You know, it's been a long time. And let me tell you I think I've been more than patient. Two years is a long time to wait for the next installment of what could arguably be called the scariest game series of all time. I muscled through buying Silent Hill 2 again for the Xbox so I could get a 15 minute scenario and one extra ending, and I purposely avoided all news about the game proper just to make sure I wasn't clued in on any of the scares. I knew the character was a lady-type and that she got a machine gun and that was WAY too much for me. (And not only because I was worried it would turn into some fanboy sex appeal crap) I guess I have only my blabbermouthed buddy to thank for that. I've still not learned to avoid him whenever a survival horror game comes to print.

But how did this game measure up? Well, let me tell you... a lot of people are going to tell you it's the worst game of the series. When compared to the soul wracking horror of the first game and the eerie psychology of the second though, that's hardly to be considered a slant. Silent Hill 3 is a good game in its own right, and while it's not nearly as frightening as the first game is, it's got more than its fair share of stuff to keep you on the edge of your seat.

However, I wish glowing walls that made it impossible to tell where the DOORS ARE were not part of them. And I wish that the maps were a bit more visible to the naked eye. Silent Hill 3 seems absolutely obsessed with making everything as cluttered as possible and I am not down with that. After I see my 50th stack of dishelved papers I'm pretty inclined to just assume that there isn't a map at all and keep plugging through the area. This is a mistake. For those of you who own our home game, there's always a map. That's the only thing you need to remember while you're playing this.

Those are about my two biggest complaints about the game. Though there is one factor that could kind of go either way. Silent Hill 3 is -very- hard. It's not hard like a normal game is hard, but it's harder than a Silent Hill has ever been. Gone are the days of having fifteen health drinks to spare and going through the game never firing a single bullet at an enemy. And you bet your ass there's no more "Shoot the boss six times and win!" The last boss actually requires you to MOVE, which is basically unheard of in a Silent Hill game. Also, I hope you've been boning up on those close combat skills. Because if you get thirty shotgun shells during your entire play through that'd be a lot. It kind of puts the 'survival' back in the 'horror'.

The trouble is that the 'horror' seems noticably lacking. Silent Hill 3 is a pretty up front game, and I think that's why fans of the series might have a problem with it. If you've played the prior games you'll probably have the 'plot twist' figured out by the second cutscene, it's still a pretty good one...but the fact remains that Silent Hill 3 is a game almost TOO easy to figure out. This is especially emphasized when placed in comparison to the seemingly senseless events of Silent Hill 1. "The worst is what you don't see" doesn't really apply in this game as much as it did in the first two.

You are Heather, a little punky kind of girl with a heart of gold who fell asleep at the local Burger King, only to be tormented by dreams of a haunted amusement park with multilated bunnies. Scratch that, multilated people in bunny costumes, which was awesome. Maybe it's a bit irreverent, but my friends and I amused ourselves by crooning in our gruntiest of voices "Bloody bunny puppets" two or three times every time we saw one. Though a little joking around might've lessened the horror, I think it was worth it.

But what about Heather? Well, when she wakes up she's harrassed by a large man who I knew was a Private Detective just by looking at his picture in the instruction manual. This means he is awesome, but he's also balding and pretty scary to look at.

(On that note, I must say I'm pleased as punch with the lack of fanservice in this game. The characters are all just so...ugly. Heather doesn't seem like she's being dolled out as some dork's fantasy, more often she seems like a poster girl for leprosy)

Heather will soon learn that he was the least of her problems, as she's soon harassed by the split faced dogs from her dreams, and what looks like it could possibly be a purple vagina walking around on two legs.

If you think my overt sexual reference is too much, then you obviously didn't play Silent Hill 2. If this is the case, then I can honestly say I don't care for you.

But what about our young lady? Well. She proves that you can take the girl out of Silent Hill, but you can't take Silent Hill out of the girl. Or something to that extent. What I was trying to get at is that, while Heather is not IN Silent Hill, the denizens of that place seem to have absolutely no problems with coming over to her neck of the woods. I guess expansion is becoming a requirement in even the grassroot "Possesed Town" industry nowadays.

Thusly, Heather has to fight her way through the mall and back to her house. She seems to accept the task pretty well from the get go. If I saw an eight foot monster that poked me with tentacles coming out of the mouths on his hands I'd be just as likely to sit in a corner crying to myself as I would be to go out and cause some damage. Sorry dad! I'll get you your gallon of milk some other time! Heather, on the other hand, takes to the situation with significantly more aplomb. While I wouldn't say she relishes being in a crazy-ass alternate universe, she's certainly more calm than our former protagonists Harry and James were. She also knows how to use a submachine gun, which is bragable.

It's hard and has mutilated bunnies. The last point I'd like to touch on is the puzzles. Holy god in heaven don't choose "Hard" puzzle difficulty. At the first puzzle suddenly I find I have a reason to use all the Shakespeare they crammed into me in school. About an hour later we look the solution to the puzzle up online and realize that "Yes, we are doing it wrong." and "Yes, I hate the entire country of Japan." Silent Hill 3's hard puzzle mode requires you to think "out of the box" in a way I'm not comfortable with. The Shakespeare riddle has nothing to do with anything about putting the five books they give you in order, it's a multiplication problem! To say the puzzles in this game are unkind would be doing them a disservice. That one, at least, is downright brutal.

For all its flaws Silent Hill 3 is a worthy addition to the series. It's creepy and the story is managable enough, but like I said, it's too straight-forward and doesn't leave enough to the imagination. Still, there's worse that would entertain you, and if you care to unlock five special weapons that all suck and twenty different costumes that all look exactly the same then you've got quite a bit of replays to go through. Silent Hill 3 won't have you peeing your pants in terror like the first one, or shivering because of its dread atmosphere like the second, but it's still very good and that's all I'd intend to ask of them.