Silent Hill 3

Platform: Playstation 2
Developer: Konami
Completion Time: 6 hours, 18 minutes

In this game you vomit God, then someone else eats God and gives birth to him/her? Then you kill God with firearms and a katana? What? This game could also be called "what the fuck was Akira Yamaoka on and where can I get some?" or "video game laxative" basically, you turn off all the lights in your video game playing location of choice, proceed to sit down and play the game alone, then have a bowel movement in your pants. This game is terrifying, and it takes a lot to get to me these days. The atmosphere is just beyond comparison, I have played the previous two titles and completed them at least once each. Somehow they managed to up the ante and make this a mini nervous breakdown in a dvd case. Also this game is fucking cryptic as hell when it comes to the puzzle gameplay. There is no way I could have possibly completed this without the help of my good friend GameFAQs. I really want to meet the mathletes who can play this with no guide or tip sheet and just somehow make sense of the riddles. Maybe in my younger days, but my beer addled mind of many years has no hope of solving this game solo. This game is a mindfuck in every direction and I love it deeply, however. The only thing I can complain about is this is so far the shallow end of the Silent Hill pool from the titles I have played plot-wise. In SH1 the whole experience could be explained multiple ways, drugs, near death hallucination, ancient gods, aliens, what!? In SH2 it was way more psychological and had to do with the personal purgatory of the main character and his struggle to atone for the sins of his past. In this one it pretty much picks the ancient god theory and concretes it and just runs with it. Ok, I guess... :\ I didn't really catch the symbolism with the main characters mentality as much, just a lot of throwbacks to the original. Which is cool in a way, but what I loved about the first two titles was how everything you saw had some obscure or obvious symbolism and when you figured it out, your eyes went crossed. The only time I felt like that in this chapter was when I realized the significance of the save point symbol... well done :)

This game looks like sex, I want you to know. I haven't been so happy with 3d realistic graphics since Shenmue. It just looks perfect, bravo Konami. This game easily beats the pants off any PS2 game I have played in the graphics department. I wasn't super thrilled about the soundtrack however, the ambiance and sound effects were top-notch as always but the ambient almost 80s flavored background music from the first two was sadly lacking. It still had the loosely related alt rock opening music and ended with the intro music from SH1 which was a nice choice but I would have enjoyed more mellow chill gray sky groove-tastic awesomeness :p

I can't really see myself replaying this one, although the bonus costumes and weapons are pretty good by series standards... the endings that I have read about are kind of weak. I'm still intrigued about the UFO ending from SH1 and if I can muster up the motivation I'll try to obtain it, but that's even after knowing exactly what to expect. This game I'm just glad to have completed, I don't know. One other thing I want to mention, fuck you Konami for resorting to the jump out of your fucking skin scares... that is too easy, I liked how the atmosphere just built in the last two until I was almost too uncomfortable to play the damn game. Screw you for cheapening it by driving down easy street *cough* manikin room *cough* I wonder how many heart attack lawsuits they had to fend with this game haha...

Very important fractional Kuni rating: 4/5