In the tradition of exclamatory movie titles like “Dude, Where’s My Car?” and “Stop! or My Mom Will Shoot,” I hereby petition Konami to change the name of this horror series to “The Lock is Broken, I Can’t Open the Door.” As Heather, the latest victim to explore the macabre municipality of Silent Hill, you’ll utter these two phrases again and again.

TLIB, ICOTD (aka Silent Hill 3) adheres to the standard survival-horror formula: beautifully creepy graphics and sound effects dragged down by awkward camera angles, sluggish combat, and way too many broken locks. The catch is that most doors can’t be opened, ever — a fact that makes Konami’s decision to set the first level inside a door-laden shopping mall border on sadistic.

As is the hallmark of this series, the plot is morose and incomprehensible. Heather, a rebellious teenager with daddy issues, abruptly enters a nightmarish, blood-stained dose of alternate reality where she’s haunted by strange notes and even stranger zombie-like creatures. The thread linking this game to the previous ones is Silent Hill, the town in which she was raised and must again revisit if she’s going to un-funk the world.

Streaked with blood and grit — and presented with a distressed, grainy visual style — the chilling atmosphere will have you itching for a shower to remove the filth. The horror of the game, however, lies solely in the ambience: the evil mutant things after you aren’t so much frightening or menacing as they are inevitable. Announced in advance by static and monstrous squeals, they plod toward you, ever so slowly. And you, nearly as glacial, slay the ghoulies with conveniently mislaid swords, maces, and firearms (including a new submachine gun).

Though scarier than Silent Hill 2, this effort still reeks of a paint-by-numbers design so blatant that the digits are visible. Shockingly un-shocking, it’s too much mood and little “boo.”

— Chuck Osborn