EmP's Silent Hill Downpour review

This is a wonderful novel review! But seriously, there are some great passages in here, too many to list (hee hee), but the last few paragraphs are especially strong. Kudos!

What a girly slight slip of feedback to compliment my huge, manly review!

Thanks, Marc. Now, let's both enjoy the thought of never having to play Downpour ever again.

Ha, as much as I found Downpour boring and depressing, it wasn't offensively bad like SH4, or as downright lame as Shattered Memories. That's gotta count for something, right?

I would put SH4 a good way ahead of Downpour. At least it advanced a tale worth telling behind its awful, clumsy gameplay. Plus, 100% less Korn

I'll have to disagree with you - at least Downpour seems like a Silent Hill game for the most part. A bad SH game, but a SH game. SH4 seems like a bad game belonging to a different franchise. Anyway, whatever, they both suck.

Before we go on, let's not think me soft for SH4. I hated that game, and the review I wrote wasn't a lot shorter than this one, such was my wealth of things to complain about. But I have garnered some sympathy for it over the years. For instance, it's common knowledge that it was originally a new original title that Konami decided to nix, and then give to Team Silent to mould into the new Silent Hill. But I was surprised to learn just how late in the game’s cycle this happened. As such, Team Silent had to awkwardly shoehorn in franchise staples and alter the plot to try and tie a separate story back to the town somehow. It’s not a lot of surprise the game ended up such a convoluted mess. I’d argue that you could have quite a lot of fun with SH4, so long as you do nothing with the actual game itself, and just read up on some of the translated plot notes, or hit up a fan-made wiki and check out the plot that should have been.

It’s just as little surprise that Downpour was god awful, but the reason is so much simpler. It was given to a developer with a single mediocre title released under their belt whose understanding of the series seemed to come from skim reading Wikipedia, and thinking that jump scares would be enough to paper over their weak barely-horror plot. I do not see a weaker Silent Hill game being released, but Konami do seem hell bent on pimping them out of unproven devs, so who knows what the future might bring.

Yeah, I know about how SH4 was supposed to be something else entirely. I guess if it had actually been good we would have forgiven it (see Super Mario Bros. 2). I can't remember if you said you played Shattered Memories or not, but again, that one's also a contender.

I’d argue that you could have quite a lot of fun with SH4, so long as you do nothing with the actual game itself,

Possibly the greatest example of damning with FAINT praise I've seen in an eternity.