I was asked to write an article for 1up.com about the 5 things Silent Hill Downpour did right back in April 2012. To be honest I was flabbergasted and intimidated that such a big video game website would ask someone like me to write this for them. Sure I write on my own websites but this was so different. This article would be seen by a far bigger audience and I was so afraid of fucking it up. Well in the end my enthusiasm for Downpour and the support of family and friends convinced me to give it a shot! I pretty proud of the reasons I came up with. I hope the positives I saw while playing will convince other long time and even new fans to give this title a shot despite the questionable technical issues!

The Five Things Silent Hill Downpour Got Right

The latest Silent Hill wasn’t entirely bleak.

By: Whitney Chavis

April 20, 2012

March 2012 became known as Konami’s “Month of Horror”, with three major Silent Hill entires set to spook series fans and newcomers alike: Silent Hill HD Collection and Silent Hill: Downpour on Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, and Silent Hill: Book of Memories for the recently released Playstation Vita. Unfortunately, March turned into a “Month of Disappointment” for many fans with Book of Memories’ release pushed back to a vague “Spring 2012” while the much anticipated HD Collection turned out to be a technical downgrade instead of the high-definition upgrade fans were promised. But some would say that being disappointed by a release isn’t anything new for Silent Hill fans; for many, it’s even expected.

These fans believe that the quality of the Silent Hill series has been in steep decline ever since development moved out of the hands of Konami’s in-house, Japanese “Team Silent” and into the hands of American and European developers after Silent Hill 4: The Room. Many claim that the new developers don’t “understand” what really makes a good Silent Hill title, pointing out that Silent Hill: Homecoming’s horror was less cerebral and more “typical Hollywood,” suggesting that the developers took too many cues from the 2006 Silent Hill movie. Couple that with the recent re-imagining of the original game in the series, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, which many felt failed to provide even the most basic scares, and you begin to see many fans now feel the series has become a mockery of its former glory.

With so much negativity in the air, it really didn’t help matters that the third game in Konami’s “Month of Horror”, Silent Hill: Downpour released last month to mixed reviews. A number of critics faulted the game for its cumbersome combat and technical issues (e.g., frame rate drops, glitches and texture popping). Despite this criticism, however, I truly see and rank Downpour as the best post-Team Silent game to date, because it brings the series back to its roots. Before I continue, a warning is in order:

For those who haven’t completed the game, please note that while I don’t reveal any major elements of the plot, there are some minor game spoilers below.

That being said, here are the five ways I think Downpour succeeded as a Silent Hill game:

1) It’s an original stand-alone story anyone can play.

Downpour tells a well-crafted tale that doesn’t rely on continuity with the previous Silent Hill games. Anyone can pick it up and play the game without having to know the full mythos of the series to appreciate the story. More importantly, it’s not a simple rehash of the tropes we’ve seen used in previous Silent Hill titles. This was one of my bigger gripes with Silent Hill: Homecoming — the series’ first foray into next-generation consoles — which basically just copied the plot structure of Silent Hill 2, in which the protagonist suffers from amnesia about a violent act he committed in the past.

That’s not to say that retreading is always a bad thing. One of the other Western-developed offerings, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, rehashes the original Silent Hill but presents it as a reimagining of the same plot and plays on fans’ expectations from the original story to present familiar characters with new agendas. But as fun as surprise twists can be, they still rely on familiarity for their impact.

In contrast, Murphy Pendleton (the protagonist in Downpour) isn’t like the protagonists we’ve seen before as he deals with his own issues and unique reasons for being called to the town. I don’t want to give away the plot, but I will say this much: I was very surprised when I learned the true reason Murphy had been called to Silent Hill — and it goes beyond the simple “inner demons” justification we’ve seen before. I’ve seen discussion in online discussions where other players were able to guess where the story was going from a mile away. Personally, I was gripped by the story right up through the end, and my engagement had a lot to do with the storytelling mechanics used in the game. Murphy’s story doesn’t just unfold in cut-scenes; it unfolds bit-by-bit through flashbacks, character interactions, and even in the notes you pick up throughout the game. Even better, Murphy’s character arc isn’t rushed or crammed into the climax of the game, either. Instead, we learn his back story and discover his motivations all throughout Downpour. I appreciated the fact that many of the details explaining Murphy’s actions weren’t revealed in cut-scenes (as is the case with previous games in the series). If you want to know the full story of what’s going on, you have to take the time to piece together the snippets of information you’ve gleamed from notes scattered throughout town, keep a keen eye on the environments you explore, and pay attention to some of the side quests you complete.

