Struggled to vibe with this for the first couple hours. There's something to be lost in the more explicit self-consciousness and higher budget here versus its precursors: this is Silent Hill after it's been wrung through the E3 pre-release wash cycle. The scares are more pranky than chilling, the sound foley trickery is flamboyant to the point of tedium - maybe Douglas needs to investigate why Portland’s building codes allow for such shitty noise insulation. And the worst part is that the game just wasn't scaring me! There's an acute sensitivity towards the eeriness of depopulated spaces from the first couple games that's sorely lacking in SH3’s first few areas.
Around the office building level, though (which marks the start of a steady incline in the game’s quality), I had a realization flash through my head that made the game far more palatable: this is the most Resident Evil-ish Silent Hill game. Which is to say a lot: for one, the mechanics in SH3 are the most rigorous the series has seen. Increased enemy density and a more miserly resource pool means that target prioritization gets promoted into an actual gameplay mechanic: it's great to see a game in this series that finally plays to the strengths of the survival horror genre rather than using it as a vehicle for delivering scares. But more importantly to the Resident Evil analogy is the type of horror on display. SH3 has this more gratuitous, playful approach towards exploiting its set pieces that reminds me of walking through a haunted house (and that's before the game throws a literal haunted house at you). The brazen use of insta-death sequences are absurd to the point of genuine hilarity, and really play into the genre’s adventure game origins. There’s this sly humor present even in the game’s puzzles, how they all require you to do things you should never do in the real world (like throwing a dryer into open water, or combining bleach and ammonia) that gives the impression of some bizarre Saw trap. Even the otherworld's gone full throttle into looking like a Korn music video and I'm all here for it. Heather is of course the fulcrum on top of which this overall tonal shift lies: she is the series veteran, the fatigued fan, who's ready to cut through the commencement and get to the chase, but still willing to give weight to the events around her when they’re due: her last cry for her father after the final boss is easily the most emotionally powerful part of a game that's otherwise a little flat. It's a miracle she's as charismatic and likeable of a character as she is: Bloober’s gonna have to figure out how to not Whedonify her when they inevitably remake this game in the next few years.
It's definitely the least compelling entry in the series so far, and I'll always be partial to the rickety 5th gen artifactuality of the first game. But it's a good encore regardless, and I think it's the most traditionally fun game out of the three. It simultaneously kicks up the moment-to-moment heat and escapes the quagmire of writing itself into another self-serious SH2, and I respect it for that. And I have to wonder what would have happened if the series kept going down this trajectory. Apparently at some point after SH4, there was a Silent Hill game in development that planned to lean far more into black comedy, and I think I might be the only person on earth who would have loved to see that game come out, to see Silent Hill get its Evil Dead 2. I don't think you understand how much I want to see an intense chase sequence with Pyramid Head terminating with him tripping down a flight of stairs and eating shit, like full GMOD-style ragdolling down that thing. If you're going to leave this series for carrion and scrap it for its aesthetic symbols, then at least have a little fun with it!