I finished this over the weekend on the PS3. It's a good game, and a very good Silent Hill game for that matter. It really hits most of the right notes: the protagonist is interesting, the story is engaging, well written, well delivered, and unusually mature for a video game (think SH2, albeit with vastly superior acting). The town itself is well rendered, and while it's not exactly an open-world environment, it does a decent enough job hiding (or making you believe in) its boundaries.
One of the best additions to the franchise comes in the form of the many side-quests. While they are completely unrelated to the story, and rarely reward the player in traditional, meaningful ways, they are nonetheless very interesting, well presented Silent Hill short stories, and completing them is rewarding enough in and on itself. You may have to assume the role of a projectionist at the Silent Hill movie theater, subsequently entering the movie itself through the screen, or you may be asked with the punishment of a murderous husband's ghostly remains. Another task sends you on a search for the "Telltale Heart" by following its ominous beat in a labyrinthean cellar. It's all really good stuff, and there is quite a lot of it.
The Otherworld is very well done as well. Unlike in the previous games you don't have to comb bloddy and rusty versions of the same locations for clues. The otherworld here is much further removed from reality in fact. It's far more trippy, largely linear, and comes across more like a nightmarish assortment of set-pieces. Each visit to the Otherworld also comes with a chase sequence where you have to outrun a strage. all-devouring, formless entity. It's pretty exhilerating the first time it happens, but since it's being repeated with subsequent visit, it quickly loses its appeal. Still, it's not too bad, and generally too short-lived to really become a nuissance.
There are a couple unfortunate down sides though.The monster design is weak. It's a far cry from the unsettling creatures depicted in the other Silent Hill games, and more reminiscent of something out of a Hellraiser movie. To make matters worse, there's a grand total of just 4 enemy types throughout the entire game, and it's quite a long game. Just like the enemies themselves, the entire combat aspect feels more like an afterthought than a proper feature. Most of the times it's not a big deal since you can easily outrun all of the creatures in the streets of Silent Hill, but there are situations where you probaby want to clear an area out to get on with the puzzle solving uninterrupted, and that's when the clunky combat becomes a real drag. Murphy Pendleton may be the most hapless protagonist in any Silent Hill game as of yet, and this will assuredly piss you off something fierce once you reach the final stretch of the game. (little word of advice: don't bother hoarding items. Any of them)
And now on to the turd in the punch bowl: technically the game is a complete mess. It starts off okay enough. The dreaded UE3 texture loading issues are ever prevalent, but the low light environments and the oppressive fog do a relatively good job at hiding the issue. Once you actually reach the town it all goes to shit unfortunately. The game is constantly streaming in whatever it is it needs to stream in (given the repetitve nature of textures, assets and the near non-existent draw distance of the game, I don't really know what exactly that could be), and the result of that is a near constant stuttering. It also seems to get worse the longer you play. Apparently the game stores all the not-quite-worn-out weapons you chose to replace with fresh ones in memory, and that stuff really adds up over time. It's the Skyrim of UE3 games, and it can get downright nauseating.
It's really unfortunate, because there's a really cool game buried under the technical mess here.
Still, I certainly enjoyed it. There's just nothing else out there quite like it.
Oh, and the camera is of the classic, controllable third person kind. There are a couple of spots with fixed angles, but they are rare, and strictly used in non-combat situations.
