Silent Hill 3

In the years since their original release, the Silent Hill games, particularly the entries developed by Team Silent, have maintained a reputation as some of the scariest horror games ever created. Unfortunately, general neglect from Konami, the series’ publisher and IP holder, following the infamous delisting of P.T. has caused a scarcity of the Team Silent entries and increased the monetary barrier of entry for fans of the console releases who either don’t want to deal with emulation or don’t have access to a PS3. This hit 2003’s Silent Hill 3 (SH3) particularly hard, considering it never received a digital rerelease, unlike Silent Hill (SH1) and Silent Hill 4: The Room, and outside of Silent Hill HD Collection only had a console release on the PS2. As such, without a cheaper Xbox copy to fall back on, secondhand North American copies easily go for over $100, even floating around $200 if you also want the soundtrack that it originally came with.

Since I was unfortunate enough to get into the series late, I was one of those who ended up paying about $180 for a complete PS2 copy in good condition and even then, I wondered how long it would take for buyer’s remorse to sink in. As such, I did everything possible to get the most value out of my copy, including playing on multiple difficulties, viewing every ending and obtaining or viewing just about every secret I could. After all of that, did the game hold up to its reputation as one of the best and scariest games in the series? Yes. Is it worth paying the unnecessarily high price point to experience it? No.

Heather has a nightmare involving a derelict amusement park, which ends with her getting run over by a rollercoaster. Afterwards, she wakes up in a burger restaurant in a shopping mall and calls her father, promising to return home soon. When she hangs up, she’s approached by private detective Douglas Cartland, who is investigating information regarding her birth, which she has no memory of. Heather escapes through the mall’s bathroom to evade Douglas, but finds the mall suddenly devoid of life when she reenters. As she tries to find a way out, she encounters a woman named Claudia, who claims that Heather’s hidden power will reshape the world. When Claudia disappears, Heather is determined to escape the Otherworld and return home to her father so she can figure out what’s going on.

At least the mall offers some respite.

While perhaps not as psychologically complex as Silent Hill 2 (SH2), SH3 still has a compelling narrative. Heather looks and acts very much like a teenager and has an interesting personality that involves some tomboyish traits. Through her dialogue and interactions with items, we get a clear look into how she sees the world and her frank responses to the nightmarish setting. While it does take half the game for her to finally visit the titular town, the pacing didn’t really bother me all that much, since the game did a good job building up the central mystery of Heather’s past throughout the first half and wove it really well into the environment. For example, the more she sees the symbol used for saving the game, the more she reflects on recent events and recalls information about herself. It was also rather refreshing seeing Heather explore locations and Otherworlds outside of Silent Hill, including a shopping mall, a subway system and an office building.

Apart from Heather’s own journey, SH3’s psychological aspects come into play through the other characters, including those who never physically appear. Reading the different memos helps with better understanding certain details about the world and explaining certain previously unexplained aspects, though in series tradition, it doesn’t provide a concrete explanation for what exactly the Otherworld is and how it operates. During the second half of the game, there’s one character who somehow stalks Heather and leaves behind disturbing and increasingly creepy notes about his love for her, which ends with an equally disturbing implication. There are also environmental details that successfully prey on the player’s imagination, including the sight upon finding the location of the Submachine Gun.

Of course, the main supporting cast, consisting of only three other characters, is interesting in their own right. Douglas’ neutrality is tested as he learns more about Heather’s past, especially after the halfway point, where a certain reveal completely recontextualizes the entire game. The other two, Vincent and Claudia, each have their own agendas and are clearly not quite all there, though their scenes include interesting commentary on religious ideology, including how multiple believers can view the same faith through a different lens. Vincent in particular is also a memorable character, as he has some very quotable lines relevant to the themes of the series.

Vincent has very quotable lines.

Without spoiling anything, SH3 does have ties with the previous Silent Hill games and even helps fill in some of the information gaps left behind, especially those from the original’s vague storyline. While playing the previous games isn’t necessary to play this game, prior knowledge of them certainly enhances the experience.

As per tradition, SH3 also features multiple endings, this time only three, all of which are dependent on meeting specific criteria. The Normal ending is the only one available on a first playthrough and the Possessed ending is unlocked after performing certain actions to obtain 4000 points in a hidden point system. The third ending, Revenge, takes the longest to obtain, since it requires unlocking a specific weapon required to meet the ending’s criteria. Since I went out of my way to see all three endings, I thought they were all worth it, though the Possessed ending is the shortest of the three and shows a darker version of a post-game interaction.

