After the departure of longtime Silent Hill composer
Akira Yamaoka from Konami in 2009,
Daniel Licht was brought in to write music for subsequent installments of the long-running survival horror game series. Having composed for the Showtime TV series Dexter as well as several Clive Barker movies,
Licht knows how to write scary music, and on his first Silent Hill score, for the 3-D game Downpour, he maintains the mix of eerie ethereality and deeply unsettling horror of the earlier soundtracks while putting his own spin on them. Tracks such as "Meet JP" and "Stalking for Dinner" are gently creepy, pulling the listener deeper into the mysteries of Silent Hill, while more violent cues like "Clowning Around" and "Basement Fight" offer plenty of good scares and prepare players for combat.
Yamaoka's music, in all its creepy, complex, atmospheric glory, was a significant part of why Silent Hill was one of the most acclaimed game series of the '90s and 2000s; while
Licht's music isn't nearly as weird,
Silent Hill: Downpour continues enough of that tradition to be a solid addition to the franchise. ~ Heather Phares