Heather faces countless nightmarish scenarios. Konami obviously wanted to create a lot of cinematic atmosphere, and they sure succeeded.īe glad you're not her. The graphics are all so good that you may not even notice, at first, that a cutscene has ended, and you're now suddenly in control. One of the neatest things about this whole opening segment is the way the game shifts between cutscenes and in-game action. Fortunately, you also find a pistol for dealing with just such an eventuality. The halls are now empty, most of the shops are barred shut, and suddenly you come face-to-face with some kind of hellhound who's sloppily munching on a corpse. When you lead Heather back into the mall through a service entrance, things start to go very wrong. Heather doesn't want anything to do with the guy, so she heads into the ladies' room and then bolts through a window that leads into a back alley. She heads off to call her dad to let him know that she's coming home soon, but then she meets up with a supposed detective who wants to talk to her about her birth. After an introductory sequence with a surprise twist, we find Heather in a burger joint in a shopping mall. She's just an ordinary teenage girl named Heather who means well but also has a bit of an attitude. If you can get past the clunky camera and controls, Silent Hill 3 has some cool things to offer. When other third-person console games, like Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell, get ported to the PC with smooth, easy controls and camera views, there's really no excuse for Silent Hill 3's problems to exist. For added frustration, you have to engage a special "caution" mode before attacking enemies. The movement controls were clearly designed with a gamepad in mind, though you can use the keyboard, albeit awkwardly. You can theoretically reorient the camera, but it's usually sluggish, or it simply won't move around properly in tight areas. Oftentimes, an attacking creature-and sometimes even your character-is hidden from view. What this all boils down to is that the camera is frequently pointing away from where you want to look. Additionally, the game sometimes switches your view to draw your attention to something or to merely create a dramatic visual. To further confuse matters, you can also look around rapidly, in a small arc, while holding down a particular key. In the other, movement is relative to the character's view. With one system, character movement is relative to the camera. You get two basic camera/movement options. They're so awkward, disorienting, and motion sickness-inducing that there are many times when you'll want to quit the game in disgust. Silent Hill 3 is enough to make you vomit-not because of the blood and gore, of which there's plenty, but because of the clunky controls and wild camera system. Silent Hill 3 fully earns its Mature rating, as this game isn't for the faint of heart-or stomach.įirst things first. Silent Hill 3 isn't so much about gameplay as it is about creating a disturbing world and immersing you in it, which is something it does very well. Silent Hill 3, released on the PlayStation 2 earlier this fall, continues both these traditions by offering up a survival horror adventure that's long on eeriness and short on sense. Konami's Silent Hill series is known for two things: loads of creepy atmosphere and awkward, underdeveloped stories.
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