As far as gameplay goes, SH3 doesn’t innovate that much beyond the foundation established in prior games, though it does improve on that foundation with its own helpful tweaks. Items in the item menu are now organized into three categories for easier scrolling, especially with the increase in items that Heather has to carry on higher Riddle difficulties and the amount of unlockable clothing items that remain in your inventory at all times. Heather can also equip more than just her weapon, though two helpful items carry their own drawbacks; the Bulletproof Vest heightens defense at the cost of movement speed and the hidden Silencer trades attack power for increased stealth.

Combat feels closer in spirit to SH1, including some fast enemies, but feels more refined in comparison to SH2. Improved weapon accuracy helps alleviate frustrations with fighting off small crowds, though quick thinking and good resource management are essential on higher difficulties, especially in spaces where enemies can more easily swarm Heather. Even on Easy, however, certain sections led to more frustration than fear, particularly when dealing with multiple Slurpers and Pendulums at once. The varied attack patterns of the different monsters help keep players on their toes, though like SH1, SH3’s monster have a degree of randomness. In this case, monsters can randomly choose to not die once they’re down, so Heather has to kick them to finish them off if the player doesn’t want to waste ammunition. Though the bosses generally aren’t too difficult to deal with, they feel more varied in design than in previous games and have more unique behaviors that help them stand out more.

The bosses feel more unique.

I also liked that while the early environments felt open, they weren’t too difficult to navigate, even without a guide. Each level has its own subtle way of railroading the player and the number of inaccessible areas in locations like the mall makes it easier to guess where to go next. Of course, while better about it than previous entries, the game will let you leave certain areas without major items, so it’s still best to check every inch of an unfamiliar room to help minimize backtracking.

One consistent annoyance, however, is that Heather’s loadout in a cutscene continues into the gameplay, which means that there are times where no matter what you had equipped before, she could suddenly have the Handgun. When this happens, you’ll have to manually swap back to your preferred weapon, with one instance occurring directly at the start of a boss fight. While it doesn’t happen often, it can throw you off at first if you’re not prepared for it.

I should also mention the puzzles, which aren’t as key-heavy as SH2, but do include more code solving. Admittedly, I only played with the Easy Riddle setting, but I’m aware that higher Riddle settings are actually more difficult, especially on the Hard Riddle setting. Most infamously, a very early puzzle involving books requires in-depth knowledge of Shakespeare’s works to properly decipher and another involves realizing that a lengthy and gory memo refers to numbers on the keypad as parts of the face. As such, I honestly wouldn’t blame anyone for just looking up the solutions on this difficulty, which remain static across multiple playthroughs.

As part of my experience, and to help kill two birds with one stone, I went through the game a second time on Hard difficulty, which surprised me with some subtle differences apart from different item and monster placement or damage and stat modifiers. On Hard, Heather suddenly acts clumsier and can bump into walls, which makes one section in Lakeside Amusement Park more difficult to pass. Heather can also fall off of ledges unless she readies her weapon in Caution Mode and certain obstacles can actually damage or kill her where they wouldn’t before. While monsters can more easily swarm Heather on Hard, unlocking the Unlimited Submachine Gun beforehand can make this difficulty much more bearable and even add some level of catharsis.

A particular haunted house becomes more of a death trap on Hard.

Unfortunately, playing this difficulty didn’t help me fulfill one of the conditions I sought, but it did help me see the Possessed Ending more easily. Completing this difficulty also unlocked a life bar that players can toggle in the Extra Options menu, though it must be turned on during gameplay and not through the main menu. While this life bar may look odd for some, it has great utility on higher difficulty settings, especially Hard and the ten levels of Extreme, for helping track Heather’s health and stamina.

Silent Hill is also known for its unlockable special weapons and SH3 certainly tops SH1 and SH2 in that regard. Between the Unlimited Submachine Gun, Beam Saber and Flamethrower, players can really go to town on the monsters in subsequent playthroughs, while an optional joke event allows Heather access to two more weapons that are at least funny to have, even if they don’t really help much.

