I’ve quite a lot of sophisticated emotions about this sport. I believe it should warrant extra time and extra reflection earlier than I can pen something extra coherent than what follows. However it’s a sport worthy of research, worthy of research, and worthy of your time, nonetheless.
4) SILENT HILL F | NeoBard Studios 2025
“No matter you select, you’ll positively remorse it.”
Since we’ve been speaking about video games that had quite a bit to stay as much as, Silent Hill f arrives on the scene of my reflection, sheepish at first, however more and more assured. It’s unashamed of its personal id, even when that id is itself irritating at instances.
The primary new, full-length survival horror Silent Hill sport since Silent Hill Downpour again in 2012, Silent Hill f additionally had the unenviable activity of following-up the very well-received Silent Hill 2 remake final 12 months. I wrote a brief article about early Silent Hill f impressions earlier this 12 months, and ideas in regards to the sport have continued to percolate in my thoughts since then. I believe it tells a great story in a genuinely daring manner. It tells a narrative about rising up as a younger girl in a conventional Japanese setting, the place that younger girl is pressured into an isolating organized marriage out of a way of responsibility and custom. It forces you to acquire the worst ending on the primary playthrough, after which calls for that you just replay the sport in its entirety repeatedly to understand the totality of its which means and the depth of its characters.
I really feel this can be the shortest article on this collection, and it’s for one, easy truth: Silent Hill f pissed off me to play. It’s a sport that claws at greatness, and I believe achieves it in narrative construction and total boldness. The performing is implausible, the cutscene course phenomenal, and the writing attention-grabbing. It held my consideration and captured my creativeness all through. It’s the gameplay that baffles me.
The opening twenty minutes of the sport are an ideal set-up. A wistful stroll by a Japanese rural setting, oddly deserted and fog-wreathed. I spent ages luxuriating in how fantastically haunted the sport felt. I loved being launched to all the characters – even when their dynamics have been all made fairly apparent proper from the beginning, the sport’s writing does sufficient to subvert that afterward. It does take a very long time to get to that subversion,and I believe that’s the place the crux of Silent Hill f’s controversy lies. Additionally it is a really, very combat-heavy sport. A few of the different Silent Hill video games are additionally combat-heavy, however the important thing distinction is you could keep away from nearly each fight encounter in traditional Silent Hill video games, with sufficient cautious maneuvering. In Silent Hill f, enemies are in all places, they usually’re quick. They pursue you and burst from round corners, typically scary inescapable grabs. When you’re in a seize, there’s nothing you are able to do however watch as Hinako, the protagonist, is mutilated in a roundabout way, which tanks your well being.
Therapeutic objects are powerful to return by – or at the very least, you must use a whole lot of them on a primary playthrough, the place threats are unsure and you may be ganged up on by groups of enemies in a sport that’s clearly designed for one-on-one fight. There are not any ranged weapons, simply quite a lot of melee weapons, a few of which may break. All the things feels calibrated to frustrate or confound you in the case of enemies, which makes fight a genuinely harmful affair. All of this is likely to be effective if a) you weren’t locked into sure troublesome encounters or b) you weren’t swarmed by a number of enemies at nearly all instances. Fight is definitely extremely pleasurable once you’re going through off towards only one foe at a time, nevertheless it’s painfully clear that the system simply doesn’t operate very nicely towards a number of combatants. The truth that it occurs so typically is hair-tearingly powerful.
However Silent Hill f appears like a pure extension and revision of the unique video games’ ambiance and ethos in different areas moreover extreme, punishing necessary fight. All the things is soaked in layers of dread. Areas are expansive but constrictive, with each secure path blocked off by some survival horror contrivance. All of this simply provides to the surreal feeling. It feels simply as eerie and haunting as among the unique video games, and I liked the sport’s puzzles for probably the most half, as they fed into the narrative and ambiance, the sport’s two sturdy factors.
Whereas the narrative isn’t completely revelatory within the context of each story ever written in each medium, it nonetheless feels necessary to see in a big-budget online game format. Hinako suffers as she is reduce off and ostracized by each necessary individual in her life, and the ache that she suffers fuels her self-loathing and ache as she bottles all of the trauma and damage as much as change into a distinct individual, elevating a masks towards the phobia she feels. By the tip of the sport, she is a modified individual, harrowed by what she’s seen, the distress she feels. One of many sport’s most harrowing scenes is an act of physique mutilation that doesn’t reduce away at an expedient second – it’s deeply uncomfortable, seeing the lengths to which Hinako will apparently go to alter herself.
The monster designs go a protracted method to promoting this sport for me. Every of the monsters hyperlinks in very nicely to the narrative’s symbolism, as any good Silent Hill monster will attempt to do.
I believe that Silent Hill f is an extremely necessary sport, nevertheless it’s additionally a really unusual one. It solely has one conventional “Silent Hill dungeon” of a great size, the varsity. The sport’s journal system factors out the sport’s symbolism in painfully apparent methods. However there’s nonetheless one thing very compelling a couple of story advised about how girls in society are managed and made to detest themselves for what they’re being made into by that very same management. It’s a horrible loop, one the place enforcement is carried out by the subjugated with none extra hate wanted from the oppressor. It’s a pivotal sport within the Silent Hill collection. Silent Hill f is an attention-grabbing, experimental leap in asking the participant to beat the sport over and over with little variation, simply to see a distinct ending and choose up some new notes that present completely different context. It deserves to be performed, however whether or not or not it should frustrate you, I believe, is as much as every particular person participant. I don’t at all times have the endurance for Silent Hill f, however one thing odd saved drawing me again in. The loop wanted coping with. The story explicitly repeats, time and time once more, echoing down historical past. Fog, blood, and monsters obscure the ache of misremembered or misunderstood trauma, earlier than a revelation that maybe has the potential to trigger much more hurt, but in addition would possibly imply, finally, liberation. Silent Hill, on the finish of the day, continues to be Silent Hill.
Sport #3
