Silent Hill Downpour initially presents itself quite solid. It is again possible to choose between different action levels and puzzles-levels. Thus you will be different types of players meet. With these settings, then you dive to Silent Hill. For the first time the journey begins just outside and it works its way only gradually to the city before. As the title suggests, plays an important role water. Thus, the player enters the protagonist Murphy, an inmate, through pouring rain little by little deeper into Silent Hill and thus also in the backstory Murphys and the secrets to Silent Hill. The plot is at first Silent Hill-typical: confusing, opaque and impresses with an abundance of large and small twists in the story. Nevertheless, little by little a pale aftertaste suggests itself the player. The story does not convince in the end really. One has the feeling that it was built on the part of the game makers too much - promised too much what one could no longer meet in the end. It seems as if a lot of potential has been wasted. When the story had been written under time pressure at the end. And also in terms of atmosphere potential was wasted. If you walk at the beginning still hesitant through the area and fought a bad feeling that wants to prevent a mind to go to the next corner, so the game over time loses but considerable tension and creepiness. But what could be wrong?
This question is difficult to answer. On the one hand curb stuttering, which increase gradually, the flow of the game and break the player so again briefly from his illusion. Maybe it's the sound design, which was supposed to make the heart of every survival horror games. Granted, Daniel Licht does a good job with his compositions, yet the usual industrial-style sound effects of the old parts who used selectively and suddenly, the players gave the feeling of persecution and were responsible for perhaps the odd scare missing. Maybe it is also the Monster Design. Had the monster of the old Silent Hill parts something to do with the psyche and the past of the protagonists, the 4 existing enemy types appear in Silent Hill Downpour being too arbitrary. While playing, I could not shake the feeling that it would involve to any old opponents of a low-budget titles. Perhaps in the faltering atmosphere of the game as well as the transition from the "real" world in the "otherworld" blame. Here you realize that Silent Hill Downpour but very strongly oriented towards the movie. Instead of creeping transitions that do not even really noticed the player and he knows only by an increasing tension that soon something will happen until it is ultimately in the "other world", is this title to a aprubtes Ablättern of walls and thus takes itself a bit of the subtle horror that would have been possible. The idea of open-world system is to be regarded with mixed feelings. On the one hand it allows the player to explore the world, on the other hand lost the game thus also to a voltage. Most of the time you walk freely through Silent Hill, in search of the next building, which you can enter. This feeling of "Locked-being", which you could experience in the older parts, if you had to pass through an apartment in order to get to the other side of town, remains of this part. Part of the open-world history are also side quests that can find the player. This fact shows actually the strength of the game. It is precisely in the Side Quests sentiment is often Silent Hill typically dense and the player wonder why this atmosphere could not be maintained in the rest of the game. (Who finished the cinema Side Quest, knows what I mean.) But here was sloppy. The rewards for the often challenging side quests fall out only mau. A few cutscenes would have done the game here well and the players not left with the question, "Why did I now actually gemach and this SideQuest because already finished?". The new weapons system in which the player (in addition to a firearm) can only carry a single object with itself - and the wait over I initially set at the most critical, has proven to be quite beneficial to the atmosphere.
Even though this is now everything sounds very negative: Silent Hill Dowpour has very good ideas. Especially the level design of the houses where you are and where you are fighting through the main story is very demanding and bubble over with grandiose ideas. The developers have tried to take once well-known from the previous parts and spice it with new features. In itself, this would be done and the game would have definitely had the potential to be an excellent title, but lost due to the already mentioned points to a significant atmosphere and tension. Overall the game, as all the great ideas and the first really good story would not have been thought, due to lack of time on the part of developers to the end and so came only a half-finished product on the market acts.