There is one weapon, however, that requires you to kill at least 333 monsters. As there aren’t 333 monsters in the game, this requires multiple complete playthroughs, since the results screen is when the game determines unlockable items, and progress can be saved in multiple save slots (though they all have to be on the same save file on the PS2’s memory card). While I’m not sure if this is necessary, I continued the chain through multiple Extra New Games. Do all of this and you unlock the Heather Beam, a weapon that can continuously fire projectiles from Heather’s eyes as long as no other weapons are equipped. Should you have the Transform Costume in your inventory, you can trigger a funny magical girl transformation sequence that turns Heather into Princess Heart and upgrades the Heather Beam into the more powerful Sexy Beam.

During normal runs, especially on higher difficulties, the Heather Beam may not seem like that great of a weapon due to its comparatively low firepower. However, if you kill at least 31 enemies with the Heather Beam or Sexy Beam by the time Heather reaches her apartment, you can view the Revenge ending, which continues where the previous UFO endings left off. Considering everything I went through to get the Heather Beam for this specific purpose, I thought this ending felt well worth the effort and let me end my time with the game on a high note.

SH2’s visuals already held up well decades later, but SH3 improves upon it and looks even better. The monsters all have unique designs that fit the setting, every environment, including the refreshing new ones, feels lived-in and the total atmosphere felt more unnerving than previous entries, especially this game’s interpretation of Lakeside Amusement Park. Part of this came from the introduction of one of the park’s mascots, Robbie the Rabbit, whose bright color palette creates a jarring and unsettling contrast with the dark environment around him. I also noticed that when out in Silent Hill before visiting the park, the town’s signature fog looked thicker than on my Xbox copy of SH2, for better or worse.

SH3 nails its atmosphere.

When Heather visits Silent Hill, I immediately noticed that the area of the town she was in, the map of the town and the entirety of Brookhaven Hospital were recycled from SH2, but with different areas blocked off in both the Fog World and the Otherworld. Without knowing exactly what went into SH3’s development, I can only speculate from my limited knowledge of game development that it was cheaper and easier to recycle this portion of SH2 and then mold part of the plot around that, considering that Brookhaven’s status as a mental hospital tied into the subplot with the minor character Leonard. However, I think it would have made more sense from a narrative and thematic standpoint if Heather had instead visited Alchemilla Hospital from SH1.

Speaking of SH2, you can insert references to that game into SH3 if you happen to have SH2 save data on your memory card. Since I own the Xbox version of that game, however, I was unable to see these for myself and I’m not willing to pay over $100 for a physical PS2 copy just for that. From what I could see online, however, these references are minimal and amount to small Easter eggs and in-jokes.

Unlike previous games, players can also customize Heather’s appearance with different shirts through the unlockable Extra Costume option in the main menu. Here, players can input different codes on a typewriter for the appropriate costume. Though the game wants you to fulfill certain conditions to obtain the codes in the first place, you can fortunately just look up the codes and input them without any penalty. For example, you can just type “PrincessHeart” and get the Transform costume. While every shirt apart from the Transform costume results in only a small cosmetic difference, the God of Thunder costume actually changes her appearance more dramatically.

As for the voice acting, it’s actually pretty decent compared to the previous games. While the characters’ lines still have an awkward delivery, these performances still fit in so well with the game in making them feel like real people, and Vincent coming off convincingly unhinged, that I can’t imagine any other voices. Akira Yamaoka also continues nailing the score, with tracks that perfectly capture the tense atmosphere and vocal tracks still fitting well with the tone. Since North American PS2 copies also came with a copy of the soundtrack, minus the song "Rain of Brass Petals - Three Voices Edit" from the individual Japanese release, I was able to better enjoy the music even outside the game, with the main theme “You’re Not Here” serving as a great highlight.

Even with an awkward delivery, certain moments still have weight.

Before I end this review, I must point out that SH3 is also a surprisingly short game. Even if you’re fumbling around without a guide, it will still only take you a few hours to get through the story once and if you skip cutscenes, it flies by even faster. Granted, going for the Heather Beam can increase the playtime a bit, but it’s an artificial way to increase playtime more than anything else.

If you’re interested in a well-polished old school horror experience that only Team Silent can deliver, SH3 is still a great game with a lot of clear passion that still holds up well. With that said, however, while playing it on the original hardware is ideal for a smooth experience, it’s not worth paying the ~$200 asking price and you’re better off trying to emulate it instead, at least until Konami can finally give it a decent rerelease.