Comments on: Silent Hill 3

By: CtrlAltDelete

CtrlAltDelete — Wed, 21 Sep 2005 01:41:29 +0000

Silent Hill 3 was one of Grandma’s favorites- but she could never get into the 4th of the series, too redundant. Like you, we waited until the price was down, because gaming can be quite expensive when you play hard, and do it often.

Someone mentioned Parasite Eve 2- YES; this is exactly what I thought when playing SH3. Beautiful game.

By: TrueTallus

TrueTallus — Wed, 21 Sep 2005 00:50:45 +0000

It does seem to me that that the series has lost something over time, but despite it’s undeniable failings I really enjoyed Silent Hill 3, particularly all the facinating inner monolog you could read when you examined the envirnment. I thought it added a great layer of characterization to know what Heather thought about things, and it helped to shed light on what exactly the developers meant thing to be. Its something I wish more survival horror games would do (to my knoledge only Parasite Eve 2 and Haunting Ground have had that feature to any appreciable degree).

By: Andrew Plotkin

Andrew Plotkin — Tue, 20 Sep 2005 17:47:43 +0000

The series gets a lot of review cred, so I expect it sells
steadily in the long term. Even in the hit-crazed game
industry, that’s known to be a good thing.

And it has imitators.

I was pleased that with SH4, they made some effort to break
out of the rut and rethink the game structure. Not just
the pacing, but the way game elements (save system, chapter
divisions, real/surreal division) fit into the storyline.
Those elements were all *innovations* in SH1, but retreads
in 2 and 3. They didn’t change the franchise a *lot* for SH4;
but they were clearly paying attention to the problem.

By: Chris

Chris — Tue, 20 Sep 2005 08:35:10 +0000

Like you, I am usually some time behind the bow wave of the games industry’s output… Why pay 40 for a game I can get for 15 if I wait a year? (And these are pounds I’m talking about, which is twice as much as dollars right now). I only buy at full price the games which I know will repay my trust. The Zelda franchise is about the only one right now.

My wife and I played Silent Hill 3 last year. She enjoyed it – but unlike the previous game, she made me operate it almost all the way through. I did not have such a good time playing this as the previous two.

The first remains my favourite – simply because the game design is quite masterful. The second, however, I have respect for because they recognised the audience they were hitting, made the game much, much easier and focused on the story and atmosphere. It’s possible this might have been the right direction for this franchise, but clearly sales were not where they wanted.

You can see the logic… we need to connect with the Hardcore gamer. So, they made 3 have a pathfinding structure, in which you run through corridors of monsters (like an FPS) to connect between set pieces and cut scenes. Trouble is, this portion of the Hardcore audience is already getting their play needs met in other genres – yes, they made SH3 appeal to this audience better, but at the cost of the play needs of the audience they had been building.

However, I do think the set pieces in 3 make it worth playing, although it is for me the weakest of the three thus far.

Silent Hill 4 sits on the edge of the of our play pile. My wife and I will probably start it soon – after all, Halloween isn’t that far away.

Silent Hill is, as far as I can gather, a very delicately balanced franchise. It sells sufficient numbers, but the sales are never exceptional. The question is, how long will Konami be satisfied with its borderline sales?