>By far the shortest out of all 4 original Silent Hill games >Linear levels, unlike 1 and 2 you are not allowed to explore the town of Silent Hill >Only 3 endings compared to 4-6 in other Team Silent games, you can only get 1 of them on your first playthrough, compared to 3-4 in other games >Only three characters you can interact with, less than in other games >Reused set pieces from 1 and locations from 2 (though former can be excused, 3 being direct sequel to 1) >Story doesn't get going until you get to your home 40 % into the game >Exactly the same gameplay and controls as 2, the only new additions are the ability to block with melee weapons and leaving lures to distract dog enemies
With a new SH on the horizon we need to talk about SH 3's shortcomings, it's still a good game despite all that, but feels very lazy and/or rushed, did it have a troubled development?
3 most definitely was rushed. Straight up reusing a big chunk of SH2 is evidence enough of that. I still like it a lot, Heather is great and the soundtrack and monster designs are some of the best in the series.
Nolan Wright
1 > 2 = 3 > 4
Jaxson Nguyen
>>Linear levels, unlike 1 and 2 you are not allowed to explore the town of Silent Hill This was a huge drawback to me. The biggest overall though is how it follows the formula of the other two games while taking out the little things that shake up the pace. The end result is the most by-the-books classic SH experience you could have, none of it is really shocking like the first two games were, and that's a really big weakness. The music and characters are still fantastic, but on a horror level it's a clear step down from the others.
Adrian Butler
>Linear levels, unlike 1 and 2 you are not allowed to explore the town of Silent Hill This wasn't really an issue. Town exploration in SH2 was garbage anyways. You're right on all other counts.
Daniel James
Monsters were good on the average, but 3 was the first game in the series to have some outright bad enemies though, like first enemies you encounter in the mall or fatties, 4 would continue that tradition
Jace Morris
>Town exploration in SH2 was garbage anyways. Why? Because all enemies were super slow?
Jonathan Bell
Does anyone know why starting location in both SH 2 and 3 (apartment building and mall) are so big and confusing compared to the rest of the game? I've completed both games multiple times and still sometimes get lost there
Luke Lee
>like first enemies you encounter in the mall These dudes?
>did it have a troubled development? Sort of. The devs originally wanted 3 to be another spinoff story like 2 was. I'm not sure if they had to switch mid-development but it was probably something they didn't entirely want to do.
Isaac Lewis
Yeh, I remember them looking and moving pretty goofy, but I don't remember them having vagina for a face, was Heather scared of lesbians?
Joseph Flores
Dunno. There's a lot of sexual imagery in 3. Did you forget about the penis raptors and the giant dick worm boss fight?
Brody Price
It was also easy to get lost in SH1's school. My guess is that it's like throwing the player into the water and expecting them to sink or swim. If they can get those segments, they're capable of playing the rest of the game.
Zachary Cook
Come to think of it, 3 being sequel to 1 also feels pretty lazy since the original game left no sequel hooks and 2 had a completely new story. The only ambiguous thing about 1's ending was Cybil's fate, but 3 ignored it anyway
Chase Jackson
I imagine many people who are not into usual survival horror gameplay dropped SH 1-3 on it's first major location, some may have dropped SH 2 even earlier because it's not immediately clear where the apartment key was hidden
Joseph Williams
>Story doesn't get going until you get to your home 40 % into the game not to mention the story itself just sucks. will never understand why some people are actually interested in the cult of silent hill
Easton Price
Yeah, I remember penis worm monster, Douglas acting creepy and how if you examine knife Heather has she says somethings about feeling safer with it, so she obviously fears of being raped, but why does this masculine looking monster has vagina on his face?
Asher Foster
She was afraid of sexuality in general. Probably cause she was impregnated by demons against her will, twice. She probably didn't socialize much with anyone over the course of her life, aside from her father who she was obviously overprotected by.
