Silent Hill: Mobile 3 is the final mobile game in a trilogy that began in Silent Hill: Orphan and takes place in a mansion where the dark secrets of the town finally will be revealed. The gameplay is similar to the previous two games: it's a first person adventure game that consists of a number of static environments that the player can move between and interact with a point and click interface. At some occasions the player will have to fight against different monsters, and when that happens the cursor will be transformed into a crosshair allowing the player to aim and shoot. The shooting system is slightly different from previous games, each enemy has a weak point and when hit at the right time leads to extra damage.
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This third and final chapter in Konami's trilogy of J2ME Silent Hill spin-offs had a lot riding on its shoulders. It was saddled with the unenviable task of having to salvage a plot that started off on solid footing, but quickly lost its way with the borderline incomprehensible second entry. I'm pleasantly surprised to say it sticks the landing far better than I thought it would have. It doesn't manage to save the overall tale from being an incredibly misguided part of the canon, but does at least provide an appreciated sense of conclusion and maybe even possible understanding.
Gameplay-wise, it doesn't deviate from the expected point-and-click puzzle-solving and combat seen in its predecessors. The pacing sure has changed though. In the prior two installments you'd slowly and steadily follow a trail of breadcrumbs that would lead you to the information or items necessary for completing the various big brain-teasers scattered throughout the environment, in a manner that allowed them to stretch across the entire experience. Here however, you'll be jumping to them back-to-back in rapid succession, which at first feels great. Yet, it ultimately ends up backfiring a little bit when you reach the middle portion onwards where you're left without much direction as you've basically already dealt with everything and find yourself wandering around to rooms you've previously visited with the hopes of uncovering some new hidden something that will get the ball rolling again. That's also when the amount of enemy encounters begin to increase...
Mobile 3 puts a far larger emphasis on fighting monsters. The battle system returns to a style similar to the one used in Orphan, only this time sporting a critical hit ability which I felt was never clearly explained, and there's much more variety in the types of creatures you'll face so it's not a terrible shift. Unfortunately, the way you now have to repeatedly check every background object you come across (no matter what the protagonist's observations about them may be) because maybe this time there's been a medkit tucked away there, rather than being able to return to a set area where they always spawn is a touch irritating. It definitely adds a greater sense of challenge and captures more of the franchise's survival-horror roots by forcing an increased need to loot on the player, but the repetition of scouring the small location over and over again paired with the extremely limited quantity of health aids actually available on the whole leaves my opinion somewhat mixed.
Although not as mixed as my thoughts on the story. After finishing this I've come up with three potential explanations as to what the heck this mini-saga is meant to be. It's either an alternate universe origin story for one of the series' most important figures, a very bad attempt to further flesh out the backstory of said character from people who clearly weren't familiar with the lore as it makes no sense within the context of it, or (what I personally believe is the case) the biggest and most angering bait-and-switch in video game history since fans thought they were going to get to play as Solid Snake in Sons of Liberty. Around the midpoint of Orphan it's revealed that the primary antagonist's name is Alessa. A massive revelation that naturally ensures the property's hardcore followers are guaranteed to grab the follow-ups. A clever ploy, but if my theory is correct that's all it is. A shame because by relying on such cheap trickery for their OC's identity we're shown that the writers clearly had no faith that their work would be able to garner attention on its own, and they truly shouldn't have as it's otherwise a fairly solid yarn even taking the horribly written penultimate outing into account. It's a tad awkwardly told, seems like there's a missing segment explaining how Karen went from being one of the original's manipulated leads to a full-on secondary villain in its successors, and there are some grammatical issues present in the text of this particular portion, but despite these faults the hints of genuine quality amongst them are still visible.
Overall, I walk away from this small, undeniably flawed trio of cellular Silent Hills fulfilled that I possibly understand what role the devs intended for them to carry in the iconic universe and viewing this culminating episode itself as a decent adventure. The mansion setting doesn't match the creepiness of Sheppard's Orphanage, but is a significant improvement over the bland hospital of *2* and while the head-scratchers show their age (I actually got stuck on a couple due to not having seen stuff like a rotary clock or a keypad with letters in years and needing to remind myself how they worked) their ingenuity still holds up today. Neither are necessarily enough for me to recommend everyone go hunt this confused side-excursion down. They merely instill a modicum of value at least for the completists who do.
6.9/10
Gameplay-wise, it doesn't deviate from the expected point-and-click puzzle-solving and combat seen in its predecessors. The pacing sure has changed though. In the prior two installments you'd slowly and steadily follow a trail of breadcrumbs that would lead you to the information or items necessary for completing the various big brain-teasers scattered throughout the environment, in a manner that allowed them to stretch across the entire experience. Here however, you'll be jumping to them back-to-back in rapid succession, which at first feels great. Yet, it ultimately ends up backfiring a little bit when you reach the middle portion onwards where you're left without much direction as you've basically already dealt with everything and find yourself wandering around to rooms you've previously visited with the hopes of uncovering some new hidden something that will get the ball rolling again. That's also when the amount of enemy encounters begin to increase...
Mobile 3 puts a far larger emphasis on fighting monsters. The battle system returns to a style similar to the one used in Orphan, only this time sporting a critical hit ability which I felt was never clearly explained, and there's much more variety in the types of creatures you'll face so it's not a terrible shift. Unfortunately, the way you now have to repeatedly check every background object you come across (no matter what the protagonist's observations about them may be) because maybe this time there's been a medkit tucked away there, rather than being able to return to a set area where they always spawn is a touch irritating. It definitely adds a greater sense of challenge and captures more of the franchise's survival-horror roots by forcing an increased need to loot on the player, but the repetition of scouring the small location over and over again paired with the extremely limited quantity of health aids actually available on the whole leaves my opinion somewhat mixed.
Although not as mixed as my thoughts on the story. After finishing this I've come up with three potential explanations as to what the heck this mini-saga is meant to be. It's either an alternate universe origin story for one of the series' most important figures, a very bad attempt to further flesh out the backstory of said character from people who clearly weren't familiar with the lore as it makes no sense within the context of it, or (what I personally believe is the case) the biggest and most angering bait-and-switch in video game history since fans thought they were going to get to play as Solid Snake in Sons of Liberty. Around the midpoint of Orphan it's revealed that the primary antagonist's name is Alessa. A massive revelation that naturally ensures the property's hardcore followers are guaranteed to grab the follow-ups. A clever ploy, but if my theory is correct that's all it is. A shame because by relying on such cheap trickery for their OC's identity we're shown that the writers clearly had no faith that their work would be able to garner attention on its own, and they truly shouldn't have as it's otherwise a fairly solid yarn even taking the horribly written penultimate outing into account. It's a tad awkwardly told, seems like there's a missing segment explaining how Karen went from being one of the original's manipulated leads to a full-on secondary villain in its successors, and there are some grammatical issues present in the text of this particular portion, but despite these faults the hints of genuine quality amongst them are still visible.
Overall, I walk away from this small, undeniably flawed trio of cellular Silent Hills fulfilled that I possibly understand what role the devs intended for them to carry in the iconic universe and viewing this culminating episode itself as a decent adventure. The mansion setting doesn't match the creepiness of Sheppard's Orphanage, but is a significant improvement over the bland hospital of *2* and while the head-scratchers show their age (I actually got stuck on a couple due to not having seen stuff like a rotary clock or a keypad with letters in years and needing to remind myself how they worked) their ingenuity still holds up today. Neither are necessarily enough for me to recommend everyone go hunt this confused side-excursion down. They merely instill a modicum of value at least for the completists who do.
6.9/10
Strongest of the 3 but still more of the same, see my review of 2.