Backlog: Silent Hill 3 (HD Collection)

In 2012, Konami put out a HD collection for Silent Hill. Consequently, this was around the time most people realized Konami hated their videogame division. 

I bought the HD collection, around the time my OG backwards compatible PS3 bit the dust, as a way to still play some of my favorite games. And it sat on my shelf, for damn near 8 years, in it's plastic wrap. 

The HD collection is just a collection of Silent Hill 2 and Silent Hill 3. It completely ignores that Silent Hill 1 is a necessary story to know for Silent Hill 3 to have as much of an impact. It also leaves off Silent Hill 4: The Room, which didn't start as Silent Hill, but since it's been ignored by Konami the most, is not an expensive collectors item. 

People reported bugs, bad sound mixing, terrible "remastering." But I thought, PS2 games, there's no way it's as bad as people say. At the very least, they should run. The PS3 is at least one more powerful than the PS2. 

So was it as bad as people said? Yes. 

The game locked up on multiple occasions as I was running away from enemies. Enemies out of the screen, which you would hope would be less of a drain on the system. This had to be especially frustrating for trophy hunters as there are several trophies around not saving much. 

They cleaned up some graphics like the character models, but not others, like building textures. Which wouldn't be a problem, except they also lightened the fog and lightened the game. So as you're running through Silent Hill West, you see god ugly PS2 textures on Pete's Bowlarama as you dodge mutant dogs. 

Bringing the brightness up also makes the flashlight mostly useless. Instead of lighting a path in an incredibly dark room, it sort of has this glaring affect that makes it more difficult to see items. 

In scenarios where the flashlight isn't glaring your line of site, you can easily navigate around all of the enemies because you can clearly see how much space you have in the hallway, so you can run circles around most of the enemies.  

And there was something about the grittiness of the original games, of not being able to see the enemies in full detail, that let your imagination fill in the gaps. When everything is covered in rust, and you're hearing industrial noises sharply attack your ears, those gaps your imagination fills in are absolutely terrifying. 

My memory of this game is a little foggy, so I can't speak to whether the sound mixing is any different, but I can tell you it sounds worse than what's in my memory. I'm assuming that is because it went from stereo to any number of digital mixing techniques the PS3 supports, but folks, the sound sound like dogshit. 

The soundtrack still raises the hairs on my neck... that is when it doesn't randomly shut off early. 

The enemy sounds are terrible. The nurses sound like someone grunted into a tin can. The dogs sound like compressed barks done by some sound engineer. 

When you're running through the industrial type otherworld of Silent Hill, your often clamping against rusty metal grates that make the floor. This rhythm used to drive me forward, running from the snarling beasts and grinding noises that make the soundtrack, but since the music seems to stop for no reason and the beasts sound like garbage disposals, you're left with a really empty and hollow clank clank clank. 

There are no spooks to be found in a spook game. 

I wanted to return to Silent Hill 3 before Silent Hill 2 for a couple reasons

1. I've beaten Silent Hill 2 roughly 3 times. (I lost a save in the final location on one playthrough)
2. I've only ever beaten Silent Hill 3 once. It remember being disturbed by it and didn't have the guts to return to it for a while. 

I'm glad I did. I think with the quality of the HD collection, trying to play the first third of Silent Hill 2 for the twelth time would've be rough. I probably would've bounced off. 

But because I didn't remember much of Silent Hill 3, I was willing to work through all of the issues of the collection. 

There's something really gripping about the way these games focus on points of interest. Resident Evil always relied on the item twinkle to tell you where you look. Silent Hill plays with the camera, the perspective of your character, to highlight both items and extreme horrors. 

The way Team Silent contrasted the peaceful, snow falling world of Silent Hill with the murderous nightmare of the other world was beyond Playstation 2. Probably beyond Playstation 4 if we're being honest. 

And the way they didn't try to over explain the side characters was built for the internet. There are countless forums trying to determine what the true intentions of Vincent were. Why are only some people affected by the other world? Is Silent Hill some sort of hell or is it more of a purgatory you can earn your way out of? Does it reflect the evils of one person, or collectively all. 

And finally, one of the more messed up scenes in video game history brings you to the penultimate ending. 

You, Heather, a teenage girl, is the reincarnated child from the first game. Which means you were an attempt at resurrecting an old god for this local cult. 

Now, you, Heather, a teenage girl, discovers she is pregnant with the next incarnation of this demon God. 

And you, Heather, happen to have a locket containing a poisonous material your adopted father used to banish this god 17 years early. 

And then, you, again, Heather the teenager, swallows the liquid, aborting this god. You vomit the fetus of this all powerful being onto the dirty ground of the basement of hell church. And then the cult leader, picks the fetus up, and just eats it in order to finish the incubation and birth the god who you then have to fight. 

Ultimately, the game doesn't hold up. Which is a shame, because this always lived in my brain as the top of the series, no matter how many people told me Silent Hill 2 was the best the series had to offer.