For more on Silent Hill Downpour, check out our full Silent Hill Downpour review. Or, for more of the best Xbox 360 games for a 10 year old, why not try our Family Game Finder
Silent Hill Downpour sees you filling the prison overalls of Murphy Pendleton, an inmate imprisoned for an unknown reason, as he tries to come to terms with his past crimes. While he starts off as anything but an inspiring role model, as you learn more about his situation he becomes a much more bearable character.
As a horror game, you can expect plenty of scares, uncomfortable situations, and mature storylines here. Combat is frequent and brutal, and the game's been designed with the intention of scaring you. For younger players, this certainly isn't.
With two difficulty settings, one for the combat, and another for the puzzles, the experience can be customised for the player, so people good at puzzles but not great at combat can keep the combat on easy while ramping the puzzles up to hard, or for the more sadistic players, the combat can be set to hard and the puzzles to easy. With adult themes prevalent throughout the game (paedophilia and child abuse, to name but two) this is one kids should avoid.
Silent Hill Downpour is pretty dark. From the opening section, which sees you assaulting another man in the showers, culminating in Murphy embedding his knife into the other man's back, splattering blood across the screen, to some of the subjects covered later in the game (the man in the showers is later revealed to be a child molester and murderer, while Murphy finds himself haunted by visions of a deformed, wheelchair bound monstrosity, a manifestation of his guilt over a crime from his past), the game can get quite uncomfortable at times. The language used is also fairly heavy, with sh*ts and b*tch thrown around whenever two characters get together, with the occasional F word when people get really angry.
While Silent Hill Downpour is only a single-player game, some of the puzzles can be solved quicker using a number of brains. It's also likely that any younger players will need help during some of the trickier combat sections.
Age Ratings
Format Reviewed: Xbox 360
