i saw a screen shot of a guy who beat it in 2.5 hours. i am sure he was speeding through, but still, that is pretty fast.

Haha, I should clarify. My brother is buying it today and will immediately play it...maybe several times over.

I will borrow it from him in the fall

IGN's 4.5 "Bad" review

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wow, rarely see a high profile game get that terrible a rating.

Ouch.

This game is mostly review-proof, though. It was going to be largely ignored either way.

Joystiq gave a more favorable review and a 3.5/5.

Shame on you MoviePage! I'm not sure the Silent Hill series has even been a huge seller...

Joystiq 3.5 out of 5
IGN 4.5 out of 10
GameSpot 7.5 out of 10
Game Informer 7 out of 10
Playstation Official Magazine AU 70 out of 100

Those other scores don't make it seem so bad. Just average.

Yeah, the others seem more favorable. IGN's previews leading up to the game were pretty positive...I guess someone different did the actual review from whoever did the hands on previews.


My brother started it last night (2 hours in) and texted me that the PS3 version is having some serious framerate issues.

Being a huge Silent Hill fan, I had to pick this up right away, in spite of any negative reviews. After playing through it for a few hours, my impression is that it's a mixed bag. Your brother is correct in that it has some very noticeable technical problems, at least on the PS3. I have already encountered several instances where the camera stutters unmercifully if you move the viewpoint too much or too quickly. It doesn't really damage gameplay too much, but shows some poor engineering/QC for a game of this generation.

On the plus side, I was worried based on some reviews I read that the gameplay and style would be close to that of Silent Hill: Homecoming, which is possibly the worst game I have ever played. Thankfully, that is not the case. While SH: Downpour doesn't really compete with the best of the series (ie - the first three games), it does at least measure up to the likes of SH: Origin and SH: Shattered Dreams. Which is to say, acceptable but not great in the pantheon of Silent Hill titles. In fact, it seems to me to largely incorporate the more interesting elements of those two titles, for anyone who had played them.

So I could easily recommend it to anyone who is a Silent Hill fan, and has played and at least liked most of the titles in the series. Anyone who's not a SH buff isn't likely to be converted by Downpour, but (aside from the one admittedly very annoying technical problem) it's not as terrible as the one really bad review makes it out.

This game is getting shit on which kinda upsets me. Yea, it quite possibly has the worst frame rate ever but the game itself makes up for it.

I'm only 65% done but this may be the best Silent Hill game since Silent Hill 2. Vatra really put a lot of effort into the story and the atmosphere is AMAZING!

Glad to hear it, I look forward to playing it.

On another note, the Joystiq review of the Silent Hill HD collection said that the original voice cast of SH2 is available in addition to the new one.

Finally played this like 2-3 weeks ago, after playing Homecoming before [again, which I liked a lot], it did not really feel like a Silent Hill game. Yeah the story and atmosphere was real good, but it was missing the scared-shit factor of the nightmare world. That's what I loved about Homecoming, even after playing it before I was still scared. This time it was mostly running away from some fucking force monster and a shit load of side stories that I wanted to be over with soner that it took me to finish them. And yeah the framerate fuckups when moving/running really sucked.