No problem guys. Truthfully I don't remember much of the Korn song, and I believe it is only featured in the intro video. And given that it doesn't really feature in the game, only the instrumental songs, which one of them, Intro Perp Walk, I find memorable, makes me think that although it doesn't have the richness and creativity of an Akira Yamaoka score, it holds up well, fitting well the theme and the beats of the story.

@jeust: I have to say I agree with the majority of this reply. Obviously, not the broadstroke of Downpour is better, but I think you're right: SH2 isn't scary; it has a great, tense atmosphere. I only mentioned "scares" in relation to Downpour because it actually seemed like DP wanted to be scary on some level but could not fully commit, whereas SH2 knew it wasn't really going for that. Also, I forgot the lore and side-quests of this game. I really like most of them! In fact, I like pretty much all of the "general lore" that the western teams made for SH, even in Homecoming. It's hard to get mad at learning anything interesting about the town of Silent Hill.

That music, though...

Anyway, I guess I mean that while I don't hold this opinion, I can relate to appreciating what IS good in DP and if things were weighed differently (for me, VERY differently :p), the idea of liking DP above the others. To paraphrase heavily: "I may not hold your opinion, but I can see it from here".

@jeust: Absolutely. I just wanted to point out the weird Korn thing. You're opinion is valid, I was just a being a drunk dick at the time. Just a fan being a terrible fan lol

Apologies.

@yummylee: @mason20: @brodehouse: @poobumbutt: @john1912: @dancinginfernal: @devil240z: @lelcar: @xerseslives: @viciousbearmauling: @sh_fan89:

Different strokes for different folks.

Downpour isn't scary, but neither did I find any of the others appart from SH4. SH2 had a great atmosphere, but very few scary moments.

To me Downpour isn't a perfect game, but, given that I played recently both Sh2, SH3, and Shattered Memories, and have a good recolection of both Silent Hill 4, Origins, and Homecomming, it is the best overall, in my opinion.

But like some pointed I base much of my opinion that the game plays better, and is faithfull to the mythos created mainly in SH2, and non-Team Silent games, like @xerseslives said. Also to me the side-quests, and some of them in particular, like @yummylee said, are very good, plus a big and explorable town is also amazing. I always wanted to explore Silent Hill in more depth.

This doesn't mean that I find the game better than the others, in everything. Silent Hill 2 and 4 story is amazing, and more poignant than Downpour, the monsters aren't that creative like Silent Hill 2 and 3, the music of all prior Silent Hill games is amazing, and better than in this game. But as an overall package I prefer Downpour.

Still it is just an opinion.

Nothing, absolutely Nothing excretes the terror, the horror, and mindbogglingly boredom and tedium of this terrible entry.

Remember no one is a more credible artist than Korn. I mean they backed that blockbuster Haze! Joking aside, I'm usually one for ignoring a necro'd thread or just simply a opinion I don't agree with but... Really? Others have already stated similair feelings, I just felt we needed a reminder of a band "possibly" more prestigious than Kidd Rock in video games...

Also, anyone remember what this game was suppose to look like like and the lo-res kiln look that we actually got in the end? The freezing, frame rate, busted saving system, meandering story, and haunted police cars?!

On it's own merit Downpour is a terrible horror game with death trapped filled waterslides and a killer time rift that chases you. As a Silent Hill game? Pure disgrace.

I would buy this game in a heartbeat if it was re-released on PS4. I only played through it once but really it enjoyed it at the time and thought it was a significant improvement over Homecoming. The Hansel & Gretel psychological set-piece was fantastic, as was the side-mission where you used a gramophone to rewind time. Though Shattered Memories is without a doubt the best of the most recent, Western-developed entries. Hell, it's one of the best across the entire series even.

...lol I missed how I had already posted in this thread. I knew it was a necro, but completely skipped over my own post.

I think the main problem is that Team Silent cribbed notes from Jacob's Ladder and Stephen King, while the Climax games seem entirely The Twilight Zone. They manage to instill melancholy and bitter catharsis pretty well, but they don't do disgust and terror like the Silent games do.

Like someone else said, it has great ideas but terrible execution.

I'd be willing to accept the shot at tank controls - even if, like any control scheme, they're bad UNTIL you learn them - if Downpour didn't have a perfect parallel.

