Lightning Reviews

I am not a forum girl.

I visit for a while, sometimes make a few posts, and then inevitably disappear off the face of the planet after a while. (Kind of like with this blog.) After a while, I realize that there's no reason for me to stay on a forum if I'm not going to stick around and stop trying to go to them. Then a year or two passes and I'm back where I began.

Recently, I decided to browse the forums at HellDescent.com after getting an email from the webmaster saying he'd redone his site. I'm not really sure why I got this email, but it caught my attention, so mission accomplished. I browsed his news to see if there was anything new about Silent Hill 8 that I'd missed, and when there wasn't, I checked out the forums.

I noticed the same thing I notice about every other Silent Hill forum. Before Shattered Memories was released, I was actually rather active on a forum, and the pattern from before that game's release and Silent Hill 8's is so similar it's almost funny. I'm not the only one who noticed it, either. To paraphrase a member of HD's forums, it goes a little like this:

"1. New Silent Hill game is announced. Fans speculate whether it will be as good as 1-3 warily.
2. New information is released on the game. Most fans condemn it. Some remain hopeful. Some say they won't even buy the game when it's released.
3. Game is released, everyone tries it (even the people who said they wouldn't.)
4. Forum is in uproar, everyone complains about game and overanalyzes it. Eventually, a consensus is made that the game isn't as good as 1-3.
5. New Silent Hill game is announced. Fans speculate whether it will be as good as 1-3 warily."

Wash, rinse, repeat.

I've never been able to understand this. For one thing, 4 was made by the Japanese team as well, so why is it never included in the infamous "1-3" claim people always make? Sure, it wasn't as well-loved as 1 or 2, but it was still a Silent Hill game in the same category as the first three. And to take it a step further, what's so great about those games, anyway?

Don't worry, I'm not a Silent Hill hater. I actually love the series - I've been a fan between 1 and 2 being released, and it's probably my favorite series of all time. But what makes Silent Hill a great series?

Silent Hill 1 was the kick-off of the series - an experimental little PS1 game that really helped to form survival horror as a genre. As Harry Mason, a father missing his daughter from a car crash, you search the foggy and abandoned town looking for clues to where your daughter went. You encounter monsters and the occult, and you're swept up in something beyond your understanding. This game laid down the framework for the rest of the series, and although Silent Hill games are meant to be standalone games (which is something I think people like to forget about) there are linking things that make them a series - the town, the fog, the monsters, the cult, the psychological aspect of the game. Am I missing any? I hope not. Hold onto these thoughts, 'cause I'm about to come back to them.

Silent Hill 2 followed. For many, SH2 is considered the best game in the entire series and while I have a difficult time choosing a favorite, it's certainly in a tie with the best (with two others) for me. It picked up where SH1 left off in its own way - a new story, with new characters and more focus on psychological impacts. It took what was made in SH1 and perfected it, turning the game into what I would argue is a piece of art. The framework from 1 remained - the fog, the town (but with new locations!), the monsters, even mentions of the cult (although it wasn't taking center stage this time around). So, what makes Silent Hill 2 so much better in the minds of fans? Is it the story? For me it is.

Eventually, Silent Hill 3 was released. I wasn't on forums back then, but if I had been, would the pattern have been there, too? Would people be condemning the game before it had even been released, saying it would never be able to follow up 2? Somehow, I doubt it. SH3 focused on Heather, Harry's "daughter", and tied directly into the first game. (It's really difficult to explain to folks new to the series "Well, they're all standalone really, so you can play 2 without having played 1, but you should play 1 before 3 since 3 is a sequel of 1. Yeah.") It had the same framework as 1 and 2 - monsters, fog, town, cult - but the game was weak, and it was easy to see.

In the end, there's really more to Silent Hill than a penchant for mindfucks and a bunch of fog. With an entire town as your playground, Silent Hill 1 and 2 allowed for a ton of free-roaming and exploring. And while I hate the phrase "twist-ending" as much as the next person, those two games both had something you were working towards - as Harry, he needed to discover what had happened to Cheryl, and as James, he was working towards finding Mary. In Silent Hill 3, you're not really working towards or discovering much of anything - and time to explore and free-roam? There isn't really any.

The game starts with Heather in a shopping mall - for some reason that's never explained, she fell asleep in a burger joint and when she woke up, the place was practically deserted save for her and a detective trying to ask her questions "about her birth". She blows him off and then is forced to fight through the shopping mall full of monsters to get to the subway station and try to get home. Okay, fine, but where's the plot?

As Harry and James it always felt as if there was something pushing you - a sense of "I've gotta find Cheryl" or "I've gotta find Mary" that was always there, driving these characters and driving you, as a player, to dig deeper into what was happening. As Heather for the first half of the game it's just… "I want to go home"? I'm sorry, but that's weak as hell.

The worst thing about this is how easily it could have been solved. Were another cut-scene added with a second call from Heather to her father (perhaps during the Nightmare mall, or the subway station?) where it became apparent that Harry was in danger, that push would have immediately been added and the sense to get back home would have felt urgent. As it was, I didn't really feel compelled to keep playing at all.

In the second half of the game, after Harry's death, revenge is the driving force - and, perhaps, a desire to understand what the hell Claudia's going on about - but as the game builds up and up towards the ending, nothing shocking or surprising or even slightly interesting happens at all. Ever.

Does that define a Silent Hill game, too? A shock, a surprise, a "plot twist"? Harry's death doesn't exactly count as one and despite how much I like Harry it almost didn't even have any impact on me thanks to being so poorly executed. SH1 had Cheryl being part of Alessa, SH2 had the scene in Room 312 where James watches his videotape, SH4 had Henry and Eileen's conversation with Joseph in Joseph's 302. Origins had revelations. Homecoming had a huge one. So did Shattered Memories. But Silent Hill 3?

Bottom line is, every Silent Hill game has a scene where major things are revealed to the characters and the player that changes the entire game - everything that has happened and everything that will happen. Silent Hill 3 doesn't have this. Sure, it has its fair share of expository scenes - the scene in Douglas' car where Heather reveals her ties with Alessa and Cheryl comes to mind - but this doesn't reveal anything new or interesting to the player and it doesn't change anything, either. We already knew this info from playing the first game. Bizarrely, even Douglas doesn't seem all that Earth-shattered by it. So where's the plot? Where's the interesting part? When does this game become good?

It doesn't.

That's the end of it. Silent Hill 3 is a bad game. It's a terrible game. It's hardly even a Silent Hill game. Sure, we get to Silent Hill in the second half, which is more than I can say for 4, and there's puzzles and monsters and fog and a cult, but is that what makes a Silent Hill game? *I* don't think so. If so, why do people say that Homecoming, Shattered Memories, Origins, and 4 aren't "proper" Silent Hill games? So what does make a Silent Hill game in those fans' opinions? What does 3 have that the rest of the series misses out on?

If any game isn't "a proper Silent Hill game", it's 3.