Silent Hill: Downpour is the worst kind of bad game: A game of missed potential.
As the last mainline entry in the Silent Hill series as of the time of writing, Vatra games certainly tried (and in some cases, succeeded) in trying to shake up the formula. The town itself is more open-ended in terms of level design, encouraging exploration that the series has been missing since the original Silent Hill, and this more open-ended design, alongside the addition of optional side quests gives the town a real purpose, aside from connecting one area to another. The limited inventory system actually gives weapons some purpose as both self-defense tools and puzzle solving items, with the environment having a surprising amount of interactivity, from picking up environmental decoration as weapons, to breaking padlocks & boarded-up doors, to shimmying down tight corridors around the town. The atmosphere is impeccable at times, with the weather system and the small touches that show a real level of care went into the game (I love how the traditional Silent Hill radio static is replaced in this entry with garbled police scanner audio, or the scene where a monster shows up on a security monitor in the background for a second before disappearing, all without any attention called to it). The Otherworld is the most visually interesting of the series, even counting the original Team Silent games, and it can be truly breathtaking at times. The plot (at first glance at least) is the first original story line in a non-Team Silent Silent Hill game so far, with a decent premise and delineable themes about revenge and loss.
Unfortunately, the positives end there. Even post-patch, the game is a technical nightmare. Textures pop in constantly and take seconds to fully load, making everything a blurry mess when entering a new area. The frame rate is atrocious, struggling to hit 30FPS at the best of times. I had the game seize up multiple times when entering new areas, and even had a full-blown system crash at one point. I notably couldn't even finish a side quest because playing the game on Normal means a necessary side quest item doesn't even spawn! The monster design, a usual standout in even the worse Silent Hill games is incredibly lackluster, and I struggle to think of a point at which I was actually scared while playing (and no, those jump scares don't count Downpour.) The side quests are only sometimes interesting, at times mostly being fetch quests and busywork to pad out the runtime. Hell, at the point of no return, you lose all your inventory items during the final area, meaning all those side quest items are useless in the end. The Otherworld is barely used to its full potential, only used for chase sequences featuring a Photoshop motion blur effect. The characterization of Silent Hill as a benevolent force that uses nightmare creatures as some kind of self-help therapy session is also at odds with the original hostile, sadistic nature of the towns in previous games. The biggest sin however is the ending, in which depending on your decisions (including pointless moral choices and an unexplained monster sparing mechanic), the main character's backstory can completely change, making all that symbolism and theming utterly pointless depending on your choices, which is a mortal sin for a psychological horror game.
It's a real shame this is where the series stopped for now, because beyond the flaws, this is the best non-Team Silent game. If Vatra Games didn't go under after release, I would've loved to see them improve on this formula, because the good in Downpour could've been great if they had a chance to polish and refine what they had. But we have to work with what we got, and what we got is nothing but "what if's" and "could have been's".
As the last mainline entry in the Silent Hill series as of the time of writing, Vatra games certainly tried (and in some cases, succeeded) in trying to shake up the formula. The town itself is more open-ended in terms of level design, encouraging exploration that the series has been missing since the original Silent Hill, and this more open-ended design, alongside the addition of optional side quests gives the town a real purpose, aside from connecting one area to another. The limited inventory system actually gives weapons some purpose as both self-defense tools and puzzle solving items, with the environment having a surprising amount of interactivity, from picking up environmental decoration as weapons, to breaking padlocks & boarded-up doors, to shimmying down tight corridors around the town. The atmosphere is impeccable at times, with the weather system and the small touches that show a real level of care went into the game (I love how the traditional Silent Hill radio static is replaced in this entry with garbled police scanner audio, or the scene where a monster shows up on a security monitor in the background for a second before disappearing, all without any attention called to it). The Otherworld is the most visually interesting of the series, even counting the original Team Silent games, and it can be truly breathtaking at times. The plot (at first glance at least) is the first original story line in a non-Team Silent Silent Hill game so far, with a decent premise and delineable themes about revenge and loss.
Unfortunately, the positives end there. Even post-patch, the game is a technical nightmare. Textures pop in constantly and take seconds to fully load, making everything a blurry mess when entering a new area. The frame rate is atrocious, struggling to hit 30FPS at the best of times. I had the game seize up multiple times when entering new areas, and even had a full-blown system crash at one point. I notably couldn't even finish a side quest because playing the game on Normal means a necessary side quest item doesn't even spawn! The monster design, a usual standout in even the worse Silent Hill games is incredibly lackluster, and I struggle to think of a point at which I was actually scared while playing (and no, those jump scares don't count Downpour.) The side quests are only sometimes interesting, at times mostly being fetch quests and busywork to pad out the runtime. Hell, at the point of no return, you lose all your inventory items during the final area, meaning all those side quest items are useless in the end. The Otherworld is barely used to its full potential, only used for chase sequences featuring a Photoshop motion blur effect. The characterization of Silent Hill as a benevolent force that uses nightmare creatures as some kind of self-help therapy session is also at odds with the original hostile, sadistic nature of the towns in previous games. The biggest sin however is the ending, in which depending on your decisions (including pointless moral choices and an unexplained monster sparing mechanic), the main character's backstory can completely change, making all that symbolism and theming utterly pointless depending on your choices, which is a mortal sin for a psychological horror game.
It's a real shame this is where the series stopped for now, because beyond the flaws, this is the best non-Team Silent game. If Vatra Games didn't go under after release, I would've loved to see them improve on this formula, because the good in Downpour could've been great if they had a chance to polish and refine what they had. But we have to work with what we got, and what we got is nothing but "what if's" and "could have been's".