Silent Hill: Downpour (PlayStation 3) Review

The protagonist is "just a guy," who happens to be a prisoner, and who butchers someone in the very intro of this adventure, and in a pretty disturbing way - not visually disturbing, though. It's just that the player is unaware of the reason, which makes Murphy Pendleton, the star of this dark tale, look as a pretty unlikable fellow… which, by the way, is the strongest emotion that you'll have towards him. Soon, he'll end up in Silent Hill, where he will have to face strange shrieking zombie-ladies, grotesque monsters, and a sort of 'Death Wave' that chases the main character around, and which can't be shot like any simple enemy - oh, and lots of crows, for… some reason.

Unfortunately, Silent Hill: Downpour is a victim of some severe westernization, and as a result, it has lost a great deal of its charm, foreboding atmosphere, feeling of dread, and mystery, and thus, it's the least scary instalment so far. Even the themes that it explores, while interesting, aren't handled that well, with the typical symbolism of the series being a bit more "in your face" than it needs to, and, generally, not as effective as in, say, Silent Hill 2.

Moving on, while the OST and the sound effects are more than decent, the same can't be said about the visuals. Besides the overall dark blandness of it all, with not even the monsters looking as - pleasantly - creepy as they used to, this is a piece of software that, even after so many years and several updates, still has some pretty serious frame-rate stutters, as well as an unreasonably high amount of freezes.

Gameplay-wise? Same old, same old. Explore, find key items, kill enemies, solve puzzles, watch cut-scenes, rinse, repeat. Of course, no Silent Hill impressed people with its gameplay, since it was mostly about the plot… which, to be honest, is not that impressive here. In other words, it's all about the game as a game, and nothing else. So, is it a good one? The answer is a big disappointing 'No' - disappointing because it tried to handle the action part a little bit differently… and failed while at it.

Silent Hill: Downpour is mostly about avoiding enemies, not fighting them, and that's certainly a good thing in survival horror games… theoretically. You see, Murphy will have to heavily rely in melee weapons; melee weapons that lay everywhere, like hammers, axes, or simple sticks, and which tend to break very easily, forcing the one in control to use them as a last resort. The problem? Every now and then, you'll just have to fight.

Simply put, the battle mechanics are sluggish and unreliable, making battles feel more like chore-ish than challenging. Unresponsive, slow, and weak, Murphy is the worst character in the franchise when it comes to killing monsters, and especially when he has to face multiple enemies (read: more than one), or fight one in a cramped area… which is certainly not a rare occurrence.