Part of Spooky Season 2023.
If I had to describe Silent Hill 3 in one word, it would be intense. While not much in terms of gameplay has changed between this game and the previous ones, its structure and balance have been adjusted in a way that really stressed me out and made the horror more effective than it's ever been in the franchise. I actually had to take breaks and play through it over the course of shorter sessions because I found the game to be immensely draining, even despite its short run time. Silent Hill 3 is a treacherous, suffocating nightmare from start to finish, and is quite possibly the scariest game I’ve ever played.
The previous titles in the franchise had a general pattern they’d follow. You’d usually explore the monster and fog infested town of Silent Hill for a bit before entering one of the indoor dungeon-like locations. These mostly consisted of large, dark and decrepit buildings with multiple floors, long narrow halls, various locked rooms that you’d need to find keys for, as well as several puzzles that you’d need to solve. You’d usually fight a boss once you reach the end of these places as well. These locations were generally where the games’ horror was most concentrated, as rooms contained gruesome imagery and setpieces to experience. Once you successfully clear one of these areas, you usually experience a cutscene or two and then head back into town and explore it a bit more as well as develop the story further before traveling to the next big indoor location. Rinse and repeat until the game’s climax.
The treks through town offered the player a momentary sense of relief and a chance to breathe a little bit after making it out of those dark and terrifying labyrinths. Now, the town wasn’t completely free of danger, as writhing and contorting creatures still roamed the roads and streets, but because you were outside in a more open environment, you’re generally able to maneuver around them rather easily, to the point where they’re not too much of a threat. However, Silent Hill 3 does things a little bit differently. Here, you spend almost the entire playtime making your way through those indoor dungeon-like areas. From the start of the game until a little over halfway through it, you go from one horrifying maze to the next. You really don’t spend much time exploring the town at all. This dramatically lowers the amount of opportunities for the player to catch their breath, limiting them mostly to tiny rooms void of any danger where you can save your game.
In my review of Silent Hill 2, my main point of criticism was that the game gave you way too much ammo and healing items. This dramatically lessened the effect of the horror, as there wasn’t really anything stopping you from playing safe and shooting just about every enemy you come across. Silent Hill 3 feels like an angry, vicious response to that criticism. Not only are ammo and healing items much more sparse in comparison to previous games, but the enemies are also far more aggressive. A majority of them are also designed to be either really tall, wide, or both. Most enemies eclipse Heather in size. Since you’re constantly making your way through cramped and narrow corridors, it makes avoiding and moving around these enemies rather difficult. As a result, strategic decision-making and resource management during combat is extremely vital. Even though this game came out twenty years ago, it really feels like Team Silent heard my Silent Hill 2 complaint and went above and beyond to address it here, to the point where I feel like it borders on overcorrection. Still, I do think that Silent Hill 3 is better off this way as opposed to the stockpile of ammo and healing items you’re left with at the end of Silent Hill 2.
Once again, the art direction and sound design are both handled in true masterclass fashion. The art direction in particular is extremely visceral, especially during the Otherworld sequences. It’s very reminiscent of the corrupted industrial look of Silent Hill 1, but with the PlayStation 2’s higher graphical fidelity, the game’s visuals are more striking and impactful than ever. The reddish-orange color palette that covers many areas of the game and the sadistic and violent imagery really makes you feel like you’re trapped in hell on earth.
The minimal amount of town exploration, the lack of opportunities to safely collect yourself, the greater focus on combat and resource management, in addition to the already horrifying art direction and sound design on par with the previous games, all come together to make Silent Hill 3 an immensely stressful experience. The stress in turn made the fear and horror more effective than it’s ever been in the series. I was constantly worried about my resources in addition to already feeling tense as a result of the horrific environments you have to find your way out of. Aside from the other two Silent Hill games, my horror experience up until this point has been limited to Resident Evil titles as well as Signalis. None have been as successful at making me constantly feel sheer terror and dread as Silent Hill 3 has. I fully admit that this game freaked me the hell out, and I applaud it for that accomplishment.
My biggest complaint is that while exploring a couple of areas in the game, you can stumble into rooms or areas that I consider to be traps. These are rooms that have enemies in them but otherwise serve literally no other purpose. There’s no supplies you can find, no reward for combatting the enemies, nothing. If you wander into these rooms trying to find something that you need to progress, you’ll wind up wasting your very limited ammo and healing items clearing these rooms out, only to find nothing for your efforts. I will cut the game a bit of slack because I did notice that these “trap rooms” are often very close to save rooms, so you can reload a save if you end up wandering into one of them and wasting your supplies. Still, I think that their inclusion in general is pointless and frustrating. All they do is waste time, as well as needlessly confuse and punish the player for exploring.
My next biggest issue is one that’s shared with Silent Hill 2: the camera really sucks. Just like in that game, the camera will sometimes just refuse to cooperate in narrow halls, and trying to force it to will just cause it to spin around wildly and make it nearly impossible to see what’s in front of Heather. It’s especially frustrating here when there are enemies in a hall that you encounter, and you can’t tell if your gun shots are actually hitting their target, meaning you have no idea whether or not you’re wasting ammo.
