Silent Hill: Downpour Review

Stepping in to take the reigns on a new installment of an incredibly popular gaming series must be incredibly scary for a development team. Even scarier when you consider that this series has some of the most obsessive, loud and passionate fans I've personally ever seen. But that is exactly what Vatra Games has done with Silent Hill: Downpour, created a new title and injected it with their own design concepts and thoughts.

A brave maneuver by Vatra but how did it actually work out?

Well the results are rather mixed and your personal take on the depends upon what you were expecting in the first place. In the bluntest possible way, if you are looking for a Silent Hill title that goes back to the glory days of Silent Hill 2 and 3, you may as well just stop right now as that isn't what you are going to find here. If you instead, in your mind, remove the Silent Hill title from Downpour and take it as it comes you will actually find a rather solid, enjoyable . There's problems with it, which I will cover later, but overall it's not a bad game.

First, to the meat of any Silent Hill title - The story. In this installment, we meet our brand new protagonist, Murphy Pendleton. The opening of Downpour begins in prison with a series of rather lengthy cinematics, after which you are faced with a rather unsettling event, which I won't go into as I do not want to spoil the story too much. This event sets the tone for the rest of the .

After a few more cinematics you wind up out in the open on your lonesome, heading toward the infamous town of Silent Hill with no clue about what you are about to face. Featuring twists, turns, crimes of passion, a loss of someone very dear to you and a gradually building story which tells you why our dear Murphy was sent to prison in the first place. There is a lot to think about and like about the overall story, and is definitely one of Downpours stronger points. As well as the main story, you can find out about the residents of Silent Hill at your leisure.

Throughout the game are many different side quests, all of which unveil to you more info about the town itself and the residents that once dwelled within, something which is pretty unique to Downpour and works really well. Throughout the story you will encounter a Silent Hill staple, the otherworld/dark world/hell; whatever you want to call it, which in my opinion is done rather nicely.

Departing from the usual blood stained everything and pulsating tumorous walls, Downpour brings you rusty metal by the bucket full. Corroded walls and floors path your descent into what seems like utter madness, cogs and mechanisms turning ominously, powering this whole nightmarish scene. All of this twinned with bouts of water makes for a interesting experience, everything looks rather nice as you stumble around trying to find your way out.

Getting out of these otherworld scenes isn't as easy at it seems though, generally there is what I can only describe as some form of paranormal entity chasing you, trying to suck you into the surroundings bit by bit, so you have to literally run for your life whilst trying to fathom your way out, chucking things in the way of the entity's path to slow it down. Various illusions are also played on you, never ending corridors and looping environments can completely confuse you as you try to hunt down the correct path. These sections are packed, running, ducking, diving, even sliding down what are essentially water slides with obstacles and feel totally alien in a Silent Hill game. I'm not saying that they play badly, they don't, but they just seem very out of place in this series, it kind of feels like you're playing Lara Croft: Adventures in Silent Hill sometimes, I'll leave that down to you as to whether you think that's a good or bad thing.

Worth noting though is that in the entire paragraph above describing the nightmarish world, the place that's supposed to terrify you, the word 'scary' was never mentioned. That's because it isn't. Sure there are a few jumpy moments but nothing that I would say is truly terrifying. When I think of the otherworld in Silent Hill titles, I think of pant wetting moments like the mirror room in Silent Hill 3. If you have experienced it, you will know which room I'm talking about - it stays with you. In Downpour, everything is paced so fast in these sections that you don't really have time to stop and admire/scare yourself silly with the scenery. I found myself saying "WTF?" more than I did "arrrghhh scary", something which was really disappointing to me.

That being said, there are some genuinely unsettling bits, like a long train ride through an abandoned mineshaft. That managed to freak me out, but still nothing compared to its predecessors. One of the main elements that adds to the scariness for me personally is the monster designs in these games and it saddens me to say that the monsters you face in Silent Hill: Downpour are very bland and uninspired. Screaming women, much like the Sirens in Killing Floor, man with knife, long legged jumping man and big guy wielding a hammer and more are what you can expect to find dwelling within Silent Hill, none of which are particularly terrifying, not really aided by the fact they aren't very subtly placed, you can see them from a mile off and can just run away from them or you can attack them without much difficulty.

Combat in Silent Hill: Downpour is a little iffy, you can pick up and wield a multitude of different weapons including rocks, sticks, fire axes (my personal favourite) and a variety of firearms. People complained about Silent Hill: Homecoming's combat; that it was too and combo orientated, so Vatra have simplified things somewhat. You have Square to attack, Triangle to block and R2 to fire a gun, simple stuff really. Attacking isn't overly accurate, or dignified either as each button press sees Murphy haplessly flailing around in the hopes of actually hitting something. Some may call this bad design, I in fact think it actually adds to the charm of the game a little bit. Makes you believe that Murphy really is just a normal guy combat wise, that he is doing what any of us would do in that situation, wave your weapon like a lunatic and hope it hits. Whether this train of thought about the design is intentional or not however, I really don't know.

I can't go any further into this review without addressing something that fans of the series have been worrying about with this new entry, and that is the soundtrack. Personally, I am a massive fan of Akira Yamaoka, his haunting, unique scores from previous Silent Hill games have been favourites of mine since the first time I heard them so when the news hit that he wouldn't be doing the music for Downpour, I was devastated.

Daniel Licht, the man behind the music of popular TV show Dexter, is in charge this time, and I'm pleased to say that whilst there is a notable difference in the types of music, Licht does a good job of capturing the atmosphere of places in his music, although the atmosphere is built up a little too much sometimes with random increases in volume and intensity for no apparent reason, this was described to me by my other half as "It's going Batman-ish on you" as that is what happened also in Arkham Asylum. Joining him for a few of the songs is Mary Elizabeth McGlynn, whose voice gives a touch of familiarity to the soundtrack. To me personally, the soundtrack isn't hugely memorable though, it's not bad at all, just didn't click with me on a level similar to Akira Yamaoka's work.

All the good points I have described above are nigh on ruined in places however by crippling technical issues. There's no getting past them, they are there, the biggest and most intrusive to gameplay being framerate issues. I can't stress enough how appalling it actually is at times. Just turning the camera is enough to reduce the game to a slide show and some more intense moments make the game freeze up entirely for 5 seconds ish, more on a really bad place. I am reviewing the PS3 version of Silent Hill: Downpour so I've no idea if this plagues the Xbox 360 version or not but it's a serious issue on this version, and one that needs looking at asap by way of patching or whatever.

Silent Hill: Downpour is a very mixed bag, the quality of your experience will depend solely, as I said in my opening paragraph, upon what you are expecting to find. Being a fan of the series, I noticed every single little change made, I constantly compared it to the older entries in my head but someone new to the series, taking Downpour at face value will enjoy it in a different way.

Downpour is a good entry into the series by Vatra, with a solid story, interesting take on the otherworld and new innovations like side quests, unfortunately it will feel a bit weird to fans of the series as so much has changed but is still definitely worth a go.