Going into Silent Hill 3, I had no idea what to expect. There’s a divisive (if you can even call “it’s really good, just not as good as the first 2” divisive) reputation surrounding this game that had me very intrigued when booting it up for the first time. Putting the TL;DR at the start: it was an incredible experience. I recommend anyone interested in playing it to play the first 2 before it, but other than that, let me share my thoughts.

Let me get the obvious out of the way: this game looks phenomenal. It's nothing short of wizardry how much the team improved the lighting, hair effects, facial animations, and textures in only 2 years. But something I appreciate even more is that the rusty and depraved atmosphere from the nightmare sections in Silent Hill 1 and 2 not only return; they return with a vengeance. Unlike its predecessors, the nightmare sections feel unpredictable and horrifying. The hallways are bathed in blood and filth with mutilated corpses in caged boxes hanging from the ceiling. Later in the game, rooms (and your flesh) will be consumed with squirmy tentacles of black ooze. Some hallways are a high contrast orange that make you think your eyes are bleeding. Random yelps of pain will sound off right as you exit a room, accented by shuffling feet and beastly groans in the hallway outside.

When you find the source of the groaning, you'll discover that the atmosphere is thanks in large part to the skin-crawlingly disturbing enemies. The PSX limited Silent Hill 1 from going too crazy with the models and Silent Hill 2 kept itself limited in scope on purpose, but Silent Hill 3 takes the training weights off and cooks up some truly awful looking bastards to chase you around. 10 foot tall flesh pillars who come in packs. Living piles of bloated, dead flesh. Disfigured humans who crawl on the floor, gnawing at your feet. And if it wasn't bad enough, the typical dog enemies aren't just dogs anymore, their heads are split right down the middle: exposed brains and all.

It wouldn't be so bad if you were playing as Harry or James. But you're playing as Heather. While Harry has the luxury of killing dogs in 2 handgun shots and a kick, Heather has to take a whopping 6 handgun shots for the same kill (and it's a miracle if you can land them all before they turn her leg into a chew toy). She also isn't granted the power of invisible walls: it's very possible to fall off any unguarded ledge if you don't react to her stumble. The game does a good job mitigating her fragility with lots of health packs, weapons, and even a bulletproof vest. But it just doesn’t outweigh the forces you’re up against. When all of these ingredients are mixed together (unsettling enemies, terrifying level design, and a frail teenage girl to protect you from it all) only one word describes the experience: intense.

In its intensity, it's Silent Hill 3 that brings to light a frustrating aspect of the series, and that is backtracking. Going back and forth fetching items and reading memos to solve puzzles is one of my favorite aspects in the series! But due to the more intense nature of SH3's atmosphere, you dread having to backtrack anymore than you have to. James wandering around the apartment building or Harry wandering around Midwich Elementary never felt especially stressful, as the environments were very slow paced and you had ample defense against anything thrown at you. But playing as Heather feels like you're getting kicked in the balls constantly. Room after room is filled to the brim with the fastest and most dangerous enemies the series has seen yet, so just running the risk of having to go all the way back through an area brings a mental anguish I haven't yet felt playing Silent Hill. This might be the game's biggest strength to some, but I'm admittedly a huge pussy, so this was torture for me.

You might get the vibe that I hate Heather after saying all this. After all, I keep talking about her like she can’t do anything. But don't get it twisted. Heather keeps it fucking real and is, by far, the most entertaining protagonist in the original trilogy. All of her dialogue, spoken or otherwise, is brimming with personality and teenage angst. While Harry and James never had much to say when looking at an object, Heather gives well written commentary on pretty much everything you choose to look at. Her voice and motion capture actress Heather Morris gives a fantastic performance as well, ranging from tongue-in-cheek comments, to heartbreaking scenes of utter defeat, to indescribable rage and frustration. Never have I seen a Silent Hill hero so fed up with this shit and it's extremely relatable because I'm also fed up with this shit! Claudia is pissing me the fuck off! Let's get her ass together, Heather.

This is as good a time as ever to touch on the game’s relation to Silent Hill 1. It’s by all means a direct sequel to what happened in the first game and I think it does a wonderful job continuing that narrative. While I prefer Silent Hill as an anthology series tied together by the titular town, they pulled off a continuation surprisingly well. Ambiguity isn’t as important for Harry as it is for James, so hearing more of what happened to him post god-slaying made me smile. It also elaborates on Claudia and whatever the hell is going on with the cult she’s a part of without spoiling the “less is more” storytelling that SH1 was going for. All in all, it’s everything I can want out of the direction they chose.