But the real advantage of not wrapping everything up with a few cut-scenes at the end is that, even with all the clues you’ve collected, you’re left with some unanswered questions. In true Silent Hill fashion, some elements of the game are left open to the player’s interpretation. Silent Hill has never been about handing you all the answers, which is a big part of what makes it such a fun game series: It provides plenty of fodder for fan discussions for years after the games’ initial releases. There are still fans (to this day!) discussing the “true” endings to their favorite installments or the “true” motivations and predicaments of some of the characters.

2) It has an engaging protagonist.

In Downpour you play as a convict who sees a chance at freedom when his prison bus crashes on the outskirts of Silent Hill. Going in, I wasn’t sure how much I would like Murphy as a character — especially after the opening scene, which makes it blatantly clear that he has good reason to be locked up. Going into the game knowing the character possessed questionable morals up front was definitely new territory in a Silent Hill game, but Murphy completely won me over by the end. I attribute my change of heart to how well Downpour humanizes its protagonist: Murphy reacts much like I imagine a real person would when confronted with the horrors of Silent Hill.

Murphy is extremely disturbed, often questions his own sanity, and erupts into sudden outbursts of frustration and fear even during normal play, and I found it easy to empathize with him. I knew what he was feeling throughout the game, not just in the cut-scenes. For example, I knew he was nervous when he refused to run and insisted on scanning the room for hidden dangers, and I knew he was in pain (and extremely scared) from his blood-curdling screams during the Void chases. In fact, his reactions were so realistic that at times he and I said the same thing, at the same time, when we were both startled or just frustrated with whatever was happening in the game at that moment. One such moment was when a Weeping Bat dropped out of nowhere right in front of Murphy. When we exclaimed “Fuck!” in unison, it struck me just how realistic Murphy’s reactions were. I especially liked that when he met up with other people in the town he didn’t conveniently ignore the messed-up things he’d seen and been through; instead, he was very verbal about his distress over his situation and lashed out at others for being unnecessarily obtuse.

Overall, Murphy reminds me of my other favorite Silent Hill protagonist, Heather from Silent Hill 3. Like Murphy, Heather often commented on the disgusting environments and disturbing monsters she encountered and became obviously frustrated when others were unnecessarily cryptic about her circumstances. Since Murphy’s reactions were so much like my own at times, and the game offered constant verbal and visual clues to let me know what he was feeling throughout the game, I definitely felt closer to him as a character the more I played and as a result sympathize more with his plight.

3) It features immersive and detailed environments that help deliver on the scare factor.

The amount of detail added to the town and its surrounding environments was another major thing Downpour did right; Silent Hill was more than just a simple abandoned and foggy town. It looks lived-in, with trash littering the streets and actual decor within the buildings. This attention to detail is a big improvement over Homecoming’s largely empty decrepit buildings and too-clean streets. But what stands out most, though, is how alive the environments seem even though they’re deserted: You can watch leaves fall to the ground as you walk through clusters of trees; you can see heat distortion over pipes in the Otherworld; flies buzz noisily over rotten food; and rays of light shine through grimy windows within the darkened buildings. The town comes alive with these little details, and it’s one of the ways the game really excels.

Beyond being pretty, the game makes good use of the environments to startle and disorient you; you encounter unending staircases, experience sudden earthquakes intended to topple you off a high beam, and on occasion the environment will suddenly come crashing down on Murphy’s head. Admittedly, these tricks amount to simple jump-scares, but the device is used sparingly and unpredictably so you don’t develop an immunity to them. In the end, not only did these surprises get my heart pounding, they also made me hesitant to run blindly through locations for fear that my rash movements could get Murphy killed. I really hope the company sticks with this game engine for the next core game in the series and focuses on working out some of the graphical hiccups and the frame-rate issues rather than developing a new engine from scratch. That way they can potentially spend more time ironing out the story and characters and adding even more amazing graphical details.

4) It brings the focus back to exploration over combat.

Homecoming’s creators made the decision (some would say mistake) of turning combat into a major focus of the game when traditionally this has never been Silent Hill’s strength. In fact, many would argue that the clunky and cumbersome combat elements of earlier games were deliberate choices to encourage players to run away from a fight instead of standing their ground. Shattered Memories, the next title released after Homecoming, took combat to the other extreme by removing the option to engage in a fight at all, leaving players no choice but to run away from every single altercation. Fortunately, Downpour pushes combat aside without removing it entirely and encourages players to focus more on exploration — which some would say is the “true” core element of the Silent Hill games. When I played Downpour, I didn’t feel like I was constantly being hounded by monsters or that I needed to be ready for a fight everywhere I turned. Unfortunately, this changed in the final area (which felt like an unending gauntlet), but the majority of the game offered identifiable periods of calm during which I could explore the town unhindered and at my own pace.