There's a part in Downpour where you go "inside" a movie screen and it's all "whoa, fixed camera angles, just like the classics" except it still has directional movement. Good God. Every time the camera switches its view, the movement of your character immediately orientates itself to match the new direction you are pointing with your analog stick in relation to the camera angle. That means that depending on which way you're pressing and which new view the camera takes, "up" could become "left" in relation to your character and it takes effect immediately, causing the closest thing to "stumbling around" I've seen in a video game. It's not unnatural to control at all and is real good for horror immersion. Anyway, they also make you fight/run away from enemies with this control scheme; it's great. By the way, tank controls don't have this problem.

I mean, if you don't like tank controls, that's fine, I'm not blaming anyone for not liking something that games left behind a while ago. But they do, in fact, have their time and place. That place happens to be in games with fixed views from the late 90s and early 2000s. So, yes. They're outdated. But that also means that if you're going to use fixed viewpoints - something else which is relatively obsolete - you have to think for a damn second before implementing it.

It's a wonderful example of designers wanting nostalgia without thinking of gameplay repercussions. I mean, they probably DID, but then someone told them that you can't just shove tank controls abruptly into a free control movement game (and rightfully so), but they just went ahead and made a nostalgia trip anyway. One which is soured by how not fun it is to control. Nice try, guys.

Oh, and the game isn't very subtle. SPOILERS

"Scares" in the game include a door which slams itself a half dozen times in a row; stuff falling slowly off other stuff; enemies which can't get past certain doorways, causing them to do a fun little dance and Murphy's clothing textures sometimes not loading in for multiple seconds after a fail state. Ooooooooo!

In SH2, they don't just outright tell you what happened to Angela, you have to work it out for yourself from the symbolism and dialogue. As opposed to that drunk train guy in Downpour, where you can just read explicitly about how he caused that accident. Still, Murphy and Cunningham's story is pretty cool, though Wheelman is a goofy-ass final boss. Anyway, the fact that enemies and combat are only slightly less clunky than its predecessors doesn't help this game much for me. Not when the things that this game tanks on are largely what I enjoyed so much of the classics and horror in general: mood, tone, subtlety, interesting cast all around. Downpour ruins the first two, has little of the third and only Murphy and Cunningham apply to the fourth.

Oh, well. Least it isn't Homecoming.

I loved Downpour! I thought the rain was pretty great at adding a new aspect in wanting to take cover inside. There were all those little side quests which made the town feel lived in. It gave me a bit of a voyeuristic feel in that I was walking through someones home when I shouldnt be there. SH2 and Downpour are prob my favorites. Never finished SH1, or Shattered memories. So sad Silent Hills was canceled. Was the best chance the series was ever going to get to get a AAA treatment.

But the story is really dumb and doesn't make much sense.

You think you were in the army, but you were hallucinating and blocking it out because you accidentally killed your brother. So you were being punished by silent hill for...what, exactly? Your brother eating shit off a boat? Why is Pyramid Head here? For some reason you turn into them in one ending? Why does nobody just tell you your brother is fucking dead? If you weren't actually in the Army, how do you know how to fight, when the Army was their justification?

The game just tries really hard to mimic the twist of Silent Hill 2 - and it really feels forced and pointless. Alex is not an interesting character, and he shows himself repeatedly as wicked dumb. Character motivations are flimsy, and I'm pretty sure parts of the game aren't even in Silent Hill?

Enough bashing on Homecoming, Downpour was pretty good. It always got a bum wrap but I enjoyed it. 3 always has a special place in my heart, I think and 2 is probably the best; to me Downpour is better than 4, and that I can say confidently.

Homecoming's alright. It does a number of unforgivable things (takes influence from Saw, of all things and waters down Pyramid Head, pretty much just rips off Silent Hill 2 for the twist), but as far as the later games in the series go, it's easily the best. That might be more a reflection on just how terrible Origins and Downpour are though.

True but also it only works if you played the fist 3 silent hills in the moment when they were released.

Worst necro ever.

I didn't like Downpour, but I did actually love Homecoming, which is another widely hated Silent Hill game. And I thought The Room was cool too. I don't like SH3 as much as most people. I can't agree with you about Downpour, personally for me that game is all around clunky and boring, but I do understand having the unpopular opinion. Homecoming forever!

This doesn't feel like a Silent Hill game!

What doesn't feel like a Silent Hill game? It has fog, metaphorical monsters, gruesome twists, sinners, and the possibility of redemption. Thematically is as Silent Hill as Silent Hill can get.

