant to meet Douglas Cartland, a detective. He pesters Heather a little, but Heather is not interested and brushes him off. Immediately we are faced with questions about Heather: Who was she really? What did Douglas know about Heather’s birth? Heather leaves Douglas only to find that the monsters in her dream had not left her, and the mall is crawling with them. In horror and dreadful anticipation, Heather solves the puzzles of the mall laid out in front of her in sonnets and blood. After much reading of Silent Hill’s love for Shakespeare’s themes of gore, revenge and death, we meet Claudia Wolf, a heinous looking 40–50-year-old blonde woman in an all-black dress looking down on us with awe and… a little bit of fear. Claudia tells Heather that she needs to remember who she really is and that God will usher in a path to Paradise to which Heather’s power will be harnessed. Just like that, by hand of God, we enter the Otherworld as powered by the occult and Heather needs to solve her past to save her future.

The story elements of SH3 are very similar to SH2 in that we have the usual suspects: bizarre and incomprehensible characters with seemingly incomprehensible dialogue, tarnished yet innocent characters, cutscenes with gore and mystery and notes scattered all throughout that lore us into the story more.

We don’t have many characters, but Silent Hill games are very personal, deep and focused on only few psyches. In addition to Heather, Douglas and Claudia, we have Vincent, a whacky cleric with a whacky accent, who downplays Heather’s nightmare by saying it is “fun” which is perfectly understandable because we know, from past SH games as well, that we experience the world as the protagonist perceives it. For Heather, Silent Hill takes the form of her mysterious past, her coming of age or adolescence story and even creepy notes from an admirer, Stanley Coleman, a patient in the psychiatric ward of Brookhaven hospital. Personally, I loved Stanley’s notes, they were unsettling and something that Heather, being a late teenager girl, would be most creeped out by.

The story and overall game are less serious compared to SH2 and the comic relief was exemplified by several moments including that scene where Heather looks at the toilet bowl and wonders if something useful could be stuck there and she stops right before she was going to put her hand in it, stands up and faces the camera: “Who would even think of doing something so disgusting?” Heather remarks after seeing Leonard, Claudia’s giant alien father: “Is every person a mental case here?”

Heather impersonating Alessa to try to trick Claudia into stopping her schemes was also funny to me. This one took me by surprise; it was so much fun to see Heather flinching as she feigns to be Alessa and finally she gives up and says: “You self-righteous witch!” Of course, the best offender of all is the final scene where Heather walks toward an injured Douglas with a knife and says “You’re still alive…. Boo! Just a joke” and the game ends with “Don’t you think blondes have more fun?” Come on Team Silent, is this literally the last line of the game? Perhaps SH2 was so sad that they thought they should continue the series with a more lightweight, easygoing entry.

SH3’s story may not be as gripping as SH2, but it is a fun and engaging narrative. Having said that, I thought the first section of the game, basically until reaching Heather’s apartment, felt like a filler, there wasn’t much action and it wasn’t particularly immersive. Though they made sense in Heather’s other world, because she is a teenager who would frequent those places. The rest of the game is very intriguing. You do want to know what happens to Heather, what Claudia is cooking, whether Vincent is truly innocent (you keep guessing till the end!), whether Douglas continues to betray Heather or comes clean. Who knows, maybe we will get to see Cheryl again one day (since, you know, she has Carrie-like powers! – see more on that below).

Gameplay

SH3’s gameplay is very similar to the past entries: monsters running around while you carry a hand gun or pipe and you stomp on them once they’re down. Weapons can vary later in the game, I especially loved using Katana, it was my favorite. Combat is somewhat clunky but nowhere near the level I experienced in SH: Homecoming where combat was simply laughable. The camera angle changes can be very awkward, but I got used to it. Boss fights were very few and not very memorable, that includes the final boss, Alessa reborn.

Puzzles with poems are a trademark of SH and SH3 is no exception. I made the mistake of playing Riddles on Hard mode. No matter how clever you think you may be, some of the puzzles just plainly don’t make any sense: that owl that ate and ate and ate, and yet it wasn’t the greedy fat bastard animal that wanted it all. The face puzzle at the hospital… it’s too cryptic and the diagram did not make sense. Anyway… Better play it in Normal or Easy. The puzzles are not that plenty either, but it wasn’t a concern for me. Shakespeare puzzle was ok, but then you have to know your literature to solve/appreciate it, which I understand to be a major concern for some players. Otherwise, the puzzles are not very memorable.

