Silent Hill 3 (PS2) (2003)
Developer: Konami

Review by Faididi and Co.


Too much in her dad's shadow


Story: Above Average

As is soon revealed in the game, the young woman who calls herself Heather is really Cheryl, the daughter of Harry Mason. Despite her loving dad's efforts to protect her, the influence of her dark origins in the town of Silent Hill is so powerful that she can get sucked into its hellish alternate reality no matter how far away she hides.

This story deals with the aftermath of the very first installment's events, and its plot provides closure to the case of Alessa-slash-Cheryl-slash-Heather. That means it might not be very unpredictable, but at least it does a great job at portraying religious fanatics as utterly hateful nutcases who need to die. Painfully.


Gameplay: Average

Konami's Silent Hill 3 has a story that nicely wraps up things from the first installment, but as a game, it's a fairly stale action adventure. There is essentially nothing here that hasn't already been done in the previous installments, and worse yet, it's also much more linear.

You've read that right; there are no longer any overworld-like areas that encourage open exploration. Instead, Silent Hill 3 is divided into several narrowly structured dungeon-like labyrinths, which Cheryl tackles one after another without ever needing to return to previous regions. This simplified level design also means that the use of jammed doors (to keep our heroine on track) is increased to a near-ridiculous frequency. Not helping is the fact that one entire region is copied straight out from the previous installment, right down to the streets and the building complex.

That said, the rest of the gameplay remains decent. It doesn't scrimp on the scary bits, and Cheryl gets to play with more weapons than James can in Silent Hill 2. Most interestingly of all, the puzzles on the highest difficulty setting in Silent Hill 3 are incredibly hard, requiring outside research or knowledge beyond the in-game clues to solve.


Controls: Above Average

The controls' total responsiveness is happily brought back to the very first installment's standards, thanks to the re-tightened sidestepping motions. The new blocking move is a nice but unnecessary extra, but by this point in the series, having finer control over the camera would've been more helpful. This sequel also supposedly makes Cheryl suffer from temporary performance penalties if she tires out herself by constantly running all over the place, but this effect is so minor that it's unnoticeable, making one wonder why the game even bothers with it.


Graphics: Excellent

Silent Hill 3 takes after Silent Hill 2 visually, meaning that it has the same great graphics. The characters are just as fluidly animated, the environments are just as richly decorated, and the nightmare aspects are just as horrifying.


Audio: Above Average

The audio effects take both a step forward and a step backward. An appreciably stronger passion lies behind the main characters' voice acting, but the music makes the mistake of including songs that would better fit a cheesy drama show. The songs are so out-of-place and irritatingly loud that they blot out the dialogue during one cutscene. Luckily, the evil ambience effects continue to work their magic without problem.


Overall: Above Average

Still scary but hardly surprising, Silent Hill 3 is a lesser second serving of its predecessors' material. Its linear level design sadly loses the overworld areas, although its puzzles on the hardest setting provide an extreme challenge. Those who are new to the series are definitely better off starting with either the original Silent Hill or Silent Hill 2, both of which offer fantastic action adventure horror with more places to explore.


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