Like last year, one of the prizes for this October’s Celebrating All Things Spooky contest was to pick a game for me to review, and this time a winner picked Silent Hill: Downpour.

Downpour was the sole Silent Hill game I had no familiarity with up until this point, so I went into it completely blind. After playing it, I came out of the experience feeling pretty conflicted.

Silent Hill: Downpour puts you in the role of Murphy Pendleton, a prison inmate who is being transported to another prison when the bus overturns and he finds himself stranded near Silent Hill. All Murphy wants to do is escape, and so he begins searching for a way to leave the town.

Although I didn’t get Downpour at launch, I was following news leading up to it. The main thing I remember is everyone making a big deal out of what it might mean that the next Silent Hill protagonist was a criminal.

There is an odd perception of Silent Hill as being about people confronting their own repressed memories and perceived guilt, despite Silent Hill 2 being the only one of the original four games to have that premise. Since that viewpoint was solidly in place by the time Downpour was coming out, of course people were fixated on what having a convict protagonist might mean. Between that and the game’s opening sequence having you murder another prisoner, I had some concerns that Downpour would go out of its way to be dark and edgy.

Fortunately, that is not the case. Murphy is just as much of an average, everyman protagonist as the other Silent Hill protagonists. In fact, I’d go so far as to say he’s one of my favorite protagonists in the series.

(My other favorite is Henry, so take that as you will.)

I like Murphy. He’s a good guy – at least in some endings, but we’ll get back to that in a little bit. I was invested in getting him to safety. I like Murphy. And yes, I’m emphasizing this because I’m about to start talking about things I didn’t like.

You know what I dislike in games? Breakable weapons. Downpour one-ups that by not only having breakable weapons, but making it so you can only carry one at a time. You can also carry a single gun in your inventory, although equipping it means you drop your melee weapon.

Then it goes even a step further by requiring you to have specific types of weapons to unlock certain areas, although this is usually either optional (as I discovered after backtracking across half the map to find the item I needed to access what turned out to be just an easter egg room with some ammo in it) or has the weapon you need nearby. It’s still a frustrating design decision.

Because your weapons break, there are weapons located all over the place… and since there’s no quick visual distinction between weapons and plot items, walking up to any new item became a game of guessing whether it would go into my inventory or if (the much more likely scenario) Murphy would toss down his current weapon to pick it up.

At one point, I got a new gun and wanted to keep it. After several failed attempts to replace my old gun, I finally realized I needed to drop the new gun, equip the old gun, drop the old gun, and then pick up the new gun again.

Then there’s the combat itself. Downpour’s combat is clunky and awkward. “But Sam,” you’re saying, “Silent Hill games always have clunky combat! It’s part of that ‘everyman’ thing you were talking about!” They do, but I played Silent Hill 2 for the first time just last month, and it felt so much better to play.

I avoided combat in Downpour whenever I could, but there were some points (especially in the final section) when that wasn’t viable.

One would assume this makes the game scarier due to your vulnerability. It does to some degree, but since there’s an auto-save system, you’re rarely in danger of losing too much progress. I found only a couple of monsters scary, while the rest just ended up frustrating.

Downpour also features Otherworld sequences where you’re unable to fight back and must run through a maze to escape “the Void,” a glowing red vortex that chases you for… uh… some reason…

These sections felt clearly inspired by the chases in Shattered Memories, although it never stopped feeling weird to knock down obstacles behind me to slow down an incorporeal vortex thing.

Now, when you’re in the town of Silent Hill, you’ll come across side quests you can do. These are essentially little optional puzzles, often with a tragic story of some sorts to accompany them. They’re fine on their own and gave me a reason to explore. My main issue with the side quests is that Murphy has no real reason to do them. I felt like I was wandering aimlessly around town, putting tormented spirits to rest and solving mysteries because… because I guess Murphy is just a great guy.

I can’t help but imagine how much more interesting it would be if more puzzles and little stories like that were incorporated into the main journey, having you uncover these stories as you unlock more parts of the town.

(Speaking of which, that survival horror style of gradually unlocking areas isn’t really present in Downpour. You’ll need to solve some puzzles to unlock parts of the major areas you venture into, but it felt much more straightforward, usually with either the solution being nearby or being a larger goal that you explore the rest of the area to find the answer to.)

But at least this sense of aimlessness isn’t to the same extent as in Origins, however, where Travis seemed to wander wherever the plot wanted him to be. Murphy’s main objectives all fit with his desire to find a way out of town.

Now let’s talk about the plot. Murphy has no desire to stay in Silent Hill, but huge chasms have made the roads impassable and it quickly becomes clear he won’t get out easily. He crosses paths a few times with characters who seem to know something about what’s going on, and for a while, I started to believe Downpour actually was going to involve the cult in some way after all… but it doesn’t. Instead, Downpour hits upon the idea that the town has rules you need to follow.

Earlier, I mentioned how the view of Silent Hill as a way to confront or atone for your sins became the popular view. Downpour seems to see the town as a force that actively traps people and won’t let them go until they understand whatever truth the town wants them to understand.

I want to say that’s just this game’s standalone interpretation of Silent Hill, but whenever it came up, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the writers were trying to say, “See? We know how Silent Hill worked in the previous games!” despite that not being how Silent Hill worked in the previous games.

I found the plot to be somewhat predictable, but I did appreciate seeing my predictions come true and getting the answers to my lingering questions, although I can’t help but feel some of the conflict only existed for the sake of plot convenience, as everything could have been wrapped up much quicker if the characters simply communicated with each other. Then again, I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt and say Murphy is carrying on the tradition of Silent Hill protagonists being somewhat dense.

There are multiple endings, based on two dimensions: a karma system and a choice you make at the end. Unfortunately, these not only change the actual outcome, but also what happened in the past. With a few exceptions, I don’t like it when games have multiple endings that retroactively change the plot.

Not only does this mean your actions in the present change the past, but it also forces the story to be vague at times in order to leave room for the possible endings, which also results in there being inconsistencies depending on which ending you get. I suspect that’s also partly responsible for why Murphy acts oblivious to things he should already know.

And thanks to Downpour’s fixation on the town forcing people to realize certain truths, your ending might also leave you wondering if the entire thing was pointless and there was no truth for Murphy to accept after all… so why wouldn’t Silent Hill let him go?

The one saving grace is that Silent Hill: Downpour actually recognized what several of the original games did in regards to Silent Hill’s symbolism and the Otherworld, which is that it isn’t necessarily the main character’s psychology causing these things to manifest. Forget everything Downpour tries to say about rules and the town doing things. Murphy, like Harry, Henry, and to some extent Heather, is trapped in a nightmare imposed upon him by someone else’s consciousness.

Well, this has been a long review, and it’s probably clear I have very mixed feelings about the game. It’s the sort of game where if I’d played it at launch, I would have been cautiously hopeful that the next game could make improvements. As it is, this might be the last Silent Hill game we ever get.

So with that in mind, I’d still recommend Silent Hill: Downpour if you enjoy the series… just be prepared for a lot of frustration along the way.