absolutely without a doubt the worst mainline silent hill game. where homecoming's issues were easily quantifiable as the same types of issues as most notable "bad" games have, downpour's issues are absolutely fucking incomprehensible. every single decision from the core gameplay loop to the art direction to the main narrative is a baffling waterslide of nonsense that seemingly exists solely to subvert expectations on the established formula.

where homecoming fundamentally misunderstands what silent hill is in its attempts to emulate it, downpour seemingly DESPISES the series and only pulls from superficial nonsense in a supposed homage to the series. even areas in which homecoming, against all odds, excelled, like its soundtrack and occasional solid creature designs, downpour completely fucking falls short. this feels like a universal studios silent hill theme park ride, not a silent hill game. fucking horrendous. raising my rating of homecoming one point.

Silent Hill: Downpour is the eighth Silent Hill game in this wonderful series that have only three and half good games (being a SH fan is rough).

Downpour suffers from the plague that is called 7th gen gaming, and on top of that its using Unreal Engine 3!!! Now which is in my opinion the worst team up since Hitler and Mussolini.

Visually this game lacks any colours and has character models that look like they are made out of plastic. The enemy design, if you can call it that, are just filthy monster people covered in Unreal Engine 3 looking dirt. Some monsters look like they are big sperm that has arms and legs.

Combat is floaty and feels awful and somehow manages to be even less responsive than RDR2. You can pick up furniture, construction/farming tools, sticks, rocks and guns and you can break the game by throwing the mentioned weapons at the enemy. Hell I don't think I fired my gun except for the last area and a few times near the end because I got bored.

I don't remember any track save for one from SH1 and a Frank Sentra song . According to my friend the soundtrack is good (liars).

The Story exists I guess and its just James story from SH2 without the good writing, pacing, ETC.

The only saving grace for me is Murphy and the Cop woman.
Murphy is short and looks cute and screams funny and I wanna kiss him and hug him. While the Cop woman is cunty enough to be likeable. There was a black mail man that the game kinda forgot about but I liked him.


Overall not a bad game, but not a good game either. a very lukewarm Konami slop of its time that plays by the book far too closely and had a horrible execution for seemly decent and sometimes even great ideas.

6/10.

Before new Silent Hill games are released, I started with Downpour, one of the Silent Hill games that I had heard of before but was afraid to play because they were pretty bad. And I understood better why the last games of the series were bad. First of all, they reflected the Silent Hill atmosphere quite well. Although the lighting was sufficient for the period, the graphics did not look good to me even for the period when it was released. The most important of the game's main problems is that it doesn't feel like a Silent Hill game. If this game had been released under a different name, it could have been called a pretty good game, but in this way, it cannot fully carry the weight of the name "Silent Hill". The music and the tense atmosphere of the game are quite weak. The story is average and not very impressive, but at least I can say that it suits Silent Hill. As for the gameplay, the game kept Silent Hill quite wide. In the game, there are flats where you can tour and loot, and underground subways where you can travel fast. Yes, I can say that the game is open world. There are even a few unnecessary side missions in the game. So Silent Hill and side quest? It doesn't sound like much, but I recommend doing it because some side quests give valuable items and are interesting. In addition, the game ends in a very short time if you skip the side missions. Enemy variety is pretty bad. There are quite a few different enemies and they are almost identical in appearance and movement. In terms of bosses, it is also very weak, almost non-existent. Existing bosses are also not as epic as boss battles and are pathetically simple. The puzzles are adequate and of decent difficulty (I have no idea why there are so many hidden safes in the open world, but I'm still wondering what their passwords are). The Combat system is still the same. way it's not very fun, defend until the enemy's attack is over, try to attack when the right moment comes. You never know when the enemy will strike, so you can often get beaten up. Or just run away as I often do, saving both time and resources. The number of firearms is also quite low, but since the game is Silent Hill, I didn't mind that much, but the aiming system? That part sucks. The game has a lousy auto-aim system and what's worse, you can't turn it off. That's why gunfights in the game are seedy and frustrating. The item physics of the game has been very busy and I really liked this part of it. That's why I went more melee focused in the game. Another thing I like is that no matter where you leave your belongings in the game, they are not lost throughout the game, so you do not have to fear losing your valuables. If we come to the save system, it does not save where it should be saved, and usually in the parts where the game loads, the worst is that you cannot save manually. Otherworld parts are a complete fiasco. The game doesn't really offer gameplay in Otherworld at all, it's almost entirely a ridiculous escape sequence. It is also one of the weakest Silent Hill games in terms of music and ambient sounds. If we come to the conclusion, Silent Hill Downpour is a bad game for the Silent Hill series, but it's a decent game. If you miss the foggy streets of Silent Hill, you can spend a long time in both side quests and main quests in this game. (Also the references to old games were nice)

