Silent Hill Downpour (PS3)

I'm a big Silent Hill fan. It's been a long time since the golden days of SH2 and as the ps2 era was coming to an end, fans looked ahead for a new game to bring the series into the next generation which sadly never arrived. Instead of a next gen equivalent of SH2 we got a couple of badly made spinoff titles, remakes and fan service cash ins. Origins was a weird remake style mess, homecoming missed the point so far it may aswell have been shot backwards, and the wii game... oh boy. I am starting to see why the original japanese developers bailed after the ps2 gen.

So what is Downpour like? well, it is better than all of the games post Sh4 but falls short of the brilliance of the first 3 games. If you are a silent hill fan, it is worth your time. If not, pick up the forthcoming SH HD classic pack for ps3 which has the best games in the series.

- Story, spoiler free

A shining example when compared to modern games, but James Sunderland would be turning in his grave before it knocked Sh2 off it's pedestal. We play Murphy Pendleton, a thirty something convict who finds himself in Silent Hill when his prison transport bus crashes into a forest during a rainstorm. Little is given away as we wonder through a foggy forest into town. The story unfolds in the same way it always does via notes on the ground, flashbacks, symbolism in environments and monsters. Without spoiling much, our Murph has a troubled and violent past - which is the Silent Hill equivalent of a season ticket. Lots of twists/turns and a well written tale. Sadly the voice acting is a bit of a letdown with most characters not reflecting the emotion they speak very well. Overall, the story is the reason you should buy the game.

- Atmosphere

Excellent. I was more than happy to see they returned to the roots of the series with genuinely creepy art design, whisping fog and some great sound effects. Daniel Licht (the master composer behind the Dexter tv series) scored the soundtrack to the game and did a good job. The world is lonely, dark and foreboding. Top marks here, and no out of place appearances of Pyramid Head or Sean Bean.

- Gameplay

Here is when things start to fall apart. Fortuntely though we have the traditional medikit health system instead of the popular "never die health regen" crap that is in most games these days. This helps to build tension thst is sadly dispersed by the woeful combat. It feels as though the devs recognised that SH games had pretty woeful combat in general, but oversaw it as some kind of game design choice. The combat is limiting and unfair in SH 2 for a couple of reasons, the biggest being that you are supposed to be a regular joe flailing pipes and wood around in terror rather than a hulking meat head smasnhing skulls with regenerating health. Downpour seems to imitate combat elements on purpose, probably in attempt to stay traditional to the series, but it fails and becomes both frustrating and tedious. I generally groaned when monsters where around because the combat leaves much to be desired. Blocking is glitchy, weapons such as fireaxes break as if they where made of cardboard... but i am glad they went for SH 2 style melee combat with only a few guns and very rare ammo pickups, rather than the weird 3rd person action/quick time event mess that was Homecoming.

- Graphics

I play and review based of the above points, but it is only fair to include graphics at the end because they do look nice. Whispy fog, realistic water effects and some great art design. Silent Hill looks good. Sadly though it has some pretty dodgy texture popping and frame rate issues..

- Negatives

So we have a lot of bad design choices on display in this game, to put it nicely. It was not too bad at first but as time goes on I was starting to wonder if anyone at development bothered taking time to playtest some of the clangers of game design that are in here. Quick time event sequences that have you repeating cut scenes because they pop out of nowhere, false moral choices every now and then that dont change outcomes despite what you chose to do (Why bother!?) and somewhat game crippling combat being the biggest issue. It also suffers from a seriously busted auto save system that regularly sends you back half an hour upon death, sometimes making you view the same unskippable cutscenes 5 times over until you get to the next checkpoints. NO ONE could possibly look at this and think "yeah, this wont piss anyone off". Another totally baffling element is the police cars that roam the streets, spawning monsters arcade style if they spot you. Thankfuly if you complete the side quest in the police station they dissappear for good. There is also far too much combat in the last quarter of the game for my taste, and when it is not very enjoyable it becomes frustrating. One level in particular on hard mode made me rage after seeing the same battle intro over 10 times. The combat system just was not built for more than one enemy on screen at once... so when there's 3 guys kicking your head in from all directions dealing 25% health dmg per second while poor old Murph swings his cardboard axe once every 5 seconds before it breaks I gurantee you will rage. (Not to mention he turns around and blocks at the pace of a pensionner!) Dear oh dear... and to top it off, while Murph is getting beaten to death as you mash the tempermental block button, the semi-fixed camera is spazzing out doing 360's. It's just a nightmare and whoever thought it was a good idea needs a slap.

