First thing that struck me about Downpour was that the scares are excellent. In addition to the atmosphere which is palpable and unnerving there are many 'scare' moments that are surprising. Plenty of "Wow, whaaat?" moments. Downpour makes Silent Hill feel new again. Akira Yamaoka will be missed, but Daniel Licht does an admirable job on the sound design. I found it was most effective during the quiet moments.
Downpour combines the kind of 'rigid' controls of the early games with some more creative and useful abilities. This is important because feeling helpless in these games is an important thing. If you could easily run away or mow down enemies it wouldn't be as spooky. In Downpour Murphy moves slowly and deliberately, but the player can point the camera -and flashlight- anywhere, you also have the ability to look back over Murphy's shoulder, Murphy can throw weapons. Another great addition was automatically crouching under low passages and sliding through narrow corridors. Made things go that much more smoothly.
Story was interesting. I liked that we know essentially nothing about Murphy in the beginning. Really made me wonder is he a nice guy who had a bad deal or is he a bad guy who plays it cool? And the ending (I got ending A) was fairly satisfying.
My only complaints are the most popular ones. The framerate takes fairly frequent dips and the enemies are booooring. I admit I liked the weeping bat enemies and The Wheelman, but other than that they seemed uninspired and boring. These are my only problems with the game however. It felt like a true Silent Hill game and I happily place it among the great games in the series.
Worthy of the name 'Silent Hill.'
First thing that struck me about Downpour was that the scares are excellent. In addition to the atmosphere which is palpable and unnerving there are many 'scare' moments that are surprising. Plenty of "Wow, whaaat?" moments. Downpour makes Silent Hill feel new again. Akira Yamaoka will be missed, but Daniel Licht does an admirable job on the sound design. I found it was most effective during the quiet moments.
Downpour combines the kind of 'rigid' controls of the early games with some more creative and useful abilities. This is important because feeling helpless in these games is an important thing. If you could easily run away or mow down enemies it wouldn't be as spooky. In Downpour Murphy moves slowly and deliberately, but the player can point the camera -and flashlight- anywhere, you also have the ability to look back over Murphy's shoulder, Murphy can throw weapons. Another great addition was automatically crouching under low passages and sliding through narrow corridors. Made things go that much more smoothly.
Story was interesting. I liked that we know essentially nothing about Murphy in the beginning. Really made me wonder is he a nice guy who had a bad deal or is he a bad guy who plays it cool? And the ending (I got ending A) was fairly satisfying.
My only complaints are the most popular ones. The framerate takes fairly frequent dips and the enemies are booooring. I admit I liked the weeping bat enemies and The Wheelman, but other than that they seemed uninspired and boring. These are my only problems with the game however. It felt like a true Silent Hill game and I happily place it among the great games in the series.