Not Featured: A Hill

Conceptually horror is one of my favourite genres. In practice I find myself constantly disappointed (woah big surprise). In the past I've discussed some of my opinions on horror, and in the future I probably will do a rather more definitive post on the topic, but tonight I want to talk about Silent Hill 3 (it's the only one I own).

If you haven't be following the saga here's a brief overview based off wikipedia and what various people have said.
Silent Hill (1) has Harry Mason looking for his daughter in the haunted town filled with monsters and cult members. If you've seen the movie then you will have some knowledge of the game as the movie is the same as the game in very broad strokes. As it was the first game in the series it gets exempt of any real judgement.
SH2 has James Sunderland come to the town after receiving a letter from his dead wife (warning spoilers preceding). This game is kind of like a side story as far as plot relevance goes as the cult is not present. It is also the fan favourite, dooming all following games to be looked down upon because they aren't Silent Hill 2.
SH3 is (will be eventually) the focus of the post so lets skip it for now.
SH4: The Room was initially an unrelated game before becoming part of the franchise as the gameplay clearly indicates. The story is about Walter Sullivan, an undead serial killer who is killing for a ritual, and Henry Townshend, a man trapped in his apartment and a target of Walter's.
SH: Origins is a prequel if you couldn't guess. You play as Travis Grady at the time of the initial Alessa incident. This was also the first game not by Team Silent. This caused much complaining because apparently only the Japanese are capable of horror.
SH Homecoming has Alex Shepherd returning from military duty (or is he?[he's not]) to find out about an ancient child sacrificing pact to protect several towns from Silent Hill. By this point an astute reader will have noticed that by either design or coincidence every odd game has been Alessa/cult centred, and every even one has been a standalone side story.
Finally there's SH: Shattered Memories which is a continuity reboot, because like all long running series it has to divide the fanbase as much as possible. This is still quite new (not even in Australia yet) so all I've got to go on is my bias towards reboots when I was fond of the original (not to be confused with my bias towards originals when I'm fond of the reboot).

Just like all the previous times where I've gone to the effort of establishing some sort of context I guess it's time to end this post and pick it up another time. While I'm aware that it is kind of a dick move to not get around to what I said I would, I've also had enough for tonight so deal with it.