bloomer's Silent Hill 3 review

Great review as always Wade. This bit, in particular, struck me as brilliant insight:

My favourite phase in SH3 comes after Heather escapes the horror version of the mall and makes for the subway to catch a train home. The station is deserted. A series of locked gates herd her deeper underground. Dispassionate tracking shots follow her as you guide her down one repeating tiled tunnel after another, the metronomic clatter of her boots taking over the soundtrack. Your sense of passing time begins to dissolve. It's hard to tell if the emptiness is due to it being late at night or if something supernatural is taking place. The artful design of such stretches of SH3 – stretches which do not necessarily affect the outcome or involve fighting, but which manipulate your apprehension of a world – is what continues to most strongly voice the series' unique identity and attraction in horror gaming.

Having said that, I think it's the paragraph directly following which provides a pretty hearty helping of spoiler. If I hadn't already played the game, I would have been a little miffed at having the doppelganger encounter ruined.

Besides that nitpick, this is a great read. I haven't read mine in awhile, but I don't remember many of the observations you've made being ground I covered, so I rather enjoyed your perspective (even if our scores ended up being similar).

Edit: Our scores are not at all similar, haha. I just looked.

I'm glad that someone made a feedback thread for this review, because while I agree that it's a great read, I have one suggestion so tiny it's barely worth mentioning: I'd remove the "overall" from your closing paragraph. One of my pet peeves with reviews is when people begin their closing paragraphs with phrases like "in conclusion" or "overall," as it reads like a reviewing crutch meant to hide the fact that the writer isn't sure how to transition to the conclusion.

Aside from that one minor detail, this is an excellent and well thought out review of a game from a series I've never been interested in.

Ha, Mike, you're quite the reviewing Nazi, it seems. Lots of pet peeves! I won't rehash my defense of 'reviewing cliches' here which I ranted on at length about in some other topic -- but I've got to add my two cents (!!) about 'overall' and its ilk.

Sure these words crop up as final transitions in reviews a lot... but we're reviewing things. Doesn't it stand to reason we'll be summarizing near the end?

It's part of the blueprint, eg: here's what the game's about, here's how it fails/succeeds, and here's my recommendation or not. To a certain degree, it's nice to praise creative methods of summation, but when it's all said and done (not my favourite) we've got to wrap things up neatly for the reader.

I actually prefer a neat wrap up to an artful one, which often fails to suggest things are, in fact, being wrapped up in lieu of its own artfulness.

Off on a tangent again: this discussion reminds me of elementary school science projects. Hypothesis, Observation, blah blah blah, then Conclusion which should speak directly to the hypothesis. Ah, to be young again.

You sent me an HG mail addressing the hostility between us, Masters, and I've pretty much said everything I wanted to say in my response. But if you're going to call me a "reviewing Nazi" because I posted a comment about a little pet peeve that I acknowledged as being so minor it's barely worth mentioning, then I hope you don't mind if I call you "childish" for doing so.

Now that the staff have further expressed their disfunctionality, let's talk about this good Silent Hill 3 review.

Funny you should say that, Felix. Check my blog.

Let the 'net drama go, focus on the review.

I need to play more SH3. I remember wandering around the mall and getting stuck in a corridor so dark, I had no idea where I was going. I wandered around for half an hour, lost and annoyed, before I shelved the game. You make the game sound like it's worth another go. I'll get on that.

Already decided it was better than SH4 though. Which I hate.

SH3 really overdoes it on the dark and the dank, and SH4 was just a pain in the ass for half the game, but I still like them because I eat up this shit like a moron.

Can't wait for SH5!

Another person who likes this game more than I do. I'd reference my review, but it's old, long and clunky.

I dunno....something about this game annoyed me. I remember absolutely hating the really clunky "stay in front of the red light" part of the funhouse. And it seemed to be like one of the first two SH games, but on rails. I mean, this game didn't even try to disguise its linearity. You'd be in a huge building where it looks like there's 50 doors, but only two of them open. And then you go to the next huge building.

I did chuckle at the line where you mentioned that the hospital segment in an SH game is a bit old. Funny because the hospital, in a way, was done better here than in the past. It was a pretty cool twist to have you constantly finding little "love notes" from some deranged guy who's apparently stalking you......only to find out (via his last note) that the real baddie of the place capped him. That whole part really was a great example of how good Konami could create a killer groove as far as claustrophobic, stifling fear in those games.

Great review, dude. I've been wanting to play this one for awhile but used copies tend to cost around $30 here.