Silent Hill: Downpour/YMMV

• Acceptable Targets: Silent Hill continues its time-honored tradition of having fat people as Complete Monster's.
• Better Than It Sounds: Hearing Korn in the same sentence as Silent Hill may make you think They Changed It, Now It Sucks, but the song they play before the game even begins (and ONLY in the beginning) is unnerving, MindScrew-y, and generally a good song overall.
  • And then you hear the rest of the atmospheric soundtrack, and you wonder why he wasn't hired sooner.
  • Indeed, it says something when a new composer can be just as good as the previous one, who worked on every single one of the previous games. The critics' reviews in particular are all over this trope, on this particular aspect.
• Best Level Ever: The final moment of gameplay involves Murphy, transformed into the Boogeyman, chasing Anne through the prison. All those Weeping Bats, Juggernauts and other nasties that got in your way? Flatten them.
• Non Sequitur Scene: All the people Murphy meets in the town are either bound there due to their own sins or are a manifestation of Murphy's guilt. Except for the homeless guy found in the subway, who asks for a candy bar, a coat and a fishing rod as part of a sidequest, before opening up the glitchy subway doors and falling asleep/dying as part of a sidequest.
• Chekhov's Gun: The police badge found by the first set of clothing that Murphy changes into behind the motel. Although Anne seems to understand the significance of it after Murphy encounters her following the train ride, it isn't until the very end of the game that is is explained what it means: a mourning badge worn after the death of a fellow officer, representing the death of Frank Coleridge at Sewell's (or Murphy's) hands.
• Complete Monster: Officer Sewell. Murphy can also be one depending on the ending you get.
• Disappointing Last Level: Not to any severe degree, but the Prison increases the focus on combat and Instant Kill death traps, eschewing the atmosphere of the former stages somewhat.
• Fridge Brilliance: Why are Silent Hill's monsters more humanoid this time around, with a few exception? Because the more important personal issues are with specific people, instead of internal (ie. The Void, Weeping Bat, Tormented Soul, and Wall Corpse):
  • Bogeyman = Murphy's hatred of Napier, as well as his seeing him only as a monster. Conversely, Anne seeing Murphy as a monster for supposedly murdering her father.
  • Doll = Murphy's grief over losing Charlie. The Doll's shadows can also be seen as his desire for revenge.
  • Wheelman = Murphy's feelings over Frank Coleridge, who he murdered or was framed for doing so.
  • Screamer = Murphy's grief over his wife turning against him.
• Fridge Horror: During the Otherworld chase sequences, you can knock over cages to slow down The Void. But if you take a good look at the cages, you can see tortured creatures inside of them. And if you look back after knocking them over, you can see The Void sucking up these tormented souls, cage and all. In other words, a snack before the main course.
• Fridge Logic: The 'Forgiveness' ending has Anne confronting Sewell with a gun behind her back, the implication that some revenge is about to be exacted. That being said...what's the plan from there? Murder a corrections officer in cold blood? Even if she gets away from the scene (unlikely, as it's inside a prison), she'll have done it with her prison-issued firearm. And if her plan is to force some sort of confession from Sewell, then she's ensuring that he escapes prosecution scott-free. Her father couldn't get enough evidence for an investigation, and if his daughter forced a confession from him at gunpoint, it would be completely inadmissible in court. So she's either landed herself on death row (it's premeditated murder), or ensured that her father's killer gets away with his crimes. Nice Job Breaking It, Hero.
  • The monsters get a fair bit of Fridge Logic, too. In no particular order...
    • The Weeping Bat has no significance to Murphy at all. It's based off a Silent Hill legend that he couldn't reasonably have known about, and even then lacks any sort of psychological significance.
    • The Wheelman represents Coleridge in his vegetative state. Murphy didn't even know that Coleridge survived the shower-stabbing until the last several minutes of the game. Cunningham deliberately left him out of the loop.
    • The Dolls only appear once Murphy starts seeing abandoned store mannequins, which makes no sense if the monsters of Silent Hill are supposed to be made from flaws and insecurities of individual people, not random things that are lying around.
    • The normal convict enemy is just a guy with a metal device on his head. If Silent Hill was trying to make him symbolic of prison violence, it wasn't trying very hard. Murphy almost never talks about the supposedly-infamous prison riot that took place the night he either stabbed or was set up to stab Coleridge, nor does he reflect on any sort of violence in his prison save for the aforementioned encounter and that which he had with Napier at the start of the game.
