It's been a long time since I played a Silent Hill game. In truth, I've only played the first one which I actually finished on my own without any help. Silent Hill was one of 2 of the first games I got that Christmas when I got my playstation. I was also a huge star wars fan at the time, so I also got the Phantom Menace with it.
That first experience with Silent Hill was my first experience with Survival Horror as well. There were many times while I was playing late at night with the lights off that I had to stop and turn the lights on for a while. That was one creepy game with challenging puzzles. Looking back Silent Hill will go on my list of top games of all time because of the atmosphere and most important it was a true experience that could not be had in any other way at that time.
I later went on to play at least half of Resident Evil 2 and 3. Again I enjoyed the atmosphere and puzzles, but the series lacked the same spooky, unknown experience of Silent Hill.
Later on for some crazy reason this game genre began creeping me out to the point where I couldn't play anymore. Something in me changed for a couple years. One thing I know for sure is that it's not because the genre got any more scary. I'm starting to get back into this genre again and enjoying it. I can also say, with experience now, that yes these games aren't nearly as scary anymore because I've experienced the best already (except Dead Space. Never played the first yet. :)
Now you may be wondering, I thought this was about Downpour? I've explained my attachment to Silent Hill, so recently on Amazon Downpour was on sale for 12.99. After reading average to terrible reviews about almost all Silent Hill games in the series the past couple years, this was a good price worth my investment. I haven't got too terribly far but so far it's a good experience.
The game seems glitcy. Brief flash/slow down at every automatic save point. Before getting to the Devil's Train, the game froze. Ugghh!! But these things are tolerable. Aside from those things. I really like the game. The first couple hours of the game is pretty much a linear experience. The game starts out and you are a prisoner being transferred. The bus crashes near, you guessed, Silent Hill. You then try to find your way away from the crash site and have to go through The Devils Pit (I think that's the name, can't really remember at this moment). Once through here you finally get into Silent Hill and the world begins to open up.
Or does it....??? Okay it's open in the sense I can look around in the city, but my path is still somewhat linear. There are some side quests which is interesting. When I say interesting, I really mean Silent Hil has side Quests? I get to release birds and collect paintings to return and complete some type of puzzle. At least these are the side quests I've located so far. Right now I'm in one of the main buildings, lots of books and puzzles to solve to get through doors. There's nothing exceptional about all of this, but I have to admit I love this style of gameplay.
If it just weren't for the damned glitch stuff. Yeah I know I'm repeating myself, but now I'm getting frustrated The screen movement slows at least every few minutes and the game has froze on me entirely at least 4 times at this point. Now I'm beginning to think I'm not sure I want to finish. If it weren't for these things I would sit down and not be able to stop playing until I could reach the end.
Can I comment on the scare thing again? At first I thought the scares didn't get to me because I'm already familiar with what could be thrown at me. But that's not the case. One of those monsters came up behind me, I had no idea it was even there untilit screamed to alert me. Wasted opportunity. I'm sure I would have peed on myself if it wasn't the screamer lol.
Anyway there you go. I just finished Alan Wake American Nightmare, so next time I'll give you my thoughts on that. By the way, if you didn't know, Alan Wake is one of my favorite games of all time. So I'm excited.
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