Silent Hill 3 for cheap!

[Deepak]

PC version was by far the worst in that polish department, due to non-softened shadows and some small but weird texture artifacting.

I hope Deano is not around here....

 

[marconelly!]

Hehe, well he gave me the technical explanation for the shadowing problem. PC version has it's own merits obviously, but it just lacks in the areas where I'm nitpicky about.

 

[zurich]

But isn't the map of the normal hospital the map of the alternate hospital ? You mean you don't have the map of the hospital ?

Heh ya, I looked everywhere in 'normal' BH hospital and couldn't find a map!! Anyhow, I went through the entire thing (normal and dark) mapless.. god THAT was annoying Score +1 for SH2 for putting maps on the bulletin board right across from the entrance!

No doubt, but it seems to me they did something with flashlight in SH3 to make it better looking than PS2 SH2. Made the center of the light brighter or something. Also, in the part of the demo where I could use the flashlight (amusment park at the very beginning of the game) I simply couldn't see *any* of that ugly triangulating effect, and I was looking for it. I guess it's just worse in some rooms than it is in others, just like it was in SH2, right?

I think it just depends on the amount of geometry really. The flashlight looks great in the amusement park, because there are lots of curved surfaces, etc., whereas it is fugly as hell in say, the mall, where its all square walls, flat floor, etc.

As for XB SH2, there are some differences. Personally, I prefer the fog effect on the XB, just seems a little more natural. However the CG cutscenes are a little more blurry compared to the MPEG2 ones on PS2 (which run at 60fps too).

Overall though, the pretty perpixel flashlight on the XB alone solidly thumps down the PS2 version IMO.

(tip to Team Silent: remake SH2 with the SH3 engine )

 

[zurich]

Should also mention that SH3 definitely wins an award for best pre-baked bumps in a game, ever!

 

[notAFanB]

Heh ya, I looked everywhere in 'normal' BH hospital and couldn't find a map!! Anyhow, I went through the entire thing (normal and dark) mapless.. god THAT was annoying Score +1 for SH2 for putting maps on the bulletin board right across from the entrance!

I't is in the office on the ground floor. OR just pull out the older map from SH2 8)

 

[zurich]

Marc,

I also just remembered that you have your PS2 on component, yes? That would probably explain the difference in colours/texture quality, etc. Mine were both on composite ( ), and IMO the Xbox version looks sharper overall (flashlight notwithstanding ).

Ofcourse, the PS2 one has a few notable bulletpoints, such as faster loading and 60fps MPEGs

 

[zurich]

Just finished SH3.. first time through on normal/normal was just under 6 hours (and the last hour of that was the end boss, I had 10 bullets and no health when I fought him GRRRRRRRRRRRR).

Overall, I have mixed feelings. The graphics/sound/production were absolutely top notch, but the gameplay was 'eh'. The first 2 hours (1/3rd of the game) were absolutely useless with no plot information(mall, subway, office building), and don't even fit into the context of the game at all. The story was just... something else. I'm going to have to hunt down a used copy of SH1, because I didn't understand a single damn thing.

IMO, the graphics/sound/production values of SH3 are incredible, but SH2 is still the better game overall.

I'd say..

Graphics: 9.5/10 (I want to give it 10/10, but that flashlight...)
Sound: 10/10 (Truly amazing, and they cut down on the irritating static from SH2!)
Gameplay: 5/10 (Go here, go there, go somewhere else, flip to Dark World, rinse and repeat)
Story: N/A (Going to refrain from scoring it here, as I haven't played SH1, and thus didn't understand anything, at all, but that alone should tell you something)
Overall: 8/10 (Production values alone make this a great, if 5 hour long, experience. Think of it as an interactive, double length horror movie)

 

[marconelly!]

I also just remembered that you have your PS2 on component, yes? That would probably explain the difference in colours/texture quality, etc. Mine were both on composite

PS2 on component XB on S-Video, but it's not that... On my small TV, signal quality looks about the same. I think that something happened in the conversion of PS2 CLUT textures to S3TC, simillar problem that plagued textures in MGS2:S XB... I actually double checked that with two other graphics whores on GAF board (who both have XB connected with component and PS2 on SVideo) and they saw it too.

As for the flashlight, I could never understand why it's the simplest looking rooms (corridors and such) where that problem comes up most. One would think they'd just tesselate walls a bit more in those rooms to get rid of the problem, if they already can afford much higher geometry complexity in other rooms.