I've tried so friggin hard to get into the SH series, it's touted as storyline of the century, and the whole life/death/pleasue settings of the 3 which so many people scream about persuaded me to get 3, I'm about 3 hours into it and there is honestly about 6 lines of dialogue (i'm just out of the sewers and am in some construction building or apartments). The monsters are really shit (other than pyramidhead from the 2nd one) and look like someones tried too hard to make them look irregular and the puzzles are mediocre and uninspiring. I'm going to work through the 3rd one just to see what all the fuss is about, and most probably will be getting 4, because curiousity will get the better of me.
If anyone has any resources on the storyline or can give me a webpage with the entire story dissected for reading it'd be good, other than that I'm currently stuck with SH3 and Splinter Cell2 to play until something more enjoyable (*cough* Fable *cough) comes out.