Scary moments are also very much present. As someone who’s played many horror games, I still can be got with jump scares and unsettling moments. SH3 has a quite few of those: the mannequin whose head was chopped off as you were about to leave the room, the phone calls and alarm clocks, the cries of a baby in hallways…

One place in the entire game stood out the most for me and that is Borley Haunted Mansion. Such a fun, spooky and genuinely terrifying place. The backstories to every room, the sudden screams, the ill-meaning but gentle voice of the narrator of the place all made me feel cornered. The art direction took great turns, every moment was calculated and made you feel you are being watched or something terrible is about to happen. “It wasn’t supposed to stop there. I assure you.”

A final note on gameplay: since Heather is clearly Alessa’s reincarnation, and she has powers, why not use her powers? See, if this were Silent Hill f times, Heather would definitely acquire some god-like powers in the end! Joking aside, this could be story-related as well: perhaps Heather just chooses not to use her powers. Harry in SH1 and James in SH2 were truly horrified by what they saw in their other worlds, maybe because of lack of innocence etc. but Heather greets some moments in her world with a sardonic and nonchalant face. Perhaps this is also because Heather subconsciously draws confidence from her inner latent powers. This is a nice progression of SH games’ history, I think.

Graphics

I played SH3 on PCSX2 4K, 30fps. It’s a PS2-era game and it’s reasonably polished. I do think Silent Hill games, in general, suffer from bland environments but I wouldn’t say SH3 is bland overall. There are lots of hidden details and objects that you wouldn’t ever imagine Heather interacting (looking at you “bread” … that is…if you are bread after all !!).

I loved some of the environments. Amusement Park and Borley Haunted Mansion are some highlights. Claudia’s church, Harry and Heather’s apartment were great.

The paintings are superb as well, particularly the ones in Claudia’s church. They truly are a work of art and apparently inspired by works of Caravaggio, Bosch (done by Hiro Usuda, check the wiki here: https://silenthill.fandom.com/wiki/Chapel). St. Alessa, Jennifer Carroll (another one of Silent Hill cult’s saints) and St. Nicholas paintings are just lovely to look at.

Sound

Sound design is excellent as per usual and adds to the atmosphere wonderfully.

Voice acting is a hit or miss. Mostly a miss except Heather’s VA. I played the OG on PS2 and apparently the HD collection on PS3 has worse VA. Heather’s voice is very believable, it’s not any groundbreaking performance but it’s very natural. There was one particular scene that moved me a bit and that was Douglas and Heather in a car on their way to Silent Hill. Heather’s learned helplessness and her visceral reaction to how she is slowly getting to the truth is well done. All of a sudden, the truth comes out of her in smoothest prose. “To tell you … how happy you made me” I thought the delivery here was really good. Actually, Heather’s VA improves over time, she gets better in the church in her encounter with Claudia for example. The VA peaks at “Shut your stinking mouth bitch!”

The soundtrack (https://vgmdb.net/album/8016) is for sure a downgrade from SH2. In fact, by a huge margin and Homecoming had a much better soundtrack as well. I won’t have a separate section for soundtrack because it is not quite noteworthy except for one thing: introduction of Mary Elizabeth McGlynn. The rest was history, I guess. I want love (Studio Mix) and letter – from the lost days are my favorites. The rest of the OST is uninteresting, without catchy tunes or haunting melodies. I also like and dislike narrated passages in songs, it’s cool and annoying at the same time. It is ok because Akira Yamaoka has and will have already given so much.

Conclusion

Silent Hill 3 is a worthy game in the series with many spooky and creepy moments. It is also the most lightweight entry I have experienced in the series so far. The sound design is excellent, but the soundtrack is rather disappointing, especially compared to the genius Yamaoka presented in the past and future. SH3 also feels very short, I clocked in 6 hours at the end.

I am looking forward to Silent Hill 4, although I understand that it is disliked by SH fans. That is ok, I will start playing it with a fresh and reassured mind since I came to realize that Silent Hill f, in so many ways, improved Silent Hill as a series in modern hardware while drawing parallels with its past. I would give this game an 8/10 overall.