PlayStation Pro 2 - Silent Hill 3 Preview

It has been a very long time, but we finally got some new information and hi-resolution screenshots (see pictures 4 through 9 below) from Silent Hill 3. In Silent Hill 3, you take on the role of a teenage girl named Heather. In the beginning of the game, Heather finds herself in a dark and run-down amusement park filled with disgusting looking creatures. Eventually, she wakes up in a restaurant and realizes that her ordeal in the "theme park from hell" was merely a dream.

After a brief conversation with her father on the phone, Heather decides to walk home. Along the way she meets a detective named Douglas. Douglas has a non-threatening appearance, but the stranger claims to know Heather, so she instinctively tries to ditch him. She succeeds, but ends up in a shopping mall similar to the run-down amusement park. This time, it isn't a dream...

If the spooky storyline hasn't grabbed your attention yet, the graphics and sound certainly will. Silent Hill 3 is easily one of the best looking PS2 games to date. The character models look very stunning -- especially in the facial expressions. The skin textures are also very realistic. Instead of having perfectly smooth and even skin, characters will have blemishes and such on their face and you can literally see the veins in their hands and arms. If you look closely at one of the screenshots below, you can see that Heather has some freckles.

The textures that make up the environments also look very good. Granted, much of the game will most likely take place in dark and sometimes foggy areas, but when things are well lit, you'll notice that your surroundings look very sharp and clean. The fog in the very first Silent Hill game was there to hide pop-ups (due to the weak PS One hardware) and to add to the spooky atmosphere. In Silent Hill 3, the fog is obviously there just to keep you on your toes, as it isn't necessary to cover up poor draw distance or low quality textures.

The gameplay in Silent Hill 3 hasn't change all that much from the last game. There are still a lot of cool bosses that look out of this world and you still need to do a bit of exploring and puzzle-solving. Of course, there is nothing wrong with this, but I just hope that there will be some more additions to the gameplay aside for new and more powerful weapons (such as the flamethrower and machine gun). As for the audio...well, lets just say that if you have a surround sound setup, you'll be in for a real treat.

With Resident Evil Online on the way for the PlayStation 2, it's no wonder why Konami is already hard at work on Silent Hill 3. Developed by the same team that created the first two games in the series, Silent Hill 3 promises to feature even more grotesque creatures and mutants than in the previous game.

To be honest, very little has been revealed about the storyline in Silent Hill 3 except for the fact that it is based around brand new characters. The game wasn't even in playable form at this year's E3. Instead, a very creepy movie was shown to highlight the new characters, monsters, and locations that will make their appearance next year. And from what I've seen, Silent Hill 3 will not disappoint its fans. Especially with one of the new weapons being a machine gun.

Silent Hill 3 still has more than six months to go before it is completed, so until Konami releases more info, please enjoy the screenshots below.

Additional Media
Click here for all the screenshots and movies for this game.