In stark contrast to Silent Hill 2, storytelling is less of a focus this time around. After the very beginning of the game, cutscenes and story development in general mostly take a backseat until a little over halfway through. Despite that, there’s no less of a focus on strong themes. Silent Hill 3 is a game all about the fear and pain of being a woman. The locations you make your way through are mostly places that women have been known to be typically harassed at, either verbally or physically. There are constant, violent depictions of motherhood and childbirth. The fact that so many enemies are much bigger than Heather could also be reminiscent of how men are generally larger than women and able to physically overpower them. I don’t have especially strong feelings about the main plot. It does have some impactful moments, especially if you’ve played the first game, but as a whole, it feels rather poorly put together. I find the imagery, symbolism and the unspoken implications of the environments to be far more stand out aspects.
Silent Hill 3 goes all out in trying to make the player feel afraid, and in that regard it absolutely knocks it out of the park. The thing is though, fear is all the game really made me feel. The previous Silent Hill games made me feel a lot more in terms of emotion, especially Silent Hill 2. There was a sense of mystery and tragedy to them that isn’t as present in Silent Hill 3. Tragedy is certainly present here, don’t get me wrong, if you know, you know. But I feel like it's limited to only a single instance. If you’ve played Silent Hill 1, then it’s pretty easy to just assume what’s going on, there’s not really much in terms of a mystery to figure out here. If you haven’t played Silent Hill 1, then I feel like the emotional moments will just go over your head even if the game does try to accommodate the folks who missed out on it. This is an extremely minor nitpick in the grand scheme of things, but it’s still something I wanted to make note of because it was an element of the previous games that I loved and its absence really stood out to me.
This game really put me through the wringer, but in a good way. I think it’s the most well structured and focused of the Team Silent games I’ve played up until this point. The only aspect of it that’s lacking compared to its predecessors is the quality of its main plot, which again, isn’t really that big of a deal. Still, as great and successful as this game is, I ended up feeling extremely exhausted by the end of it. I have to admit that I don’t really want to play this game again for quite some time. I didn’t even play on Hard difficulty, yet I still found it to be very draining. I do highly recommend Silent Hill 3, but make sure that you’re mentally prepared going into it. This game still managed to freak me out despite the fact that I usually enjoy dark and gruesome media. If you don’t have a high tolerance for this sort of stuff, then I’m not sure if this is the right game for you. If you do have that kind of tolerance, or if you just want to challenge yourself, then I’ve yet to find a better way to test your courage than with Silent Hill 3.
If I had to describe Silent Hill 3 in one word, it would be intense. While not much in terms of gameplay has changed between this game and the previous ones, its structure and balance have been adjusted in a way that really stressed me out and made the horror more effective than it's ever been in the franchise. I actually had to take breaks and play through it over the course of shorter sessions because I found the game to be immensely draining, even despite its short run time. Silent Hill 3 is a treacherous, suffocating nightmare from start to finish, and is quite possibly the scariest game I’ve ever played.
The previous titles in the franchise had a general pattern they’d follow. You’d usually explore the monster and fog infested town of Silent Hill for a bit before entering one of the indoor dungeon-like locations. These mostly consisted of large, dark and decrepit buildings with multiple floors, long narrow halls, various locked rooms that you’d need to find keys for, as well as several puzzles that you’d need to solve. You’d usually fight a boss once you reach the end of these places as well. These locations were generally where the games’ horror was most concentrated, as rooms contained gruesome imagery and setpieces to experience. Once you successfully clear one of these areas, you usually experience a cutscene or two and then head back into town and explore it a bit more as well as develop the story further before traveling to the next big indoor location. Rinse and repeat until the game’s climax.
The treks through town offered the player a momentary sense of relief and a chance to breathe a little bit after making it out of those dark and terrifying labyrinths. Now, the town wasn’t completely free of danger, as writhing and contorting creatures still roamed the roads and streets, but because you were outside in a more open environment, you’re generally able to maneuver around them rather easily, to the point where they’re not too much of a threat. However, Silent Hill 3 does things a little bit differently. Here, you spend almost the entire playtime making your way through those indoor dungeon-like areas. From the start of the game until a little over halfway through it, you go from one horrifying maze to the next. You really don’t spend much time exploring the town at all. This dramatically lowers the amount of opportunities for the player to catch their breath, limiting them mostly to tiny rooms void of any danger where you can save your game.
In my review of Silent Hill 2, my main point of criticism was that the game gave you way too much ammo and healing items. This dramatically lessened the effect of the horror, as there wasn’t really anything stopping you from playing safe and shooting just about every enemy you come across. Silent Hill 3 feels like an angry, vicious response to that criticism. Not only are ammo and healing items much more sparse in comparison to previous games, but the enemies are also far more aggressive. A majority of them are also designed to be either really tall, wide, or both. Most enemies eclipse Heather in size. Since you’re constantly making your way through cramped and narrow corridors, it makes avoiding and moving around these enemies rather difficult. As a result, strategic decision-making and resource management during combat is extremely vital. Even though this game came out twenty years ago, it really feels like Team Silent heard my Silent Hill 2 complaint and went above and beyond to address it here, to the point where I feel like it borders on overcorrection. Still, I do think that Silent Hill 3 is better off this way as opposed to the stockpile of ammo and healing items you’re left with at the end of Silent Hill 2.
