Review #273: Silent Hill 3

 When humans don't behave like humans.

 I've been aching to give Silent Hill 3 a spin, for whatever reason, and now I did and... I'm pleasantly surprised.

 Firstly, you will not play this game for the story. I mean, the set up is alright, you play as Heather, who gets warped into 'the otherside' after a meeting a detective. In this 'Otherside' freaky things are out to get her, and soon she'll be involved in a cultist group's agenda. Y'know, it's alright. But... Humans don't behave like humans. Heather and the other NPCs, all behave very weirdly. Heather and the Detective come across all these creatures and they only trade a few words about it and then go merrily on their way. Or a character confronts another, and when they tell this character ' X was kidnapped and brainwashed!', the other character, instead of answering something sensible like 'Your cult is evil and X is better off now!' answers... 'X was happy!'... so what if X was happy? X WAS KIDNAPPED, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD. Yeah... character interaction isn't very realistic, which put me off a lot. And what about this 'Otherside'? Like, every place that Heather goes into is completely devoid of any human life, seems abandoned really, so when does she get into 'the Otherside' really? I dunno, I feel the game could've explained some things better. Silent Hill 4 gets a lot of flak, and I'll admit that some of its characters' interactions were a bit iffy as well, but it was much more believable than this game's. Just saying.

 But when it comes to videogames, it can have the stupidest, most nonsensical story out there, but as long as the gameplay is tight, I won't care. And this game passes with flying colors. Firstly, there's two forms of movement: 2D or 3D. 2D gives you tank-like controls, strafing and a backstep. But 3D gives you more natural controls(Left is left, instead of making you rotate), but the freedom of movement comes at a cost: No strafing or backstepping. It's a fair trade off, and it accommodates both players that are fond of tanklike controls or the other type. The game also offers separate difficulty settings for both combat and puzzles, further accommodating for players of different skills. Very nice. I played the game on normal(Both for combat and puzzles) and they were just fine, and read about some of the 'Hard' puzzles and... they can get pretty challenging.

 In order to deal with the many monsters that assault Heather, she can use both close ranged weapons and a few fire-arms. Combat is a bit stiff, like most Survival Horror games, y'know the deal, slow swings, short range and scarce ammo and healing supplies. That said, melee combat is more viable than on most games of the genre, as a matter of fact, Heather can block incoming attacks for reduced damage. There's another type of... danger. Cliffs. For whatever reason, Heather can fall to her death off the edges of, well, any kind of surface with edges. I found it a fairly needless hazard, that will kill you mostly out of being distracted than it being a real danger, which I found to be kinda dumb.

 The camera can be a bit of a pain sometimes. Some areas feature fixed camera angles that messes with your controls(Although I'm guessing it doesn't if you are using the Tank-like settings) if you are moving while the camera transitions. Furthermore, while you can adjust, on areas without fixed camera angles, the camera behind Heather with L2, sometimes the camera will try to snap back to where it was before. It's specially annoying if you spot an enemy, you let go of L2 and the camera snaps in front of you while the enemy approaches you! And sometimes getting Heather to interact with the right item on the environment that you want can be a bit tough, particularly when interactables are close together or on top of each other, but these happens almost exclusively on 'safe spots' when trying to get Heather to interact with the save spot or pick up a certain item, so it's just a minor inconvenience.

 I liked Silent Hill 3, I really did, but I really don't understand how Silent Hill 4 gets so much flak when it's so much better than SH 3. The story is better, character interactions are better, gameplay is better. And in no way am I even trying to imply that Silent Hill 3 is bad, au contraire, it's fantastic, but Silent Hill 4 is every bit as good, and in my opinion even better, than this one, yet it's the one called the black sheep of the series. But I digress, Silent Hill 3 is a great, if a bit short, game. It can be challenging, unsettling, and even creepy but it offers enough customization in its difficulty and controls to appeal to players of varying skills.
 8.0 out of 10