Silent Hill: Downpour

The Silent Hill franchise is one that very is so beloved, that recent sequels get scrutinized to see whether they deserve to be called a Silent Hill. It is my opinion that Silent Hill Downpour is deserving of the name, due to its story and its depiction of the fabled town.The first 3 Silent Hill games set the ambiance and rules for the town of Silent Hill. The first one and third one set up the back story of how the town became. While SH2 sets up what the town does to people “visiting”, and how the town and otherworld affect them physically, visually, and mentally. Downpour did a great job following these rules and setting a good story for our main hero Murphy Pendleton.Murphy has been imprisoned for stealing a police cruiser, some time after his son was kidnapped and murdered. During his time in prison, certain mysterious events happen to him while in prison that leads him to be transferred to another prison. During this transfer, the bus crashes near the outskirts of Silent Hill. Now trapped in the mysterious town, he is chased by a corrections officer who seems to have a personal grudge against him.After the brief prison tutorial, the game starts you out on the outskirts of the town, you have to traverse an area called the Devils Canyon before you can explore the town of Silent Hill. This dungeon seemed to be very “Bright Falls” which didn’t give me a good impression of the game at first. Once that area was over, and I was able to explore the town, that’s when the game felt like a Silent Hill. The town doesn’t have many buildings to visit for the story, but it does have an explorable town with various side quests. The side quests vary between looking for objects, solving puzzles, and even survival, where enemies come in waves. The town is fantastic, it looks great, its creepy, it has the right amount of fog, and it rains at different times. The otherworld looks great, but unlike previous titles this otherworld doesn’t conform to the dimensions of its original surroundings. It can change sizes, create new areas and affect physics. The otherworld themes are industrial, prison/cages, and water. The story and the different side quest can take around 15 hours. There is also multiple endings requiring more playtroughs.The combat has been rightfully criticized for its bad hit detection, however the enemies are not very difficult even with this oversight, and it’s just annoying when fighting multiple enemies. First aid kits are used in real time. This means you have to run away to safety and heal if you are low on health. Otherwise, enemies will attack you as you look for health kits in the item menu. There are an unfortunate small amount of enemy models, around five different types throughout the entire game, 4 of them “human like”. Men with hooks on their faces, a larger version of this one, a mannequin ghost, and the most frequent one, a dirty lady in a nightgown. There are no boss fights in Downpour, in their place there are these chase sections. During these, you run away from a small black hole enemy that chases you throughout the buildings as you dodge objects and find a path to safety. The puzzles difficulty can be adjusted, this seems to only affect the placement of objects and how dials move. The difficulty is not like the Shakespeare puzzle from SH3, you shouldn’t need a guide for help.Silent Hill Downpour is not perfect, but it’s a very good game in the franchise. The atmosphere, story and characters are well done. Exploring the town can give you the creeps and even provide some scares. I truly enjoyed playing this game, I recommend it to fans of the series and it’s a good introduction game for newcomers of the series.

If I may, I'd like to begin with a quote from a fellow Amazon reviewer for this title:Joman1000: "Despite that (Silent Hill 1) disturbed me beyond words and gave me recurrent nightmares, I felt compelled to keep coming back for more just because it was such an inexplicable, bizarre, unique, emotional, "otherworldly" experience. I was never the type to lose sleep over movies and games about zombies, diseases or war/general violence; Silent Hill transcended those things to me because it was like it was pulled directly from my deepest, darkness nightmares and fears of evil, eternal damnation, etc. Silent Hill 1, 2 and 3 aren't "video games" so much as they are, in my opinion, works of absolute genius, developed by a handful of Japanese game designers that were clearly very well versed in classic horror films, novels and religious lore. They have set an incredibly high standard for anyone to attempt to live up to."In terms of the original untouchable trilogy, he hit the nail right on the head. I was 14 when I first experienced the artistic genius of SH1 (which remains the best of them all imo), and, besides the two sequels, I know I will never again see anything like it in both horror gaming and film. SH fans now generally overlook the title simply because of the very dated graphics (which were actually ahead of their time in early '99), which is a shame.Now, let me fast forward to the offending installment prior to "Downpour", which was "Silent HIll: Homecoming". It was the first Silent Hill to be in the ignorant, artistically inept and unsteady hands of American Developers, who clearly just didn't get it. I saw it as the final