Caltrops - Gamerasutra - Silent Hill 3 (PS2) (PAL version)

Forum Overview :: Gamerasutra

by Fussbett 05/29/2003, 2:19am PDT

Silent Hill had one of the greatest first 10 minutes of a video game I've ever seen, so we'll give that a 10. Silent Hill 2 inexplicably made you jog for the first 20 minutes of the game, so that's a 0. To the opening 15 minutes of Silent Hill 3, I'll award a 7. It's good, but points off for the use of an FMV cutscene which pulled me out of the moment and a little too much atmosphere + aimless wander.

The visuals of Silent Hill 3 look fantastic, with a film grain effect over everything and graphics in general that I would describe as slightly better than Silent Hill 2. The sound is fantastic, supports 5.1 and is often scarier than the visuals.

The plot stems more from the Silent Hill 1 story, and assuming that we've probably played the two prequels, Silent Hill 3 gets moving fairly quick, jumping to the hell dimension right away. You play the role of a hip mall girl, who's stuck in the big shopping center when suddenly everything GOES TO HELL! LITERALLY AND METAPHORICALLY! Everything else is just as you remember it from previous games; the flashlight, the radio, "Huh? What's going on here!" and "this can't be happening!". The mall serves as a frustration because not only are some of your character's shopping quips groan inducing, but also the store gates don't get marked on your little automap. Some you can go through, others you can't, but they all just look like walls on your map screen. This annoyance, however, was not the deal breaker that made me quit playing. (!)

I stopped playing my (purchased at full price!!!) copy of Resident Evil 0 when my character (Billy!) needed to put "something long and thin" into a dumb waiter, which would ferry the object up to another character, who would then use it to crack a door lock. When I tried to put my knife into the GAPING HOLE of the dumb waiter lift, I was given the generic CAN'T USE THAT HERE message. Giving up on that problem I soon found a giant icepick in another room, which, being the exact same dimensions as my character's knife, was of course perfect for fitting into the dumb waiter, and moving the plot along the train track -- LITERALLY AND METAPHORICALLY. This moment snapped me into a moment of clarity and made me question what I was doing with my life. I got very upset with the video game hobby intervention that was RE0, and thus I stopped playing it.

In a similar fashion, Silent Hill 3 went all Shaddai to my Job early on when my lazy bitch avatar decided that the key she spied under the crate PALLETTE was impossible to retrieve because moving the cardboard boxes full of books that rested upon the skid was "too much work" she said. God forbid she do some heavy lifting of maybe 6 boxes in a time of crisis. Of course soon after I found the tongs that allowed my character to reach under the skid and retrieve the key without breaking a sweat. Then there was the dilemma of the walnut that contained a hidden treasure. Can I smash the walnut with my steel pipe? With the handle of my pistol? With my shoe? No. I needed to make my way into a room that contained a (blood soaked) vice. I guess that's what makes it hell -- it's nearly impossible to crack a walnut! Oh yeah, and all the blood. Though they tested my sanity, neither of those puzzles were my breaking points, but instead it was when I hopped onto the subway tracks and the game switched to an FMV scene which explained that I was hit by a train. Game Over. I had jumped onto these tracks earlier without incident, so I don't know if I missed a cue, or a hint, but either way, my instant death combined with a save point that was miles away made me stop playing the game. Probably forever.

I want to hear creepy noises and shoot monsters all day long, but the admission price of playing a Sierra level adventure game has worn too thin.