This text incorporates some imprecise spoilers for Silent Hill f.
The most recent entry within the Silent Hill sequence has quite a bit to stay as much as. Not solely is it following up on the very properly acquired Silent Hill 2 (Bloober Staff 2024) remake, however it’s the first full-length new entry within the sequence since Silent Hill Downpour (Vatra Video games) again in 2012. As I mentioned in my video essay on the sport, I feel there’s a harmful tendency to lionize Silent Hill 2 (Konami 2001) above all different entries within the Silent Hill sequence, but it surely’s not like there’s no good motive to take action. Silent Hill 2 is certainly one of my favorite video games of all time, and it tells a narrative so addictively psychological that each single second of it has that means and significance, right down to the color of the wallpaper. How on earth might Silent Hill f, made by a comparatively untested studio, do the identical? It appears like we’re again to Konami handing the reins of its flagship horror sequence to untested builders – like we’re within the post-Staff Silent period. Issues, certainly, haven’t modified on that entrance.
Silent Hill f (Neobards Leisure 2025) is already getting a considerably blended reception amongst some followers of the sequence, as a result of its perceived overreliance on fight. I’d agree that it does have an excessive amount of fight in it – and that a straightforward repair could be to tweak the enemy’s harm only a tad. Just a bit. Please, Neobards? As a result of in the intervening time, enemies can carve by means of what appears like half your healthbar in a single hit, and since it is a survival horror, therapeutic objects are skinny on the bottom. Most enemies should be run previous, however this in flip destroys my appreciation for the thick, foreboding ambiance the sport generates. There’s a lot nice stuff I’ve to disregard, as a result of because of the truth there’s solely melee fight (a pleasant change in principle!) I’m all the time at risk once I combat an enemy. And since fight is so unforgiving, it appears like a foul thought to combat anybody that I don’t must combat.
Motion horror isn’t a foul factor. I find it irresistible when video games aren’t afraid to allow you to rise up shut and private with the monsters – offering there’s house to really maneuver round them. The sport supplies that house early on, with a tasteful restraint on what number of monsters it deploys. I’m a few third of the best way by means of the sport in line with associates of mine, and already the variety of monsters feels overwhelming, and it’s an issue that may worsen, apparently. I form of dread this flip, as a result of I feel on paper it really works to sabotage the dreamlike storytelling and atmosphere of Silent Hill.
However. A lot of the criticism that I’m seeing truly appears like it’s ripped straight from the early reactions to Silent Hill 4: The Room (Konami 2004). A number of the criticism I’ve written above might slot right into a assessment of that recreation, I feel. The Room is full of tons of monsters, it ditches the fog, and tells a narrative set exterior of Silent Hill correct. In different phrases, that recreation took a wildly completely different flip from the earlier entries within the Silent Hill sequence, and in addition occurred to be the final one developed in-house at Konami for fairly a while. The divisive response to Silent Hill 4 (which has mellowed a little bit in recent times) has left Silent Hill f susceptible to the identical therapy. The argument about “what Silent Hill is” will rage on for so long as there are followers of the sequence, I feel. Is it a narrative about cults? About foggy cities? Concerning the eponymous city of Silent Hill itself? Is it all the time a narrative about one individual unpacking their very own trauma? Or about unpacking another person’s? As I alluded to in my video, I imagine that Silent Hill can and must be an anthological sequence that tackles completely different modes of gameplay, completely different themes, and completely different protagonists. Silent Hill 4 is a superb recreation, and I additionally assume I’ll rank Silent Hill f very extremely in my estimation once I’ve completed it, and had time to sit down and give it some thought for some time. However the moment-to-moment gameplay, once I’m studying it, feels as irritating as The Room’s very early subway escalator part, the place you climb an impossibly lengthy escalator whereas being attacked by ambushing enemies that may knock you again down the escalator. However that’s a query of motion impacting the horror. How about criticisms that Silent Hill ought to keep in that foggy American city?