This review is admittedly coming from a Silent Hill newbie. I decided to play Silent Hill 2 for the first time just a few weeks ago. So while I’m still falling in love, take a lot of these opinions with a grain of salt. Otherwise, I adore pretty much everything about my experience with SH3. Was it difficult and stressful? Definitely. But will I be thinking about it for years after this review? Even more definitely.

There's an arcade by my house which had a cabinet with like, 200 games on it. Mostly the usual offenders like Pac-Man, Galaga, Q-bert, Donkey Kong, etc. Hidden at the bottom of the list was Metal Slug 3, which blew my fucking mind. The pixel art is gorgeous. The run and gun is beyond polished. There's multiple routes through levels, and several cute characters to choose from (Fio main for life). I could never beat it; that dreadful machine ate like 30 bucks worth of my quarters over the course of a few years. But I eventually finished this through playing it online with infinite continues (I wish I had done that sooner, haha.) I wasn't disappointed for a second

Wonderful game! I loved every bit and piece of what I played, but here are some things that stood out to me:

- The art direction in this game is gorgeous. While environments are extremely detailed and characters are stubby and cute, it avoids stylistically clashing. The colors are lush and shading is beautifully done, with just about every light source accounted for. Each enemy has detailed sprites for the 8 cardinal directions as well, and it makes me gush every time I think about it
- Areas are diverse, well-paced, and memorable. From water-logged graveyards to a desert castle made of clocks, it feels like a true globe-trotting adventure. The connections between areas are a little shoddy, being literal isolated islands on a bigger map, but I love the pieces so much that I don't mind the missing whole. The levels are also designed with a sense of verticality that I love love love, each screen feeling like an actual area you can explore and walk around in. Bridges, beams, and ledges overlap eachother to create visually satisfying ascendable areas that never blocks the players vision in a negative way
- Combat is simple but extremely fun. It can feel a little slow and repetitive at first, but it opens up a lot more when you collect more party members. It's a melting pot of fan-favorite JRPG elements; the interactive attacks from Mario & Luigi, the varied enemy locations from Chrono Trigger, the type-weaknesses from SMT and Pokemon, and it blends them together perfectly with some new mechanics as well. I had a lot of fun with the boss fights because it felt like they challenged your planning skills, making you tactically plan out your moves in advance to get the highest damage possible
- Story was well-written. Valere and Zale weren't especially interesting, but it's okay because the supporting cast is likeable and interesting enough to save it
- For a piece of criticism, I really don't understand what they were thinking with the animated cutscenes? They last like, a couple seconds at most, and the artstyle used in them doesn't feel reflective of the game at all. The colors are muted and the linework is thin; complete opposites of the in-game artstyle of bright colors and thick linework. I get the idea of using them sparingly to accent important moments, but with how rare they really are, I think the game could've benefited without them

This game is sublime. I was worried that it would feel dated compared to Silent Hill 2 given the hardware, but what I found was that the game holds up in basically every way. The cutscenes, areas, menus, and music are both charming and atmospheric. The riddles were pretty tough brainteasers. My favorite thing of all: the combat is sooooo fucking good. It tickles my brain in just the right way to unload a couple shots into some poor bastard while they fall in a puddle of blood and I stomp them to death. The choices of weaponry are mostly the same with the addition of a bunch more melee weapons to bash heads in, it's just enough without being overkill. On the note of killing people, the enemy variety is really great. Compared to SH2 (where all the standard enemies did basically the same thing) this game has a buffet of nasty creatures. Sprinting dogs. Pterodactyls that hit you from the sky. Leaping skin gorillas. Swamp monsters that hang from the ceiling. Little gray men with knives. You got it all in this game baby, and it's fun to kill every single one of them. Only ounce of criticism I can give is that the camera STINKS. It never feels like it works how it should and several times I was getting massacred offscreen because my camera is stuck in the corner. It also never reaches the emotional highs of it's sequel; Harry Mason never makes an impression apart from being the blankest of slates. But in terms of raw gameplay, it does everything not only right but better.

I respect this game a lot more than I enjoyed playing it. I think the lore is very basic and the gameplay is an RNG fest, basically just begging to god "please please please don't let me get raped and murdered in one of twelve combat encounters I have to do to get to the next save point!" Eventually you'll have your path completely laid out for you but now it's just a matter of spending an hour doing it while hoping for no complications. What I like about the game is that its limb mechanic is a very fun concept. I also like how dense it is, so many endings and random encounters for those who enjoy the game. There's no game that makes you feel more miserable than F&H which is the obvious aesthetic the game is going for, but I don't like feeling miserable tbh. I might try the 2nd game sometime because I've heard good things, but the first game is a no from me