>Konami originally wanted it to be an on-rails shooter But, user, both SH 1-2 sold well, SH 2 had very impressive pre-release hype and rail shooters were already dead on consoles by 2003, maybe you are confusing it with Silent Hill Arcade that came out in Japan in 2007?
Brayden Sanchez
Yeah but it's the scariest and most atmospheric
Aaron Gomez
The 1st part when Heather is dreaming of the amusement park.
>Playing in a dark room >You're suddenly there without explanation >Dem graphics for the time >The fucking bunny >Don't know where the fuck I have to go >Die
I mean, I was 14 at the moment and it was the first time I had the guts to play it and not only watch like I did with SH1 (wich also scared the shit out of me and wich I refused to play as a child).
Asher Cooper
I remember actually having to shut the first SH off once it switched over to the nightmare world for the first time. Despite having played my fair share of horror games by that point, like Resident Evil, Clock Tower, and D, SH fucked me up.
Ryder Johnson
i think the scariest thing for me in this franchise was the silent hill 4 trailer and silent hill 1. Bizarre I still find 1 the scariest but the moment it went dark.. i got chills, i was terrified to move. Great game.
Luis Parker
I think the sewer section in SH1 is one of the spookiest parts of the whole series.
Benjamin Nelson
Let me guess...it's partly because you can get jumped at any moment with no warning, right? That was a nasty surprise, to find out your radio suddenly doesn't work on those fuckers...
Gabriel Parker
Wtf, I don't remember that
Jeremiah Brown
This was fairly new information ( from the past year or two.) I don't blame you for questioning it, but just look at Konami now.
TBF, the sewers were a comparatively short section, but yeah...your radio, with no warning, didn't warn you about the monsters down there, so you had to proceed VERY cautiously, particularly if you were on higher difficulty levels.
Oliver Scott
iirc the radio doesn't work in the sewers since you're too deep underground
Owen Morales
I doubt that, I actually remember reading magazine article about Silent Hill 3 when it wasn't out yet, in late 2002 or early 2003 and it said that Silent Hill 4 has already been announced for 2004 release, at the time I thought it was pretty weird how they already announced two main games. I think Konami was pretty confident in the series, maybe there was a cancelled rail shooter spin-off and they just used some of it's assets for 3?
Daniel Carter
SH3 was made in more or less a rush with a very small team and they originally had a darker take on the story that had even more to do with an unwanted pregnancy and much less to do with the cult / alessa / harry, and its quality was the first sign that Konami was milking team silent dry.
>it's partly because you can get jumped at any moment with no warning, right? Yes, and no.
>to find out your radio suddenly doesn't work on those fuckers... it's because radio signals don't travel underground. It is quite weird that none of the sequels used that trick again.
>new SH project with Masahiro Ito on the team Is it a bad idea to even be cautiously optimistic? I know its >Konami but its hard to believe he would want to be part of a project that would sully the franchise even further, especially considering how vocal he tends to be about his dislike for the direction SH took when team silent dissolved.
I think Sony is also kind of hovering in the periphery, keeping Konami in check. It seems like Konami is just providing the IP, while Sony does the rest.
Chase Jones
When I first played SH3 I couldn't find a map for that location. I've spent one third of my total playtime in its mazes.
Matthew Brooks
I really, really hope you are right. If anyone can save Silent Hill, its him.
Having Masahiro-san is great but the reason SH was so good was because the whole team silent. PT is an exelent example of this while i dint mind having kojima and all the other people involved like Junji Ito i dont really think they could have topped the original saga. So i will be skeptical till i see who else is joining the team if this ever actually happens.
Jacob Rivera
Interesting. Still, the resulting SH3 seems miles better than any rail shooter/arcade game we could have conceivably gotten.
Isaiah Peterson
I liked the Haunted Mansion at the Lakeside Amusement Park section even if it did have an instakill section with that light chasing you and trying to confuse you by moving the walls around.
Gavin Foster
It would be really cool if they somehow got Yamaoka on board.