Downpour is the first game since Silent Hill 2 where you truly have the freedom to explore the town to your heart’s content. You are not locked into a linear plot, moving directly from one objective to the other, nor are you confined to one small section of the town at a time. In fact, the game provides only the barest of hand-holding; it’s left up to you to figure out what Murphy’s next move will be, and if you’re not paying attention, you could find yourself lost within the town itself unsure of where to go next.

The welcome addition of side-quests in Downpour builds on this idea of exploration and provides motivation for players to stray from the main quest and spend more time with the town. Granted, in the end, many of the side-quests don’t offer much beyond a new weapon, a Silent Hill-related Easter egg, or some creepy encounters, but overall I felt that they were all worth doing because they give the player a better understanding about the people who actually reside in Silent Hill. They also provided a (sometimes welcome) reprieve from Murphy’s own internal struggles that help keep the player engaged. I really hope that this trend will continue in future games.

5) It brings back the variety and difficulty of puzzles from games past.

Downpour not only brought back the style of puzzles from Silent Hill games past but the option to choose their difficulty level as well. This was very refreshing given the lackluster puzzles in the last two Silent Hill releases, offering no difficulty adjustment options. In Shattered Memories, most of the puzzles involved tracking down a key to open a door, and the key you needed was always either somewhere in the same room, hanging in a cabinet, or just around the corner. Sure, it was pretty realistic not to have to traverse several different floors to find the key to a storage room, but it wasn’t challenging, either. Neither was having to shake loose a key from a conspicuous row of cans that happen to be sitting right in front of your face. Homecoming’s puzzles were equally unvaried and consisted primarily of one sliding puzzle box after another.

Downpour definitely got it right by offering a variety of puzzles in which players encounter everything from simple turn-a-painting-to-progress riddles to the multi-part fetch quests we often saw in the older games. Everything you need to solve the puzzles is present on the screen, but the solution isn’t always obvious — you need to pay attention to your environment to figure things out. Take, for example, a combination lock on a door or a safe you want to open. That’s a simple enough puzzle, but where do you start? Depending on the situation, there may be several ways to track down the code: You may follow a mysterious foot/wheel trail only revealed by your UV flashlight, but maybe the solution is as simple as replacing a broken power cord to a coffee maker; the game constantly surprises you in that regard.

What makes the puzzles engaging is that the game doesn’t tell you what you need to do at every step; more often than not, you really need to depend on your own problem-solving skills and think “outside the box” to figure out the solution. For example, in one side-quest, you need to find a replacement bulb for a projector in a cinema. I searched high and low for a light bulb within the cinema itself but had no luck. Frustrated, I put that side quest on hold for a bit and continued to explore the rest of the town. To my surprise, I happened upon a light bulb in a hardware store just down the street.

Where to find the bulb was obvious in hindsight — it makes sense a replacement bulb could be found in a hardware store! — but it tripped me up because I assumed that, as in previous games, what I needed to solve the puzzle would always be in the immediate vicinity. In Downpour this isn’t always the case, and you often have to travel great distances to find a piece of the solution you need.

As I mentioned earlier, you have the option to change the puzzle difficulty in Downpour — a welcome option missing from the series’ last few releases. I played through the game on normal difficulty for both action and puzzle portions and was surprised to find myself stumped more than a few times — something that hasn’t happened for me since Silent Hill 3! Even better is that, when I played the game on the harder puzzle difficulty, I found that you are still forced to work for the solution even if it’s your second time through the game. Even if you already know how to solve the puzzle, the items you need are often in completely different areas than they are in the normal and easy modes. To make things even more difficult, you are given little in-game hand-holding when it comes to figuring out the solution. I truly think those who’ve missed the hard puzzles from the Team Silent era of games will be pleasantly surprised by some of the head-scratchers Downpour has to offer.

All things considered, Downpour is worth your consideration.

Even though it’s rough around the edges from a technical perspective, Downpour is still a very good Silent Hill title and brings back many of the mechanics that made the earlier games so great. It’s a real shame that some questionable game design choices and easily fixable technical issues have overshadowed the positive elements of the game and obscured the fact that Downpour takes a very big step in the right direction by bringing the series back to its roots. If you are still on the fence about giving this title a try I would strongly recommend giving the game another look.