finally finished this cursed game my god how much I hate it but I must admit now after finishing it, maybe that hatred was unjustified, yes the combat is horrendous, yes the frame rate is low and stuttery, and the game's graphics have aged like fine milk but it does have more creative set pieces and puzzles then homecoming and when I wasn't getting a migraine from the rest of the game I kinda enjoyed those, there is a bigger effort made to make silent hill a place and not just a hallway to the next mission which I appreciate so you know maybe I dont hate this game as much as I once did its no enemies to lover trope but at least I won't have a gag reflex every time I look at this game anymore

v weird and jarring seeing this game actively fight against itself every minute of its playtime. it’s trying to appeal to fans of action games of the early 2010s while also trying to make sure classic sh (silent hill AND survival horror) fans still fuck w it. third person standard fare controllable camera that occasionally switched to fixed camera angles + classic sh item pick up noise that sounds strange coming from this game. and that works well enough for me tbh. can’t lie I did play the majority of this w v low audio on bc what I did gleam from the story was insanely boring not to mention its depictions of black/hispanic/native american peoples is like uhhh iffy and stereotypical. so I didn’t bother w the side quests bc why are there side quests in a survivalhorror game + if that’s the writing they’re leading w and isn’t optional I can’t imagine the writing for the optional side quests is at all good. rlly rlly cool and beautiful and very creative set pieces and how the game fucks w ur perspective idk I rlly do like this game visually.

idk good silent hill is like a rlly good horror movie and downpour is like a fun but shoddily/hurriedly made haunted house. it’s a vague impression and idea of sh and that’s good enough w me lol idk though ill prob rlly like the sh2 remake so yknow w/e

why did I spend sixty dollars on a kind of mid ancient game that sat below my tv for like six months

It has a decent plot and some interesting puzzles, it for sure has its moments, i liked the chase sequences and when the game tried to be more linear and cinematic.

but the open world stuff is boring and confusing, alot of it thanks to the terrible combat this game had and the terrible weapon breaking system. Also whats the deal with 99% of the combat being with meele weapons since ammo is so scarse, guns are fun and you should allow players to use it.

in the end Downpour has its moments but thats it and its mostly boring, confusing and even frustating game.

it somewhats gets the atmosphere and sometimes you feel like you are playing a good silent hill

Another Silent Hill game that is not as bad as people say, this one is held back by its bad performance on the ps3 however, its lack of enemy variety and abrupt ending. Its atmosphere, gameplay, graphics, sound design, score, exploration and side quests though are really enjoyable and it made me excited to see what happens next and to see what I would find around the corner. The games story is honestly really good up until the ending which I have mixed feelings on. But as a survival horror experience I enjoyed this more than Homecoming, it wasnt nearly as tedious and I honestly enjoyed this a lot.

I actually started this series with Homecoming. As of writing this review, I've played Homecoming, this, Silent Hill 1, and am currently playing through 2.

This game is another game that I love far more than what it deserves. Don't get me wrong, this game is actually way better than most people give it credit for, with the few downsides like the boring monster designs and doodoo combat negatively effecting the game, but the good of it still shines through. The story is relatively simple, but what they do with it is actually incredibly smart and well thought-out and if the story had a bit better writing it would definitely be more well regarded than it currently is. I actually really like Murphy as a protag and I wish the game he was in was a slightly better one. The introduction of the open world and side missions are actually a really great and fun idea, but the rewards can vary from pretty good to whatever making some of them feel like a waste of time. Plus, the fact that you can't bring multiple melee weapons with you/can't bring them to the final area of the game, can make a lot of the side missions feel pointless.

Really my biggest complaints with the game are:
-It's not scary (Which I think you could at least improve a bit by making the game extremely dark like SH1)
-The gameplay is just super barebones.
-The subway system being locked behind a side mission is obnoxious, and the fact that you have to walk through the sewer for a bit before you get teleported to the area you want to go to makes using it feel redundant. I just ran around town for most of it.
-The lack of alternate costumes for Murphy outside of a side mission and story ones is incredibly lame. Most of the other games have bonus outfits, are you really telling me you couldn't just add a couple into the game?
-No cutscene skip. Not a big deal as it only affects replays and most cutscenes are fairly short anyways, but it's still annoying.

You should still definitely play this game. It has way more worth as a game than Homecoming does, which isn't saying much, but still. I think if this game ever got remade, Murphy would finally get the justice of being in a good game that he deserves.