Silent Hill 3

Silent Hill 3 (2003)

The following weapons appear in the video game Silent Hill 3:

Handguns

Beretta 92FS Centurion

Heather Mason, the player character, picks up the 92FS Centurion with wooden grips from the floor of a clothing shop in the Central Square mall. It has a ten round magazine capacity, wood grips, and the ability to mount a sound suppressor looted from a corpse entombed in a concrete pillar. Douglas Cartland, a private investigator hired to find Heather, uses a similar weapon, but never fires it onscreen in the game. The handgun is the only firearm in the game that the player must obtain.

Beretta 92FS Centurion - 9x19mm

"Holds 10 rounds of ammunition. Small and not powerful, but easy to use."

The first, clearest shot of the handgun in this game.

Heather discovers the handgun on the floor of a women's clothing store. Normally, the best thing to do when encountering such an out-of-place and potentially dangerous item would be to back away and notify the authorities, but . . .

. . . she then displays a shocking lack of common sense by picking up the gun, potentially ruining vital evidence for a criminal investigation, and possibly putting her own life in danger due to her inexperience with firearms, until . . .

. . . she is forced to use it against the thing that did in the handgun's former owner.

Heather runs dry at the worst possible moment.

"Some parts of this game may be considered violent or cruel."
Heather uses her Centurion to gun down three bleating Numb Body monsters. To increase their horror value, these weak and diminuitive monsters make bleating noises like a lamb when downed.

Thanks to the magic of "gameplay mechanics," holding a handgun like a scared teenage girl is apparently enough to virtually negate the damage caused by the punches from an Insane Cancer monster, which looks like it could weigh over 300 pounds.

Claudia Wolf: "You're going to kill me? Is it really so easy for you?"
Douglas Cartland: "I've done it before."
Douglas Cartland, a private detective who becomes involved with Heather's journey, has his own Centurion, but never fires it onscreen.

As the game progresses, Heather starts to gain more confidence with the Beretta Centurion and uses a proper grip in cutscenes, but her sights are still misaligned. Furthermore, she never gains the ability to reliably aim at an enemy more than 10 feet away with her firearms.

Colt SAA

Used only by a few monstrous Nurses in Brookhaven Hospital, this revolver is used rather inexpertly (but nonetheless lethally) by those monsters, and cannot be obtained by the player. The Nurses can only fire it slowly at Heather, but never need to reload. Contrary to its name, the Bulletproof vest item will not actually stop rounds fired from this weapon at Heather. If Heather closes to melee range with a revolver-wielding Nurse, the Nurse will try to pistol-whip Heather instead.

Colt Single Action Army

A monstrous Nurse about to shoot Heather with its revolver. Yes, it can hit her dead on without the Nurse even looking at Heather, and from a far greater distance than Heather can accurately retaliate with her own firearms. Then again, Silent Hill's monsters never did play fair.

A better view of the revolver used by the monstrous Nurses.

Handgun Ammunition

Boxes of ammunition for the Beretta 92FS Centurion are the most common ammunition pickup scattered throughout the game. They normally provide 10 rounds to a box, unless the "Bullet Adjust" option (which is a multiplier for ammunition found ingame) is set higher than one in the game's options menu.

Heather Mason: "The hand outside the window . . . "
Heather showing understandable hesitation to snatch handgun ammunition from something that might just snatch back.

Shotguns

Remington Model 870

The Remington Model 870, referred to simply as the "Shotgun," makes a return from Silent Hill 2 and is first picked up in an opened gift-wrapped box in the subway level. Heather can then commandeer this grisly "gift" and blast monsters away with its buckshot. It has a sawn-off barrel, no iron sights, a tube magazine capacity of six rounds, and, for some reason, can be completely reloaded by inserting a single shell into the magazine. Keeping in line with most video game shotguns, it has enormous stopping power up close and is capable of knocking monsters down with a well-timed blast, but shotgun ammunition is fairly rare in this game. Like James Sunderland from Silent Hill 2, Heather does not properly shoulder the weapon and thus can only fire it slowly as she struggles with the weapon's recoil from every shot.

A Remington Model 870, 12 gauge.

"Holds 6 rounds of ammunition. It's hard to handle, but has great range."

The perfect "gift" for a 17-year-old girl surrounded by inhuman, bloodthirsty monsters. Happy birthday, indeed.

"Some parts of this game may be considered violent or cruel."

Heather takes out her anger at the Silent Hill cult by giving its Chapel a healthy dose of buckshot. As was the case with its Silent Hill 2 incarnation, the Remington Model 870 in this game has an incredibly wide (and incredibly unrealistic) spread, indicated by the clusters of yellow "bullet sparks" that show just where its pellets hit in this screenshot (one can be seen just to the left of the leftmost stained glass window).

Submachine Guns

MAC-10 Dressed Up As Uzi

The first fully-automatic weapon ever implemented in a Silent Hill game. The Submachine Gun can be found in the basement of Brookhaven Hospital near a bloodied wheelchair, the barrel still warm from its recent use. It has a 32 round magazine capacity and can use the sound suppressor as well, which would imply that it shares a caliber with the handgun since suppressors are manufactured for specific calibers to be effective. An unlockable version with unlimited ammunition is available as a bonus item.

Though not terribly effective for most enemy encounters anyway, the decision to include a fully-automatic weapon was still criticized by some game reviewers as placing too much emphasis on firepower within a survival horror game, and to date this game remains the only Team Silent Silent Hill title to give the player control of a fully-automatic weapon; however, Silent Hill 4: The Room has an unlockable MAC-11 submachine gun as a weapon for a friendly NPC.

"Holds 32 rounds of ammunition. Great for its continuous firing."

Heather Mason: "The wall is scarred with bullet marks. What the hell could they have been shooting at?"
The location where the MAC-10 is discovered. Judging from this nightmarish scene, it's obvious that the Submachine Gun wasn't of much use to its previous owner.

"Some parts of this game may be considered violent or cruel." Some parts?!

Other

Flamethrower

Essentially a submachine gun that projects a stream of flame. It has unlimited ammunition.