The Bumpy Road: Silent Hill Downpour - First Impressions

So another one of these, eh? Another entry in the ill fated Silent Hill series. As a long standing fan of those games, I’ve come to be very careful in my expectations. Silent Hill is an amazing series that ceased being amazing years ago and still to this day lives off of the faint promise that some developer out there will ‘get it’ again, and deliver a game as good as the second or third installment, whose legacy the entire franchise lives off. But that apparently just doesn’t happen. Game after game developer after developer tries and fails to deliver that kind of horrifying experience again, one that drives you to the edge of sanity with a mix of weirdness, grotesquely deformed monstrosities and that peculiar sense of desolation.

Downpour, this most recent installment, had its developers making a lot of right noises before release, so I started up the game reluctantly optimistic. The game introduces us to Murphy Pendelton, convict. Murphy ends up having his prisoner transfer bus to a max security facility crashed by a freak accident just outside the eponymous town of Silent Hill. After waking up with his cuffs magically open, he makes off into the forebodingly misty woods.

From here on out it takes the game quite a while to get into the familiar territory of Silent Hill’s streets. The first hours are spent in the woods, a motel, and eventually in a big old cave system including a derelict mine. Thematically, this first part of the game is very much reminiscent of Remedy’s Alan Wake - though that is mostly due to the fact that both are horror games that have the protagonist run through dark woods and caves. Also, it takes quite some time until the first proper monster is discovered. And thankfully so, since the game’s monster design is by far its weakest spot. Those creatures just look very.. Dull. Especially when compared to the usual Silent Hill creature catalog. Also, they are incredibly aggressive, running up to and attacking the player at first sight. Which happens a lot since their eyesight seems to be outstanding.

The AI’s sole purpose seems to run up to the player and attack until the player or the creature is dead. Those creatures don’t do anything but. Comparing this to the behavior of the monsters of older titles makes those current ones a lot less scary to me. Most of all because avoiding them is almost impossible - thankfully running away is not. In former games, sneaking past the monsters walking the street was easy, mostly because the creatures just minded their own business and actually walked the streets. Now they mostly just spawn almost in the player’s face and go all out claws flailing. Little tension is built up this way.

Downpour is at its best when there are actually no monsters around. The riddles aren’t the series best, but they do the trick, the environments are nice and moody and Murphy is an interesting enough character to push him around a bit. It’s not quite clear what landed him in prison in the first place, which is slowly piece by piece revealed. In the town Murphy meets the magical negro postman, who, besides being a borderline offensive stereotype, is one of the game’s key characters, and apparently Murphy’s gatekeeper for his own private limbo.

I keep wondering if there will be some kind of reveal that will infuse that dull, uninspired monster design with some kind of meaning besides ‘well it’s a screetching woman figure, a hobo ganger with weird eyes and a mutant giant bat!’. But maybe it’s too much to ask. At least we get a decent enough story, and a new part of Silent Hill to explore. The fog is rolling, things go bump. But still. The game won’t really click with me the way the Silent Hills up to 4 did. Or the way, let’s say, the Condemned titles did. So far, Downpour feels more like a game inspired by Silent Hill than the real deal. While I don’t hate the game and mostly enjoy the experience, I don’t think Downpour will be the revitalization this series so desperately needs. We’ll see where Murphy’s journey will go.