Review: Silent Hill: Downpour
Silent Hill: Downpour is the latest entry in Konami’s flagship survival horror series. Developed by franchise newcomer Vatra Games, Downpour is an ambitious but flawed title that, thankfully, gets more things right than it does wrong. But only just barely.
With a new game comes a new protagonist, a deeply troubled man by the name of Murphy Pendleton. In a first for the series, Murphy is a prisoner and starts the game by being transferred from his current place of incarceration to a maximum security prison elsewhere. Fortunately for him (or unfortunately), the transport bus careens out of control and ends up wrecked in a dark and foggy wood, leaving Murphy free of his handcuffs and the only obvious survivor of the accident. With freedom in sight Murphy decides to take his chances, but as we all know, there are no accidents in Silent Hill and soon he is just as much a prisoner of the infamous town as he was in his cell.
The story and environments are easily the best aspects of Downpour, and I found Murphy to be the most interesting protagonist in quite some time. While Silent Hill 2’s James Sunderland remains at the top, Murphy easily ties with Heather Mason for the second position. If you’re not a long time fan of the series and have no idea what I just said, then don’t worry about it. All you need to know is that the twisted, fog enshrouded town of Silent Hill is a literal mirror of its protagonist’s tortured histories, mental anguish and fear.
As I said before, Downpour’s environments are one of its best features. The first area has you working your way from the previously mentioned forest to Silent Hill proper. Along the way you’ll visit an eerie diner and take a journey via skytram to Devil’s Pit, a natural tourist attraction that’ll have you navigating pitch dark areas with only the tiny flame of a lighter to guide your way. Of particular note is a sequence near the end of the Devil’s Pit section that had me freaking out just a tad. Once you get to Silent Hill itself, the game truly gets under way. The town is designed in a very open manner, allowing you to explore to your heart’s content. Unlike previous games in the series you now have much more motivation to explore due to a wide range of sidequests that are scattered throughout the town.
To give you a small taste of the missions at hand, I’ve explored a terrifying basement where the disembodied sobs of a women echo in the darkness, watched a horrific murder scene play out in reverse, and stared deep into a mirror where a woman, long since committed to a mental instution, swears she’s seen people starring back at her. Almost all of these add interesting nuances to the Silent Hill universe and are quite welcome in a series that has always been extremely linear in its story progression.
With series regular composer Akira Yamaoka absent from the soundtrack, there was a question of whether replacement Daniel Licht could live up to the lofty standards created by his predecessor. I’m happy to report that the soundtrack is one of Downpour’s greatest strengths and that fans are unlikely to be disappointed. Moving on to the gameplay, the combat system has received a bit of an overhaul and feels tighter than it ever has. However, longtime fans of the series will know that that doesn’t mean all that much. The combat in Silent Hill has always been clunky and Downpour is no exception as the game actively encourages you to flee from most encounters. Regardless, it’s still more functional than ever before and can get you by in a pinch. The team at Vatra Games has also limited your weapons to one firearm and one melee weapon at a time, and the melee weapons will all eventually wear out to the point that they will inevitably break during combat, leaving you to scramble for a chair or a broomstick to swing at the monstrosity before you.
Speaking of monstrosities, Silent Hill has always been famous for its twisted creature designs and in this respect Downpour is a bit of a let down. Unlike past games in the series, most of the monsters simply seem out of place and don’t appear to directly indicate some deep internal problem within Murphy’s consciousness. There are some hints of this, such as the ghostly police cars that patrol the streets and sic enemies upon you if they catch you in their spotlight, but for the most part the monsters are a functional but wasted opportunity for some really interesting creature designs.
Once you get further into Downpour you’ll begin to experience more and more strange issues. While the dynamic rain effects are nice (and even draw monsters to you en masse), the outside portions of the game are plagued with random framerate drops at virtually every turn. Given that the render distance is mitigated by plenty of atmospheric fog, one has to wonder why the frame rate dips so frequently for no obvious reason. In fact, the sprawling fast paced voyages into Murphy’s soaked otherworld seem to run almost flawlessly despite the numerous particle affects, traps and morphing environments that the player finds themselves attempting to escape. Why is it then that I can’t seem to walk through a door in a mundane interior without the framerate crashing so hard that my analog inputs end up with Murphy staring at the ceiling while a monster beats the tar out of me? The bugs are also quite numerous at times, ranging from Murphy’s arm disappearing and leaving me unable to fire my pistol in a tense moment, to trophies not popping up despite clearly being earned. These issues coupled with some pretty low res textures can greatly mar the experience at hand and are solely responsible for my less than stellar view of the game.
However, the story and characters on display are all solid, scary and interesting. The environments are fantastic and varied, the side missions engaging and the combat better than ever before. If you’re a fan of the series you probably shouldn’t miss this latest entry in the series as it’s one of the best since the original trilogy. Murphy is a likable but flawed character, and the choices you make throughout the story (most of them represented by moral dilemmas) will effect which of some 6 to 7 endings that you receive. Is Murphy a misunderstood man wrongfully accused of a crime he didn’t commit, or is he just as much of a monster as the ones he encounters in Silent Hill itself?
The only way to find out is to pick up the controller and take a hellish adventure to the Heart of Silent Hill. I just wish this roach motel didn’t have so many bugs.
i
March 25, 2012 @ 11:13 am
Finally, a review that adresses the disturbing lack of monstrosity. Could it be that most people simply don’t care about the monsters? In that case the incredible creativity and meaning displayed in the previous games really was wasted on the masses and the developers made the right calculation this time (“give’em some pale zombies with weird faces, THEY won’t know the difference!”) 😛 .