Previously...
Now I know very little about the game from the beginning, so here's what I do know (however)...
The first one's big bad is, from what I got from this game, was a woman named Dahlia who wanted to bring forth this god to usher forth "paradise"... uh... yeah. Paradise. Right.
Would that "paradise" be the badly blood painted hell that I've seen in these two games? Girl needs a better understanding of the term "paradise"... or maybe she needs to take more vacations... something.
Anyway to bring about her "utopia" of the damned, she apparently has her daughter... uh... (thinks)... ehh... well, she's pregnant, right? And it's how the god thing is born into this world... they don't go into detail about who or what got her... I mean... uh... I better stop while I'm behind...
Anyway in the end the "god" gets smacked down, the girl comes back and hands off a baby girl to the hero of the first game (Harry) and she dies. The girl? Why it's your character in THIS game! Heather. Hence why this game brings to full circle the trilogy and is considered the last chapter of the whole Silent Hill trilogy... I don't know if they counted The Room in that, and don't know enough to say if there's a connection, I just know it's supposed to be the end.

Oh, then some guy goes to Silent Hill to look for his former stripper slash formerly living wife, and then more crazy mind bending stuff happens and one ending pins the madness on a dog who is probably the pet dog of the strange creature that spins the wheels of fate that turns the world from normal to dark during this game... arf! (Creature in question is seen turning it's wheel of fate during the hospital sequence amongst it's several cameo appearances).

You start off SH3 as Heather, the girl who was but a baby at the end of Silent Hill (original) and who now grown up to a fine young girl who looks like she has a drug addiction. Eh. Apparently Konami's attempt to make her look independent made her look like she's on a very close and personal first name relationship with a Mr. Crack and a Mr. Smack... and I don't mean that in the wrestling terminology! Maybe it's the face, or the way she looks rather odd around the eyes, or maybe it's just how she doesn't seem very freaked out by all the stuff going on to her. It just seems like her character animation makes her look drugged up. Konami should have thought twice before they did her facial animations. Anyway Heather, who apparently does NOT have a drug habit despite her looks, is at the mall when she runs into a private investigator who is hunting her down. Seems that somebody is searching for her and he needs to bring her together with this person for a little pow-wow. Yeah. Not happening. Heather ditches her private eye "Escort", runs into another part of the mall, meets a new "creature" and the person looking for her (Claudia) who looks as if... eh... I've seen her somewhere before... but it's escaping me where I've seen her... she's an escaped character from another series... or at least the actress who voiced her (and who seemingly they designed the character after) is... but I can't remember where...hint is I think I've seen her playing the same creepy

type of role elsewhere... goddess I can't remember who Claudia here reminds me of! Sigh... never mind. Move along now, I won't remember even as I finish this review.

ANYWAY she tells Heather about some destiny or something, which probably involves not so intimate togetherness with evil so she'll birth up another god baby, and Heather obviously doesn't want any of what Claudia is babbling about.... Whatever that is. But then again she'll want in on Claudia's psychobabble even less after the world flips over on it's head and becomes all bloody. Sheesh. Somebody call housekeeping, this alternate world needs a clean-up badly. Thus starts Heather on the long road to answers, and later vengeance (after Harry is killed on Claudia's orders). Passing between the normal world and the dark world (against her will) she is dragged relentlessly forward, eventually leading her back to Silent Hill, where the troubles all began. Along the way she learns more about the people who are out to get her, her "past" and what happened before, and what these people who want her have planned for her (bet it's nothing pleasant).

Oh, but she doesn't learn that she shouldn't be so darn flippant and coy about all this.
I heard the first two games had stars who actually were affected by the madness around them, which is NOT a thing I can say about Heather. Maybe it's the drugged out expression on her face, but somehow she's just not flipping out on what's going on to her. Yeah. It's a nice change from the guy from The Room who kept muttering "What... the... hell..." or something like that every five or six sentences, but some reaction would have been nice. She acts like she walks through blood soaked death corridors every other week.

Ah, and another thing about this game is there is quite a few "homages" to older Silent Hill games, but I think you'll have to be a Silent Hill veteran to get them all. I only know about them because I read about them on a website, and that's it. I couldn't point them out to you even if I tried.

Now onto the gameplay itself, which is as troubled as the character you control.
The controls play like Resident Evil, only rougher. Even after logging down some serious hours playing this game I still have a little bit of a time making Heather go where I want her to go. I got it down better, and can move her with a little more fluidity, but she still is a little bit of a fuss to move. Worse, however, is the disobedient camera view that doesn't seem to want to behave at all. It's hard enough to move through the dark corridors of this game without having the camera make it any worse, but the camera does it's best from time to time to get me killed. It's bad enough I'm in a tight corridor with some creature coming at me, my warning radio going off as it approaches, but it's even worse when the camera insists on looking at... me. Me. Like I need to stare at myself as this whatever it is is lumbering at me. Yeah. I want to stare at myself as something jumps me and turns me into Heather Helper, who helps your Heather help the undead make a great meal. Thanks, Konami.