Merely put, I feel that to insist that Silent Hill should solely take care of tales that middle American experiences is to do a disservice to the varied different tales that may be instructed with the identical framework. I feel Silent Hill f, up to now, is coping with an analogous construction to that of Silent Hill 2 – that of unpacking trauma in a foggy city, whereas working into numerous unreliable characters alongside the best way, who by no means actually appear to have the ability to assist in the best way that we wish them to. The ambiance of Silent Hill f gripped me proper from the beginning. The cutscenes are immaculately put collectively, with characters usually out of body in simply the suitable means, our grip on actuality already a bit tenuous from the beginning. We don’t have all of the necessary particulars, so we’re left to flail a bit in confusion. That in flip pushes us on, deeper into the foggy streets of Ebisugoaka – that means “Warrior’s Hill” or “Watchman’s Hill”. This rural Japanese city, left destitute after World Warfare II and the mining business abandoning the city, has left aimless younger individuals and numerous retired folks struggling on. They stay conventional lives, which harms the sport’s protagonist, Hinako. She have to be about fifteen years outdated, but she is already feeling the strain to undertake femininity, to carry out womanhood accurately. She will be able to now not play along with her male finest good friend, Shu, and should speak to him correctly, utilizing the proper phrases.
Silent Hill f, nonetheless, has a difficulty in that up to now I’m discovering the characters pretty clear. Characters in Silent Hill aren’t all the time precisely refined, however they undergo arcs more often than not. Heather begins off Silent Hill 3 as a scared teenage woman, and ends it as a self-determined lady. Angela in Silent Hill 2 doesn’t have an initially clear motive from the primary assembly, however as issues crescendo, the tragedy of her character turns into clear. In Silent Hill f, the 4 important characters all have pretty normal, identifiable roles within the narrative. They’re basic archetypes that up to now haven’t been subverted – Rinko is the jealous one who desires Shu, Shu is the reliable finest good friend who doesn’t care that Hinako is a woman, Sakuko is the… “one who dies first”, as a good friend of mine memorably put it.
The sport – written by well-known online game author Ryukishi07 – is unexpectedly unreserved. Whereas I haven’t performed any of his earlier video games, although I feel I ought to now, even the monsters really feel a bit overexplained. Akira Yamaoka returns to compose and he does an unimaginable job of it, as regular. Director Al Yang has achieved a very good job channeling J-horror into Silent Hill’s formulation for probably the most half, although I feel perhaps that’s why individuals are having a tough time with it. Historically, Silent Hill is a fusion of American horror and Japanese horror, the spectres and existentialism of ghostly tales positioned in an American context. That gave the whole lot this odd, disjointed, dreamlike, ethereal, disturbing, lovely really feel. Silent Hill f, its narrative context positioned instantly in Japan, loses that American focus, however I feel features quite a bit for it. It permits that directness of storytelling that up to now I feel hasn’t had me as , but in addition permits for us to see how the fog and trauma of Silent Hill manifests in different cultural contexts, with different characters. Hinako is younger – perhaps as younger as fifteen – and viewing her psyche by means of her monsters is a captivating expertise.
The monster designs actually are nice, and though I’m not normally a fan of cutscenes introducing monsters, right here it actually works since you get a pleasant sluggish pan of the grisly particulars. The primary enemy, a mannequin-like doll with disjointed ball-joint limbs, is roofed with nasty scars, and we get to see all of them because it jerks round with gorgeously disturbing animations. Different monsters are equally grotesque, although none are as satisfying to combat as that first enemy. Scarecrows manufactured from schoolchildren’s our bodies are additionally disturbing and gratifying enemies to combat as they ambush you. The sport’s puzzles up to now are fascinating and I feel satisfying to work out and puzzle over. I’ve seen some individuals go on the scarecrow puzzle, and whereas I initially agreed, I performed it by means of once more and located that the clues made sense. The place I used to be failing in my interpretation was that I used to be simply taking a look at particular person scarecrows reasonably than how they’re positioned in relation to 1 one other. It’s a cool puzzle and options after all a improbable ambiance and extra disturbing enemies. I’m a little bit disillusioned on the lack of indoor “dungeon” environments as different Silent Hill video games are likely to characteristic (Midwich Elementary in SH1, the hospitals, the mall in SH3, and so forth) – up to now I’ve simply discovered the college. I hope there are extra to come back, as a result of I do assume that’s when these video games are at their finest, while you’re completely immersed within the logic and magnificence of a single place. However I suppose general the logic is that of Ebisugoaka, and that logic is entrancing up to now certainly.
Once I end Silent Hill f, I’ll be again to write down one other piece on it! I hope it is going to be a “You Ought to Play” reasonably than a “Silent Hill f is bizarre” publish. However… we will see.
