Mystery and macabre breed bizarre banality with Silent Hill: Downpour

Silent Hill: Downpour breaks the mould in many respects. You aren’t spoon-fed the plot. There’s no mindless decimation of swarming demonic creatures. Enemies are almost as scarce as ammo. The essence of Downpour is realism. While it’s exceptional in its execution, the dwindling action and continuous bewilderment breeds the illusion of banality and will have many gamers switching off.

Our antihero is Murphy Pendleton, who stirs more emotion with one defeated glance than any dialogue could. During his prison transfer, his bus crashes just outside of a little place called Silent Hill. Soon, Murphy is drawn into a demented, oddly logical plot. The journey goes from one of confusion to one of personal redemption for Pendleton, a visual metaphor for how guilt can consume your entire world, turning it into a mélange of confusion, regret and shifted reality.

Downpour has you piecing things together, with only bits and pieces to guide you: a strange radio dedication, a mysteriously cryptic mailman, the oddly elusive glimpse of a man in a wheelchair, voiceovers of wisdom from your deceased father. It can be frustrating at times, aimlessly wandering morose mines, haunting homes, and fractured streets littered with refuse. Once you manage to find your way around a bit, the story picks up pace, revealing a riveting thriller. It becomes a path of discovery, with the narrative woven in such a way so that you are just as confused as Murphy.

The overall presentation is beautifully cinematic in its execution. In the cut scenes alone, it’s clear that great care and painstaking planning went into the subtle elements of camera angles, pacing, composition, and lighting. Voice work, body language and facial expression all add to the experience. Like any good movie, music immediately captures attention, breathing as much life into the settings and stories as any human element. Locales are exquisitely crafted and a type of character on their own. With a worn, beaten down element that pulls you further into Pendleton’s abandonment, settings are unpredictable, moody and yield just as many clues to the mystery as any of the ‘human’ characters.

Downpour is a game that doesn’t cater to the mainstream. Many of the gameplay elements are designed to create one thing: realism. The lack of an on-screen map, ammo counter or health meter may be annoying at times, but more shocking is the fact that the game doesn’t stop when you open your inventory to use, let’s say, a first aid kit. This flies in the face of everything we gamers hold to be true. Yet this is simply our good friend, Mr. Realism, rearing his ugly head once more. Life has no pause button. If a demonic creature of the underworld was gnawing on your neck, you'd need to shake it first before finding a safe place to attend to your injuries.

The hardened, uncompromising tone of the game even extends to combat. Nowhere near as frequent as the Resident Evil games, you’re outmatched and outgunned which adds to your panic. Also, enemies are very difficult to kill. A veritable bludgeoning needs to take place to send these demons back to the fiery chasm from whence they came. The unexpected nature of the enemies combined with the difficulty makes combat uniquely intense.

When it comes to survival horror, Silent Hill: Downpour is the way to go. It keeps a sense of itself, never degenerating into a bloodbath. Tragically, because of the lack of action and the need to think through puzzles at every turn, most gamers will become bored and tune out. For those who stick with it, Downpour is a beautiful blend of visuals, suspense and story that borders on art.

When he’s not teaching junior high school, St. Albert Catholic High School alumnus Derek Mitchell can be found attached to a video game console.