Fortunately the story and side quests which deepen the experience were top notch and kept my attention. There are 6 endings to get but i doubt anyone will care enough to suffer the issues again for the minor differences in each. The biggest question of all for fans - is it scary? well, it is creepy in places, and does have a handful of genuinely scary moments, but it is not as unsettling as previous outings. One last niggle - the main character is a COMPLETE moron with as much personality as a plank of wood. He reminds me of the derp from Heavy Rain (I wonder if it is the same voice actor as they sound alike, too).

- Overall

It started out so well but about half way through it becomes one of those games that you wish had better gameplay to match the great story. Sadly this experience is hindered with bad / tired game design and combat, but the great story makes it worth a pickup if you are a fan of the series. If you've never played one of these games before, this wont show you the best of Silent Hill. I would say pick it up when its cheaper. Fortunately though, the developers seem to respect the franchise and did their homework on what the original games where about - atmosphere and story. I suspect they were pressured into including all the crappy cliches of modern games by the publishers or something.

Although I am only 20% through the game, I feel I need to come to the game's defence here a little bit. Firstly I am a long time fan of Silent Hill and I have been with the series since that very first foray into the fog on the PS1 so I know my Silent Hill inside and out. What I don't do is judge every game by the (admittedly amazing) SH2 and 3. I judge new incarnations as standalone games. Due to the problems I would actually give this game 3.5 stars overall but well, it's Silent Hill and one of my favourite game franchises in my gaming history so I'll be generous. Firstly I'll get the gripes out of the way:

_ Reviewers are not wrong when they mention the freezing and juddering frame rate problems. This is bad enough to knock one star off. It doesn't totally wreck the game and it is still playable but it seems to get worse the longer you play it for and when you are trying to run from three monsters and it keeps juddering and freezing it's infuriating!. Komami a patch if you please! You are meant to be a professional company! The game does support 3D and I have heard that this issue clears up a lot if you are lucky enough to have a 3D TV. I am not.
_ So far the monsters I have encountered seem to be little more than badly designed zombies (shockingly, many of them have all arms and legs present!) and I would have loved to have seen some really unique monsters on par with the four legged mannequin (the kicking ones!), half-bed half-bodies, screamers, insane cancers, spilt headed dogs and the very eerie table monsters from SH2's hotel! Sadly the team who designed this game got the concept of what kind of monsters we love to bash totally wrong. No sign of the lovely Pyramid Head yet though!
_ The game auto saves which is fine if there were also manual save points. Sadly there are not, but the game saves your last five positions and also if you learn where they are you can re-use them. No good for those of us who like to keep several saves for those multiple endings though. You will have to do it the old way - play it several times.
_ The combat is pretty dire (not impossible though), but there are plenty of health packs around and no shortage of weapons to grab. They do break after the dispatching of two or three monsters so keep swapping old for new. You can grab anything from a table lamp to a chair to a sharp stick or axe. You can also use the butt of your gun as a melee weapon but I don't know if this would break too. The best weapon for monster munching seems to be the fireaxe, and long and pointy seems to work better than short and stubby. You can mostly run off, but when you want to look around in peace it's better to take out all the monsters in sight and sometimes they can trap you in tight spaces and you have to fight them. So far I have encountered one type of hand gun which has been available at several different locations so don't worry if you miss the first gun. Ammo is very, very scarce so only use guns if you absolutely have to. Murhpy is also a dreadful aim so make sure the monster is close and that you have a red dot before you shoot it. To hack down doors you need a fire axe and to pull down ladders you need a certain type of pole hook. If possible, try and keep track of where you have seen either of these or try and keep one type with you as you will encounter boarded doors and high-up ladders and you need these special weapons for access. They also make good fighting weapons. Key weapons seem to regenerate so if you break one that you intended to use for a door or ladder, go back to where you found it. It should be back again.
-I have encountered a few green lockers with a keypad and as there were no clues or codes around I checked on the web. It turns out that if you pre-ordered the game from various outlets you would have been given locker codes for extra weapons. I didn't pre-order it but I did pay full price new and I am disappointed that I don't have one single code to use. Should have bought it used. So when you find these green lockers, unless you have a promotional code with your game you won't be able to do anything with them.
- Some minor graphical goof-ups such as I broke down a door, traversed an area, returned to area to find the same door boarded back up again, but Murphy just walked right through the boards. Very poor.
-Some areas are so dark I was getting eye strain. Yes, Silent Hill can be dark and gloomy but I don't want eye strain all the time! This seems to be a problem as there is a distinct lack of electricity in many buildings!

Sounds like a lot of gripes and issues, but it gets better!