And then there's the fact that the whole game seems to

play out environmentally like... Breath of Fire : Dragon Quarter! Eh? Is the entire game taking place underground?!? Why am I going from one series of dark corridors after another?!? Even when I occasionally go outside it seems as if I'm in a dark corridor instead of outside with only the first outside sequence in the beginning of the game being the only time I remember seeing actual outside light in this game... until I got to Silent Hill and wandered the streets for the first time going to the hospital, that's when I got my first full dose of outside wandering... even if it was foggy outside wandering. Overall though I am most certain that I saw more sky and outside in The Room than I did in THIS game (and I don‘t just mean while I was in my apartment)! What gives!!
The monsters aren't much better. With only a small set of creatures to fight there just isn't much variety.
There are a few monsters, and I guess it's OK considering there are only so many creatures in this game, but still a little more variety would have been so nice. The one thing I didn't miss was the thing about corpses on beds jumping up at you suddenly. That only seems to happen in Resident Evil games, not here.

Now mind you I'm not totally down on this game, though. I do like some things about the game.
It's good enough with it‘s time gameplay and interesting story that keeps you going and going to play further and further until you reach the end of it all, and it has more than enough gameplay to keep you coming back over and over again. Changes of costume (unlocked after you beat the game once) and difficulty levels for both gameplay and riddles should have you playing again and again (unlike certain other games that seemed to be "one trick" ponies, like Evil Dead : Fistful of Boomstick which is only good for one play). The one thing I thought was really keen about SH3 was the puzzles and riddle difficulty setting, which I don't really see often enough in games. The puzzles require some thought, even at "Easy" mode, so play the game first at Easy mode for riddles just to get your thoughts going on them. Once you best the game once go back and do it again on a harder mode for more challenge.

However with only a few "endings", as opposed to the amount of endings in previous and the newest Silent Hill? There is only the adjustable difficulty/riddle levels, and the many costume changes you could use to bring you back to this game over and over again. But with some of it's problems would you want to return?
I'd have to say yes. I'm not totally down on all it's bad quirks, but I still want to come back again on this one. I own it, so that proves how I'm for this game. Breakdown time.

Silent Hill Breakdown the 3rd
What's Hot? - It's a nice wrap-up for the series, unless you count The Room that is.
Gameplay is a little iffy, but it's still solid enough to play. I liked the riddles and the adjustable levels of difficulty on both riddles and gameplay, and the change of costumes option (after you beat the game) will bring you back for more... especially the "Magical Girl" outfit that gives you kickin'

beam powers to incinerate your enemies!

What's Not? - The gameplay could have been better. The controls a little less fussy. An actual auto-mapping system would have made it easier to traverse the difficult levels of the game, and seeing actual sky more than the few scant times I've seen it during the game would have been nice as well!
All in all despite the quirks I have with this game I still think it's a solidly done game well worth checking out. Now I haven't played the original or SH2, so I can't compare this one to those games, but for me? I think this is worth playing even if you haven't had the pleasure of playing SH or SH2 before this game.
And having a little quirky extra like the free soundtrack CD when I bought mine pre-played from Blockbuster was kind of nice too!

Moments to Remember? - I would like to say more about this, but seemingly the memorable moments kind of required me to have played the last two games... memorable moments for this game is the ability to spot the "homages" to the past two Silent Hills... or maybe that one Metal Gear Solid homage... if you can find the dead body with the silencer next to it. I missed it, but maybe you'll be able to find it.
Otherwise I can't say I remembered much, and what I should have remembered I couldn't since it required either knowledge of the first two games, or maybe just a cheat sheet of "moments" from someone who wrote up a full walkthrough of the game. Either way it left not much for me to remember about this game.

What to Ignore? - I'd like to know why a girl so irritated by the events going on around her seems to be rather unmoved by the darkness surrounding her. Now I don't want to see her flip out or go around muttering "What... the... hell..." every so often like that guy in The Room, but some noticeable reaction to the freakiness going on would have been an improvement! I'd also, on a personal note, like to point out that (despite the way she looks) Heather is a 100% drug free character... even if she looks strung out during every cutscene! Heck! Look at the cover of the game and the instruction booklet to see what I mean! But she's OK on the drug free thing so ignore that... even if I do seem to harp on about it for sometime during this review.

Overal1? - It's good, but it's not the greatest.
If I didn't have to fuss over the controls as I did, and I got the hang of it fast like I did the controls for the Resident Evil games, I could have gotten into this game faster.
If Heather could have only had abit more emotion and gotten our sympathy (and our attention) more than she did during this game I could have gotten into this game faster.
If the game had a glossary or something so I could read up on the previous two games, and thus get the references to said games without having to read about them via second hand information I could have really gotten into this game that much faster. It's little things, but little things still count in my book.
I like the game. I own the game. And yet maybe it could have been a little better. Just maybe.