Silent Hill Downpour

I wanted to do review for Silent Hill: Downpour. but before I do that I want to rage about my illustration class... just a little.
That Lizzie Borden project I was happy to be done with, well I have to redo the whole thing. Which makes me very angry. The things that need to be fixed involve too much work and pretty much has to just be redone or else it'd look all sloppy. Kind of glad I did it in graphite now rather than using ink.

Now, Downpour. I got it because I'm impatient, I wanted to wait for a price drop. And while I certainly done regret purchasing the game at the full price, it's always better to save money still. Oh well, I need games to keep me sane. So the frame rate issues and such everyone has been complaining about, that is most definitely a problem. It annoyed me when it did happen and really a game that's released, I believe, shouldn't even have any of these problems. Also they still haven't put a patch out to fix this problem and I don't know what they're waiting for. They have time to mess around on Facebook but not fix a game that people paid for.

In this Silent Hill you don't get to keep most the weapons you obtain. Because they break, so it's like a... pick it up and beat shit till it breaks, then find another. Bullets are rare, and it actually took me a while to come across a gun anyway but I've always been more the melee type so having no gun didn't bother me. I also saw the picking up objects to use for weapons as a nice thing too because it's kind of more realistic. First Aid kits are also kind of rare, so most of the time I was limping around half dead, but that didn't bother me either.

Atmosphere was.. different but I could feel... something right about it at least. The thing I believe it lacked was the sounds that could easily freak you out in all the past Silent Hills. In this one it was.. well, too silent. XD but aside from that I really did enjoy exploring Silent Hill more than I've been able to in any past ones. They did a good job with the town and I even now want to go back and explore more. There are side quests so that's even better, it makes the game a bit longer. The fear factor of monsters was kind of lost. I remember in the old Silent Hill's I was scared to enter a room because I didn't know what would be behind that door. This one I knew that there wasn't going to be anything behind most doors, and when there was they didn't even approach me half the time. A lot of the monsters like to walk backwards.. away from me...

Speaking of monsters, they were probably the weakest part of the game. There were only four monsters and all  of them were way too humanoid in their design, not scary. One was a blow up sex doll, then there was these monsters in high heels that looked like band members of Korn(Or maybe it's just because of that terrible song they thought would go well with the game.)... and there were these tall things that look like they're dancing when they walk. And lastly there was the guys that just looked like muscular.. guys.
They were all pretty uncreative, I can't see what symbolism they had to connect to Murphy and his story, his reason for being there, especially the sex doll. I think they should fire the monster designers and hire better people.

The otherworld... I think it could have been interesting if I had time to really look at it. But that blasted red light thing that chases you ruins it. It wasn't scary and more of an annoyance... when the otherworld is supposed to be something I absolutely dread because it's horrifying(The good dread..).

I enjoyed the story, I was genuinely curious about Murphy's past and what put him where he was. But I was also curious about the other characters he was meeting. Unfortunately not much was said about them though, and I wish there had been more depth to their stories because I feel it would have given the whole games story more depth and importance too. Aside from them I enjoyed Murphy's story a lot, I thought it was great and up to par with the older Silent Hill's. Probably the best part of the whole game next to the exploration and atmosphere of the town.

I thinnnk that's all I really want to say about it. I liked the game, and I do want to replay it for what I enjoy about it. Unfortunately there are still quite a few downsides so it can't have a better score than maybe... 6 or 7/10 I think is a fair rating. It's average but gives me hope if the developers can realize their mistakes and do better next time around.

This is probably a really disorganized review. Oh well. xD