While fixing many of the frustrating issues of the previous games, SH5 fails to be truly scary, and has many flaws.
In many ways, it's like watching an American horror movie based on a Japanese horror, such as Ringu, or One Missed Call. The original Japanese film was subtle, creepy, and had a general air of tension and otherworldly weirdness that got under your skin. The American version made it blatant, and ruined much of that feeling so American audiences wouldn't find it boring. Such was the feeling I got playing this game.
For me, Silent Hill has always been about a subtle psychological terror that stays with you, with various moments of sheer insanity that make you question the protagonists sanity, as well as the sanity of the developers. However, this addition misses that completely, depending on cheap horror tricks that are frankly weak in comparison. The set parts are there, but it feels shallow. More so, the horror was blatantly obvious, and thus the impact was minimal, leaving me feel like I was playing something completely different, wondering where Silent Hill had gone. Sure, I was in the foggy town, the rusted hell was there, and there were nightmarish monsters, but... It just didn't feel right. There was no feeling of crawling terror gnawing at me while I played, just the superficial annoyance of having to fight monsters. It felt fake.
In response to this initial feeling, I decided to forget I had ever played a Silent Hill game before this, and set out to give it a fair, unbiased shot. What I got was a fairly mediocre survival horror that lacked substance. There were a number of really awful design decisions involving a criminal lack of health items, plot essential doors that blend into the walls, and other frustrating things, and that's just the beginning. The character animations and lip syncing were shoddy, and the hair animation looked dreadful, so horrible it removed me entirely from the moment. Furthermore, it failed to have a single scary or psychologically wrecking moment. It felt like the soul of the game had left.
However, there were a number of good things. The protagonist, Alex, is fairly likable. The monsters, despite them being far too defined and over the top, look damn good. The combat is better, and the crappy camera angles are no more- although I must say I miss them. The dialog doesn't sound like it was written by a Japanese person with only a passing understanding of the English language, and the voice acting was good. The graphics were also very good, and the soundtrack was fantastic- Typical of work by Akira Yamaoka. The atmosphere and plot, while not quite up to par, were fairly well executed.
Even so, I felt it went in the wrong direction. With next gen consoles, I've only seen one survival horror that has truly scared me- Condemned. If SH: H had gleaned some of what made Condemned so psychologically scarring, I feel it would have been better. Also, another 3 months of development seemed in order, as many parts seemed like they needed a lot of work.
The plot follows Alex Shepherd, a soldier returning from whatever war to return to his family in a town near Silent Hill. He returns to find Silent Hill's evil slowly infecting the town like some sort of apocalypse virus, which is rather interesting to experience. As he continues, he becomes entrenched in a conspiracy involving an opposing sect of the Silent Hill cult, seemingly related to that of the movie. It then gets weirder from there, although in many ways I was disappointed, as there are sequences that seem like they were taken directly from films like Saw and Hostel, and that approach to horror seems like somewhat of a cop out.
The gameplay is decent, the new combat system, while needing a bit of work, is good. There are a number of very bad design decisions, such as having plot essential doors blend into walls and respawning monsters with no health packs for miles around, but it's all more or less decent- not remarkable, but not completely unplayable. The sound is very well done, the graphics are smooth and look good, although the noise filter is a bit too obvious and detracts from the feeling, and the shadows seem to be doing their own thing most of the time, but other than that things look good.
In the end, the game wasn't terrible, but I am hesitant to say it was a good game. It was definitely designed for western audiences, but I feel that much of the core Silent Hill fandom will feel betrayed. People have always compared the old Silent Hill to the films of David Lynch and Stanley Kubrick, but this new one seems more similar to something done by Ridley Scott. And while it has its merits, the general feeling of the game is very superficial and blatant, and loses the essence of what makes Silent Hill scary. That being said, I still had fun playing parts of it, and it wasn't horrible. It just wasn't good. Given three months more work and a bit more input from Team Silent, the original developers of the Silent Hill series, it could have been infinitely better, but sadly it took another direction.