by Jody - January 25, 2004

When the original Silent Hill was released on the PlayStation in 1999, we saw a new horror genre to take us all by storm. In 2001, the second installment was released with all new features on Sony's PlayStation 2. Now the most terrifying holiday resort Silent Hill has opened its doors once again to the public for the new holiday season. Does the third installment of this psychological survival horror series have anything more to offer than its predecessors?

What's so scary? A lot.

As with the previous Silent Hill titles, Silent Hill 3 exists in two parallel worlds, either the ''normal'' world or the ''evil'' world. The �normal� world is generally bleak, eerie and uninhabited with its fare share of monsters and surprises, however at various key moments throughout the game the surroundings change to the �evil� world. The surroundings are much more sinister, the monsters more abundant and disturbing. To explore each building thoroughly you will need to find a floor map. These show locations of various rooms, lifts, stairs etc. Your progress is marked on the maps ie locked/accessible doors, and key areas (such as a puzzle/riddle that needs solving) will also be highlighted. When it appears that you have visited all the areas/rooms in the �normal� world when it �flips� to the �evil� world the map becomes blank and all areas will need to be re-explored. With the duel shock controller set on �hard� visiting the �evil� world is a very scary experience. Where a room was previously empty it could now be full of monsters causing the controller to vibrate as your heart pounds at the possibility of an unexpected attack. On other occasions shouts, screams and banging makes you believe that something is about to happen at any time, but it never does, with Silent Hill 3 you just never know and it is this unpredictability that keeps you on the edge of your seat and puts this game in a league of its own.

At the title screen at the beginning of the game you are given the opportunity to select your preferred difficulty mode. This has been broken down into two parts your therefore have the choice of deciding how you want to play the game. If for example you are more of a fighter than a thinker you can set the difficult level for battles on �hard� and the puzzle difficulty to �easy�. There are also a number of other choices that can be made at the title screen to tailor Silent Hill 3 to your specific survival horror preferences, another nice touch I�ve already mentioned is how �hard� or �soft� you want the duel shock controller to vibrate (personally I recommend �hard� because when you least expect it, it will make you jump out of your seat�). Also, if after fighting the first boss you die another option becomes available on screen, it�s the chance to play at beginner level, which makes defeating �bosses� easier still. However if you choose this option then it will make a difference to the final scenario of the game.

You play the game as a new character, a 17 year old girl named Heather on a trip to her local shopping mall. However as soon as the opening credits have ended you find yourself plunged straight into the alternative nightmare world of Silent Hills Amusement Park, with it�s characteristic mutilated bodies and deeply disturbing surroundings and blood curdling screams. (I would suggest that to get the best out of the game you change the setting for the duel shock controller at the title screen from �normal� to �hard�. Let�s just say it gives the game an extra element of �surprise�). Heather is forced to fight strange, grotesque creatures on her way through this and macabre world before she can finally piece together the solution to the mystery of Silent Hill.

There's good news for censorship haters: Silent Hill 3 is the creepiest of them all. In the past, the developers have said they held back, not because they had to, but because they wanted to. But with Silent Hill 2 they pushed the envelope even further. This time around they decided to forget the envelope altogether and give gamers the most disgusting images they could possibly think of. Although you may cringe more, this doesn't make the game any scarier.

What's so creepy about it? The deformed monsters are one thing, and probably won't faze anyone who has played through the previous games. New aesthetics include underdeveloped humans (the legs are all there, but the body is not), a worm-like boss, eerie sounds and a Resident Evil staple, mutated dogs. These dogs look different from the ones in RE -- they have no head! Well, they do, but it opens up like a mouth. Need I say more?

Silent Hill just got a lot more visual!

If you thought Silent Hill 2 made better use of polygons than any other survival/horror game, you were right. But now, against all odds, Konami has improved the graphics. I didn't doubt them, but I did doubt the PS2 -- could it really go beyond SH2? Could it really do more for this situation? Now we know that yes, it can, and it just did. The lighting is virtually the same, though with less of an emphasis on impressive shadow work (they already blew our minds once, so apparently they didn't think they needed to do it again). What has been improved, and to an unbelievable level might I add, is the characters. Whether in a real-time cut scene or during actual gameplay, Heather looks absolutely stellar. Her skin color is realistically toned, her hair has individual strands that move independently, and her facial expressions are some of the best a PS2 game has ever had. The car sequence looks amazing, with rain pouring down on the windshield. The mouth movements are pretty close to CG-movie quality, lining up very close to what the characters are saying. This makes it much easier to enjoy the story and care about what the characters are saying.

Look out! It's Jason! Well, sort of...

The graphics are truly a work of art, both technologically and artistically, but Silent Hill 3's high point is its music. Having the best soundtrack in the series, Konami decided to include this one as a bonus disc with every copy of the game. (You'll hear the music in the game too of course.) With its incredible sounds and a stellar mix of instruments, Silent Hill 3 is both haunting and emotionally powerful. It'll intrigue you and intensify the situation, but it also has a lot of emotion behind it. No two songs are exactly alike, and span a much greater genre range than you'd expect (mostly rock, techno and classical, but the music is so vast that it's not always easy to label it as being one genre).

Also impressive is the voice acting. The voice work is by far the best in the series. Heather sounds young, but not to the point where it's annoying (as in most games and anime). She's a young, somewhat intelligent woman and her voice conveys that. Her tone is never off, and what she says never sounds out of place (her actions are a whole other story though). Claudia has that old, possessed-by-evil sound, but as with Heather it works. Not because this sort of thing works out good (it usually doesn't), but because Konami got talented voice actors. Vincent and Douglas, the only other main characters, also have appropriate voices.

Diehard Silent Hill fans can

What it really comes down to though is not how good the music is or how talented the actors are. What matters is how fun the game is to play. Silent Hill 3 is fun, but lacks the intensity of the first game. The intensity was lessened with the sequel, perhaps due to the fact that it was a sequel and I had already experienced that kind of horror once. Silent Hill 3 uses the same scare tactics as the first two games, so unless you're a newcomer, you probably won't be too horrified. If you question whether or not this makes the experience any less fun, then obviously you have no idea what a survival/horror game is all about. Silent Hill 3 great fun, but it doesn't go beyond that. Diehard SH fans won't be able to live without it, that's guaranteed. I had to know how the story turned out and I'm sure you will too.