    • See Fridge Brilliance above, for possible answers. Silent Hill's monsters are always symbolic of something, that much is guarenteed. No one said it had to be about the main character's internal issues though; issues with specific people that are ongoing can be done as well. Or possibly a combination.
  • When Murphy kills Napier, Sewell specifically mentions turning on the shower faucets to fog up the cameras. But when Sewell/Murphy stabs Coleridge, he does no such thing.
    • Perhaps this is why Anne approached Sewell with a gun behind her back. Because she already had the evidence she needed to condemn him.
• Foe Yay: So much between Cunningham and Murphy. Especially when she talks about all the sick and disgusting things she debased herself with just to get Pendleton under her thrall...
  • Murphy and Sewell, even more so. The prison setting does not help one bit.
• Goddamn Weeping Bats!: As well as Goddamn Screamers, Goddamn Dolls...half the enemies in the game, really...
• It's Short, So It Sucks: Without the sidequests, the game will only last 4–5 hours. And the sidequests really only pad out the length due to the difficulty or trawling around the map looking for random items.
• Moral Event Horizon: Sewell beating up Frank Coleridge in the game's Good endings and Murphy drowning his own son in the "Execution" ending.
• Narm: Some of the sidequests, especially since it's almost unheard of to have something heartwarming happen in a Silent Hill game. Notables ones include scattering a woman's ashes on her favourite bench by the lake, and returning stolen items to the residents of an apartment block. Entering the old war vet's apartment him triggers stock gunfire and explosion noises to clue the player in on what item needs to be returned (a war medal). Returning the item makes a heroic wartime march theme play. The player will either smile happily or stifle a laugh.
• Nightmare Retardant: A couple of moments:
  • The otherwise very spooky "Gramophone" sidequest ending with the banished spirit giving a "YURRRAAAAGGGH" Stock Scream.
  • One that can happen at random: a grotesque Weeping Bat falling down from the sky would be a heck of a lot scarier if its skin texture had finished loading yet.
• Paranoia Fuel: The surprise loading-screen hints seem specifically designed for this purpose; Say you have a girlfriend and suddenly the game says "She's lying to you". Maybe you have a guilty conscience and suddenly "Everyone knows what you've done" or "Was it worth it?" pops up. Or if the game has got you hiding under a blanket biting your nails: "Are you sure you're alone?" "It's in the room with you. You just can't see it..."
• What an Idiot!: Surprisingly, Sewell. His plan relied on him being able to convince Murphy (who had previously refused to murder Napier) to kill Coleridge and if that didn't work he would have to fight two grown men by himself and hope that Coleridge wouldn't be able to tell anyone the truth. He actually was very lucky things worked out as they did.
  • Actually, Tomm Hulett has said that Murphy killed Napier in every ending except for ending A, despite what the flashback in ending B tells you.
    • I'm more inclined to believe that Hulett forgot the content of ending B than that the flashback was outright false.
    • Purportedly, it wasn't exactly false, just a design hiccup. Since all of the endings have mix'n'match elements of who killed Napier and who almost killed Coleridge, someone forgot to swap out the line of dialogue saying Murphy spared Napier with the line saying Murphy killed him in ending B. All of the other endings are correct as is. Which is why Hulett said what he said.
    • That said, the requirements of Ending B are that you kill lots of enemies but try to help NPCs, which, given the pattern of the other endings as well as the theme of the game, would make more sense to have Murphy kill Napier. Otherwise, Ending B is the odd one out regarding the relationship between the requirements and the details of the endings.
• Tear Jerker: Early on, there's a poster for a missing dog. And only minutes later in the house, you find the bloodied dead body of a dog on a bed... oh
  • Murphy's flashbacks. You know the ones. Not to mention how Silent Hill seems to take extra measures to rub it in and show him increasingly disturbing hallucinations and Otherworld features to remind him.
• Win Back the Crowd: Somewhat. While the base remains as broken as ever, the general fan-reception towards Downpour have been surprisingly positive. The majority even states that they'd be OK with Vatra producing another Silent Hill-game, should they be able to iron out the obvious technical bugs and remedy the relatively average enemy-design.
• The Woobie: Murphy and Anne Cunningham when you find out why she is chasing after Murphy.