+ The opening sequence really took me back to SH2 and I loved it. The first 16% of the game is spent trying to get to Silent Hill after your bus crashes during your prison transfer and at first there is some linear type exploration and a few decent puzzles and some high action sequences ala SH3. Also there are some beautiful views to behold here too, which made a nice change from the usual fog. Not to spoil anything, but the first main area is like nothing ever traversed before in previous games and you arrive in our beloved town in a whole new way.
+ When you finally get to Silent Hill you are literally left to your own devices and there is little hand holding here. A whole town to explore! I loved this open-world feel. Along the way Murphy will of course find clues and encounter different people and you should leave no avenue unexplored as there are mysteries dotted around here and there and you will find weird objects!
+ The fog effect is much smoother and the rain looks very realistic. Watch out though - when it pours down the monsters come out faster and more aggressive. Hide!
+ I thought the journal worked very well. You get to keep all your maps, a task list, gameplay tips (just for the controls) and when you have completed a task it gets transferred and ticked in the completed section so it's easy to keep track of what you have done and what is yet to be done. You will also have a section in your journal for the many mysteries that you collect so keep a look out for bits of paper that stand out or magazines and articles and such. As well as interesting reading these provide some clues too. When Murphy encounters a point of interest a question mark will appear on the map at that area, but it will always be there even if you have solved the mystery so it might be a good idea to keep your own written notes. It can be easy to forget what is where!
+ For the first time Silent Hill offers around 13 (I think) additional side quests and some of these can be completed in one area whilst others will be ongoing, like finding X amount of X's dotted around town to put in the Y (absolutely no spoilers here!)and so on.
+ There is a subway system which not only offers you additional places to explore it is also a quick way to get about town once you have fully explored all the buildings and looked for side quest items.
+ I have been playing for over 9 hrs and I am only 20% complete. I have done a lot of exploring and back-tracking and this is definitely an explorer's game.
+ Choose from easy, normal and hard for both puzzles and combat. The puzzles take a bit of working out on normal, and when I am done with my first playthrough I will have another go with hard puzzles.
+ Collectible items (sort of mementos) dotted around town for the player to find.
+ Some glorious 'old style' Silent Hill moments!
+ The soundtrack is excellent. Make sure you turn on all the radios!
+ There is a basic statistics screen which tells you the percentage of Murphy's health, side quests completed, game completion etc.
+ I like the character of Murphy (he really isn't a bad guy) and I am very intrigued as to where the story will go.

If you can overlook the several flaws (and you almost certainly will encounter the freezing/juddering problem unless they release a patch), the less than imaginative monsters and difficult, sloppy combat then there is a lot to be enjoyed here and if one of your favourite things is to freely explore the town at your own pace and collect mysteries and then you pretty much can as there is a lot that is open to you without having to carry on with main quest straight away. At the moment I am just enjoying looking around picking up clues. I know where my next main point of call is but right now I have things to find and places to explore! I would recommend completing your first play through with no help from guides or walkthroughs to keep up the element of surprise. Once I have completed it, then I would probably get a guide so I can achieve all endings and get anything I missed.

I will of course update my review when I have finished, but I think a lot of potential gamers might be put off by some of the terrible reviews. Well I am still having fun despite the problems! And no it's not SH2 or SH3 it's Silent Hill Downpour! It's its own game yet has overtones of both 2, 3 and 4 peppered around. If you want to relive the glory days of SH2 and SH3 the HD collections is now available on the PS3.

Disregard my review as fanboy guff, but the technical possibly of new Gen consoles has been used far better than Homecoming.
Maybe not pushing it to the very limits of the consoles for some of you, I still can't fault the range and detail and more satisfying puzzles.
Silent Hill 3 still has the scariest red mist that follows you, and most of the side quests and puzzles are more hands on in Downpour compared to asking the Sewer Fairy to drop a pipe in the sewer.
It's moved on. For some it faces the impossible task of living up to James Sunderland shooting everything that crawled towards him. 2,3 (And even Homecoming) have the better designed monsters. And I think the flashing objects are far from blasphemous as this is finally a game that would trouble you without the glowing.
It certainly would me!
That said I'm finding it hard to find this title for sale in the High Street shops. But if you've ever played a Silent Hill you seriously need to experience Downpour. If you've never played a Silent Hill, start here.

I hope Vatra Games get the gig to follow this game with another PS/XBox title. The combat takes a lot of getting used to. There has been a moment where I didn't know what I was doing, so I just triggered off the bank alarm to attract monsters to kill. I'm now 59%.
It's also worth pointing out the sense of achievement when you finally get Murphy to Silent Hill. I have no idea how this game will end. But I do know this is the best Silent Hill game going. I can only be talked down to four stars, until then, full five stars. (Although I am aware of the "Brand new game" radiation effect)
This series, let alone this game do not deserve to be forgotten in 2012 due to Konami distribution.