nail in the coffin of this brilliant franchise that began its fall from greatness back in '04 with the heavily polarizing "Silent Hill: The Room". But in regards to the major slap in the face to SH that was "Homecoming", I blame the 2006 film, which was, quite frankly, total blasphemy. It hacked to pieces and (worst offense of all) dumbed Silent Hill down, making everything so damn black and white! And they took contemporary pedestrian horror clichés, like a creepy child scribbling something "disturbing" on paper in jerky staccato movements, and threw those into it. Another major offense that SH: Downpour unfortunately continues, was the "evil metamorphosis", with that lame wall-peeling effect that should really be put to sleep. The originals were ambiguous and mysterious about the Otherworld warp, which is what I like and what I think makes something truly scary; the developers didn't spoon feed anything to you. I will forever resent Christophe Gans for butchering such a thing (really? You made us see the source of the mysterious sirens?). So after Homecoming, I was so jaded and upset at what was done to such a brilliant series, that when I discovered "SH: Downpour", and subsequently read IGN's now infamous panning of the game, I was like "Oh god, it's all over". However, It's not, thank goodness.Artistic and SH idiosyncrasies aside, "Downpour" is the most fun I've had in a SH title since the third. Yes, there are some heavy frame rate dips and image chopping, but for me, I really don't care. SH isn't supposed to be this glossed up, overly produced and polished crowd pleaser. The game plays well for me, and I enjoy the new additions of being able to manually wield your flashlight and manually opening doors via first person view (which makes for some tense "what am I gonna be revealing as I open this door?" moments. They also have a "look behind you" function akin to GTA games which adds to the creepy tension. I also dig the game's emphasis on melee weapons, as the developers have their environments literally littered with objects that you can use as weapons, either conventionally or unconventionally. You can only carry one at a time, and can drop one whenever you want to. The objects can be thrown as well, and are prone to damage (wooden chairs break into smaller pieces that you can still pick up and use). Also, exploration is back thank god! There are times when you really do get a genuine vibe of Silent Hill 2, as you are navigating through the desolate, dreary streets of downtown Silent Hill, trying to figure out where the hell to go and what the hell is going on. The pacing and story are also far more similar to the glorious SH 2 than any other title since, and that is sure as hell welcome. And, as a welcome departure from the gaming norm of today and like the original Team Silent, the developers don't make the game like an overlong tutorial, constantly interfering and patronizing by telling you where to go and what to do. No waypoint-type thing ala "DeadSpace"; it's up to you to figure things out. Finally, some getting back to basics! The only current gaming trend it uses is the ubiquitous "autosave", which I've come to despise, especially in a Silent Hill game. Sometimes it won't save for quite a while, and I've had to do some major replaying because of this. The puzzles are well done and incorporated, and again, just like the originals, they don't hold your hand; you have to figure it out by yourself, often getting clues by reading documents lying about that Murphy stores in his notebook.One of the satisfying things about this game is the graphics. Graphics are very important for me, because they are key to my immersion and my being able to feel like I'm there and apart of it, especially if the animation is tight too. Thankfully, the latter is true for "Downpour". The character models are sharp and heavy on the polygons, and rendered in a realistic manner. The same goes for the environments, which are very detailed and fitting for a SH game; desaturated colors, bleak, decrepit and timeless. The flashlight casts very nice shadows as well. Unfortunately the monsters are quite pedestrian; their design and sounds are so horror-generic. In the originals, the enemies were uniquely disturbing; you got a sense of flat-out wrongness and perversion, which you generally don't get here. Also, I miss the atmospheric sonic accompaniment of radio static that escalates when a monster is nearby. Here, it's almost always silent. The sparse music is definitely competent, and sometimes very good, but it's no match for Akira Yamaoka of course. Another thing that no one else seems to mention: what happened to the screen noise? I think the graphics would have looked even more realistic with a bit of grain ala SH2 and 3.I haven't yet completed the game, but I should update this review soon. I'll leave as of right now with this: "Silent Hill: Downpour" is far from perfect, but a major improvement over the previous travesty and a step back into the right direction, getting closer to SH's roots. It's a fun horror game to play in itself, and you often have free reign to explore the town and get your feet dirty into side quests that increase the fun factor and decrease boring linearity. Silent HIill still has a pulse! Ignore the terrible review(s), give it a chance and decide for yourself!