Then you have a thematic misconception of most of the series, and it's most likely formed by the latter non-Team Silent games. Silent Hill isn't about "redemption" or forgetting some horrible thing that you did. Silent Hill 2 was to an degree, but that was one game, a departure from the cult story that was the primary focus of the series by the people that created it. Twists for the sake of twists (or in the case of Downpour, one unearned twist that's really not even delivered on effectively in the end) were never really what the series was about. Silent Hill's primarily about a crazy cult, a psychic girl and a subtle, unnerving horror that creates a greater sense of dread in you the more you ponder it. It's easy to forget that because the developers of the most recent games did too.

I will add that if you think the "monsters as metaphor" thing was executed well... I mean, I don't even know what to say to that. Generic shirtless prison dude? Random screaming woman? Even Homecoming did that better.

The rest of your arguments aren't really arguments, since it essentially breaks down to "yeah, this part wasn't good, but I didn't think the other games were good at this either".

The idea that people only like Silent Hill 2 and 3 because of nostalgia or because they haven't played it recently is reductive nonsense and thinking they don't hold up by simple virtue of being PS2 games honestly depresses the hell out of me.

Silent Hill 2 is a fantastic game because of the detail beyond just the surface that rewards multiple playthroughs, the pacing, the grasp of symbolism without being overbearing, the study in how the town manifests to different people, and the constant prevailing themes of sex and death.

Silent Hill 3 is a fantastic game because of its unnerving aesthetic, the artistry of the visuals that hold up despite not being in HD or whatever, moments like the mirror room or the happy birthday caller that exist only to fuck with you, the fact that the main character is just a normal girl, (which is still something exceedingly rare in modern game) and the pay off of everything that happened in Silent Hill 1, which also wasn't about redemption. It was about the occult.

To just go "yeah but wasn't really that scary and btw tank controls" completely misses the point of what those games accomplish. If you like Downpour, hey great, have fun, but your post comes off less as proof of Downpour being the best in the series and more as proof that you don't really care for the series and Downpour is really just the only one you like.

Downpour was a game with whole lot of potential. The game has so many interesting ideas, but I'd argue the execution is poor. From best to worst it looks like this to me.

• SH2
• SH3
• Shattered Memories
• SH1
• SH4
• Downpour
• Extra
• Spaces
• To
• Really
• Emphasize
• The
• Worst
• One
• Homecoming

Monster design is poor and downright boring. The amount of thought that went into the monsters in a SH game like 2, compared to Downpour's "Scary Prisoner Man!" makes Downpour look real weak in that regard. I'd agree that the music is a surprisingly decent Yamaoka impersonation.

Overall, Downpour is totally decent, but I cannot say it's anywhere near the best SH game. One thing is for sure, it's a lot better than the steaming pile of garbage that was Homecoming.

Necro thread just got res'd.

I've never played it, so I feel completely confident in saying you're wrong.

From what I hear, Shattered Memories was the best.

@jeust: its ok, nothing special.

Homecoming is the best SH game in my opinion; better story, combat and the theme is really amazing. I'd say its at least on par with 2 or 3. Still have to play Origins, which I've heard mixed reviews on.

To me it's not blasphemy. I played the game seven/eight years ago, and I still remember the ending, and still find the ghosts probably the freakiest enemies out of any horror game. Those moans still haunt me.

It, indeed, has some of the best moments out of any SH game. One part in particular where you are at like a theater and it starts to come to life. That sequence is just amazing... too bad no one gives a sh*t about SH because that should of been on the "top moments" section of the awards. Probably the best sequence this year. I didn't think the overall story was great though.

Having gone back and played the HDified remakes of SH2 and 3, Downpour definitely comes off looking good. I know it's not fair to compare the old with the new but I must have major nostalgia for 2 and 3 because they seemed pretty bad when replaying them.

All that being sad, The Room is still my favorite of them all. And I know that is blasphemy amongst SH fans so whatever.

Y'know, I really liked Downpour a lot 'n all (#3 on my own GOTY list), but... naaaah. For me it's still behind the first four Silent Hills and Shattered Memories.

Silent Hill: Shattered Memories was the best Silent Hill game.

You make a good case in taking down the most common criticisms aimed at this little gem of a game, and while Silent Hill 2 will remain my favourite of the series I think Downpour is really fantastic in a lot of ways, and a breath of fresh air for the series.

What did ya think about Silent Hill: Downpour?