The levels in this game are what shine. It's varied and interesting, and each level has different challenges for you to overcome in different ways. All the powers you get have uses, and they're all necessary at at least one point in the game. The bosses are good too, with well telegraphed attacks and interesting patterns.

However, It's easy to abuse all the powers you get. You can heal yourself, you have a charge move that can be used anywhere and makes you invincible that you can fly through levels with, a power that makes you invincible for a short time, etc. They are way too generous with lives. They need to give you less. That was my main issue playing this game the couple times I did. I really did not struggle. I will say it's at least worth playing, however.

Demon's Crest is a spin-off of the much more popular Ghosts 'n Goblins franchise by Capcom. In it, you play as the dreaded Arremer, Firebrand, who was possibly responsible for the many deaths of Arthur in previous titles. This is an excellent action platformer by Capcom. It has a cool world map that is used as a stage select area, excellent levels with tons of secrets and collectibles, and really awesome bosses. It reminds me a lot of Mega Man X's level design. A super tight experience that I consider a must-play.

The core of the game revolves around shooting crystals that split your beam into a green energy beam that charges your jewel meter, and you can get insane score through multipliers once your meter is fully charged. If you die, the meter resets to the original multiplier and you need to build it up again. It's really fun if you want to aim for scoring. Powerups are easily abused if you're just going for survival, especially the blue shield powerup, so I don't recommend that. I had a much better time when I aimed for score.

Sunset Riders, while overshadowed by Contra, is one of Konami's best run 'n' guns. Similar to Shinobi, the character you choose can jump between the background and foreground. Each character has a different spread and fire rate for their weapon. There are a couple of auto-scrolling stages where you're riding a horse and need to take out baddies before you get to the boss, which are my only criticism, as I wasn't as big of a fan of them as the regular stages. It greatly rewards memorization and good planning skills, especially for bosses. Highly recommended, because it's just plain fun.

This is a review of the more technical aspects of a 10 Star run in Silent Hill and my experience with the scoring system. For a quick review -- this is one of the best "survival horror" games on the market. Do yourself a favor and play it. It's almost perfect and one of the best games I've ever had the pleasure experiencing. It's a masterpiece, just like the first two games, and it's even more tense than they were, since you have a very small window of screw-ups that can just destroy any potential run. I played it so much, that I feel completely burned out on it, but you bet I'll be coming back in the future for replays.

I managed full 10 star run of Silent Hill 3 on the highest difficulty -- Extreme X. This game is interesting in that there's plenty of enemies for you to get every kill you need on the way to the end, but the fastest method is grinding for melee kills in the hospital. Shooting kills are easy to get, but melee kills are much harder, as Heather's kick is not an instant death, unlike with Harry and James in the previous two games.

This is easily the most difficult of the three Silent Hills, built for people who want an even more difficult challenge from the series. You have to play it on each difficulty as they unlock if you start out on Hard. So Extreme 1, Extreme 2, Extreme 3, all the way to Extreme X. They get more difficult as you progress as well. Enemies have better tracking and do more damage. The biggest obstacle, however, is the fact that there's several moments in this game where can just die immediately on Extreme X. Grabs from the Split Heads or Slurpers, getting knocked down by the Closers or Slurpers (if they are in groups, they can kill you on the ground), and the Borley Haunted Mansion hallway.

You also have similar requirements to Silent Hill 2. You need under 500 points of damage (technically under 450 points as you take some mandatory damage in the Underpass), 75 fighting kills, 75 shooting kills, at least 100 item pick-ups + the 5 special items, and new to Silent Hill 3, you need to kill each boss in under a certain time limit. There are also several places in the game that can be considered run killers on Extreme X, such as the Nightmare Hilltop Center, the Missionary boss, the Nightmare Hospital, Leonard's boss fight, and Borley Haunted Mansion hallway.

All this made for a very tense experience. I got a 10 Star run three separate times, and I must have played this game 30 - 40 times through the course of getting to Extreme X, including runs that were failures. I had a great time with it. It's the most action-packed of the first three titles, and it has some of the most interesting dungeons. While I prefer the first game, I think this is a very, very, very, very, very, very close second.

Good luck with the puzzles above Normal difficulty. On Hard, you have to be some sort of magic man to be able to solve them without some assistance. They are insane.