Silent Hill Downpour Review (Xbox 360)

Silent Hill Downpour puts you in the role of Murphy Pendleton who, after being in prison, gets stranded in Silent Hill when a transport bus crashes and leave him there. The cover of the box says Silent Hill is where fear and torment are inescapable and I thought, "for the player?"

Of course, once you’re in Silent Hill all manner of weirdness happens. Zombie-like women (Screamers) begin attacking you for no reason. Other odd humanoid creatures begin showing up and attacking as well. None of it makes any sense at all.

Silent Hill Downpour Basics

The game opens with Murphy in prison but they don’t really tell you why. You’re put in a shower room in order to kill someone (which acts as a tutorial and takes all of three minutes) and again, are not told why. It’s all quite lost in translation as the game was developed by Czech developer Vatra Game who seem to not have a story editor on staff. But that’s just the start of the problems with Silent Hill Downpour.

The game takes the form of a third-person action game. I wouldn’t call it a survival horror game because there’s little horror as all the ambushes are highly predictable, many of the enemies are out in the open and overall the game was far from horror-inducing. Creepy? Yes, it is a bit from time to time but it still relies heavily on that monsters-jump-out-at-you mechanic that B-rated horror flicks rely on as well.

Since you’re not a superhero, nor remarkable in any real way, the things you can do are limited in Silent Hill Downpour. It’s not a negative, just a statement of fact. You can walk and run, but you can’t jump. You can pick up a melee weapon and a gun as well as a flashlight and some other random inventory which consists of coins, props and medkits. Some items will sit in your inventory for so long you wonder why they’re even there. Others will be solely for some plot point in the game which they will take their sweet time explaining and when they do, I had lost interest in the reasons behind it all.

Silent Hill Downpour Gameplay

The combat system in Silent Hill Downpour is clunky, and that’s being generous. Weapons are scarce to begin with and they deteriorate rather quickly. Most notably was the mining ax which broke after fewer than ten swings and hits. I mean seriously, this is a tool that is made to dig through solid rock and hitting fleshy creatures is going to break it in less than ten whacks. Hello? Reality check!