Once again, the art direction and sound design are both handled in true masterclass fashion. The art direction in particular is extremely visceral, especially during the Otherworld sequences. It’s very reminiscent of the corrupted industrial look of Silent Hill 1, but with the PlayStation 2’s higher graphical fidelity, the game’s visuals are more striking and impactful than ever. The reddish-orange color palette that covers many areas of the game and the sadistic and violent imagery really makes you feel like you’re trapped in hell on earth.
The minimal amount of town exploration, the lack of opportunities to safely collect yourself, the greater focus on combat and resource management, in addition to the already horrifying art direction and sound design on par with the previous games, all come together to make Silent Hill 3 an immensely stressful experience. The stress in turn made the fear and horror more effective than it’s ever been in the series. I was constantly worried about my resources in addition to already feeling tense as a result of the horrific environments you have to find your way out of. Aside from the other two Silent Hill games, my horror experience up until this point has been limited to Resident Evil titles as well as Signalis. None have been as successful at making me constantly feel sheer terror and dread as Silent Hill 3 has. I fully admit that this game freaked me the hell out, and I applaud it for that accomplishment.
My biggest complaint is that while exploring a couple of areas in the game, you can stumble into rooms or areas that I consider to be traps. These are rooms that have enemies in them but otherwise serve literally no other purpose. There’s no supplies you can find, no reward for combatting the enemies, nothing. If you wander into these rooms trying to find something that you need to progress, you’ll wind up wasting your very limited ammo and healing items clearing these rooms out, only to find nothing for your efforts. I will cut the game a bit of slack because I did notice that these “trap rooms” are often very close to save rooms, so you can reload a save if you end up wandering into one of them and wasting your supplies. Still, I think that their inclusion in general is pointless and frustrating. All they do is waste time, as well as needlessly confuse and punish the player for exploring.
My next biggest issue is one that’s shared with Silent Hill 2: the camera really sucks. Just like in that game, the camera will sometimes just refuse to cooperate in narrow halls, and trying to force it to will just cause it to spin around wildly and make it nearly impossible to see what’s in front of Heather. It’s especially frustrating here when there are enemies in a hall that you encounter, and you can’t tell if your gun shots are actually hitting their target, meaning you have no idea whether or not you’re wasting ammo.
In stark contrast to Silent Hill 2, storytelling is less of a focus this time around. After the very beginning of the game, cutscenes and story development in general mostly take a backseat until a little over halfway through. Despite that, there’s no less of a focus on strong themes. Silent Hill 3 is a game all about the fear and pain of being a woman. The locations you make your way through are mostly places that women have been known to be typically harassed at, either verbally or physically. There are constant, violent depictions of motherhood and childbirth. The fact that so many enemies are much bigger than Heather could also be reminiscent of how men are generally larger than women and able to physically overpower them. I don’t have especially strong feelings about the main plot. It does have some impactful moments, especially if you’ve played the first game, but as a whole, it feels rather poorly put together. I find the imagery, symbolism and the unspoken implications of the environments to be far more stand out aspects.
Silent Hill 3 goes all out in trying to make the player feel afraid, and in that regard it absolutely knocks it out of the park. The thing is though, fear is all the game really made me feel. The previous Silent Hill games made me feel a lot more in terms of emotion, especially Silent Hill 2. There was a sense of mystery and tragedy to them that isn’t as present in Silent Hill 3. Tragedy is certainly present here, don’t get me wrong, if you know, you know. But I feel like it's limited to only a single instance. If you’ve played Silent Hill 1, then it’s pretty easy to just assume what’s going on, there’s not really much in terms of a mystery to figure out here. If you haven’t played Silent Hill 1, then I feel like the emotional moments will just go over your head even if the game does try to accommodate the folks who missed out on it. This is an extremely minor nitpick in the grand scheme of things, but it’s still something I wanted to make note of because it was an element of the previous games that I loved and its absence really stood out to me.
This game really put me through the wringer, but in a good way. I think it’s the most well structured and focused of the Team Silent games I’ve played up until this point. The only aspect of it that’s lacking compared to its predecessors is the quality of its main plot, which again, isn’t really that big of a deal. Still, as great and successful as this game is, I ended up feeling extremely exhausted by the end of it. I have to admit that I don’t really want to play this game again for quite some time. I didn’t even play on Hard difficulty, yet I still found it to be very draining. I do highly recommend Silent Hill 3, but make sure that you’re mentally prepared going into it. This game still managed to freak me out despite the fact that I usually enjoy dark and gruesome media. If you don’t have a high tolerance for this sort of stuff, then I’m not sure if this is the right game for you. If you do have that kind of tolerance, or if you just want to challenge yourself, then I’ve yet to find a better way to test your courage than with Silent Hill 3.