The survival horror genre has been lacking in the last decade or so. While remakes of Resident Evil games and jump-scare-driven Alien VR games have tried to fill the void, and they’re both good experiences, having a classic survival horror game construct featuring modern gaming amenities and a fresh new story has been desperately needed. And folks, I think we got one.
Silent Hill f from developer NeoBards Entertainment and publisher Konami hit the scene today. It brings to light a new tale for the series, while implementing the familiar gameplay elements that made the original series a classic, as well as frustrating and frightening. Steeped in heavy narrative, while playing on gamers’ every sense, Silent Hill f does a wonderful job of fitting perfectly in with some of the best Silent Hill games.
So, sit back, make sure you have a repair kit and a steel pipe handy, and let’s delve into this horror show of a game.
Story
The story revolves around a schoolgirl named Shimizu Hinako, a loner who fits more in with the boys than she does with the girls. She is different, more rugged, and far more self-sufficient than most kids her age. Not an easily accepted person in 1960s Japan.
The story begins with Hinako’s town of Ebisugaoka having a normal day until a fog rolls in. The fog engulfs the town and brings with it disease and filth that shape into horror-filled situations and terrifying monsters. To compound the confusion, the townfolks disappear, leaving Hinako and a handful of friends confused and afraid of what has become of everyone, as well as what is to become of them.
Silent Hill f’s storyline fits perfectly into the Silent Hill family. It’s creepy, creates a bevy of questions that need answering, and leaves you feeling uncertain about what is real and what is not. To match its brethren even better, the game doesn’t show its story secrets until it absolutely must, and even then, the game leaves you with the possibility of what you assume isn’t correct.
In other words, the story is steeped in horror and unsettling plot points that don’t reveal their hand until the last second. It’s like watching a David Fincher film, where you just know that when everything is feeling right, there is bound to be something terribly wrong by the end of the journey.
In short, it’s a great story that wears the Silent Hill moniker quite well.
Scary and creepy
Yes, there is a difference.
Silent Hill f brings a scary and creepy atmosphere to the gaming experience by using sound, messed-up visuals, and a sense of uncertainty through its gameplay elements. It’s every bit of what you should expect from a survival horror experience, and a bit more with those well-thought-through elements.
Let’s start with the creepy part of the game first.
Silent Hill f is like stepping into a true horror film that never gives you a chance to catch your breath. Honestly, that’s the charm of the entire series, which is created through several different horror elements. The game contains the old familiar SH visuals, foggy lands, unsettling locations, and a nifty amount of silence that gives way to creepy-ass monsters.
NeoBards Entertainment did a phenomenal job of taking a normal rural town in Japan and converting it into a real horror show through effects and destroyed landscapes. They nailed making the entire visual experience of this game uncomfortable, using tricks such as limiting the player’s range of view with claustrophobic alleyways, while throwing in a constant sense of dread through weather and environment effects (fog, rain, etc.). The horror drama is sold through every piece of Silent Hill f’s visual prowess, which uses every last drop of the PlayStation 5 Pro hardware. You get ray tracing, detailed textures, and enough visual disparity to keep your eyes occupied. If you wanted to be a part of a decimated, horror-filled town full of baddies around every corner, then you’re in the right place.
To put an exclamation point on the visuals, the game also brings some clever sound design to the experience. If you have the luxury of owning headphones, I recommend putting them on during gameplay. Sounds from ‘things’ circling you or slowly creeping toward you are lush and flush when they need to hit to emphasize the visuals and remind you audibly that you’re in a truly fucked up situation. The audio is precisely designed and executed, which adds to the entire horror scenario that players are gaming within.
Visuals and audio combined, what you get is a support system to the story being told. If you weren’t sold on a town devastated by an evil presence, then both audio and visual will push that narrative to the forefront and remind you that this isn’t a good situation, and to be on your guard at all times. From the moment you begin the game until it ends, the creepy-factor of Silent Hill f stands firmly at ‘11’.
The scary part of Silent Hill lies within its gameplay system. While the presentation and story are great, as well as the design of messed-up creatures and life-threatening situations, the game has a backbone that magnifies everything. One of the more prominent pieces of that backbone is the controls.
As you navigate Shimizu Hinako through the twists and turns of the story, the controls to keep her alive tend to complicate and exacerbate her situation. Keeping with the Silent Hill series control theme, the controls are stiff and unforgiving, if not downright inaccurate at times. While shaped for modern-day gaming, the controls still have that loosey-goosey movement to them, where it’s easy to over- or undercompensate reactions and actions to monsters or situations. For example, when trying to navigate Shimizu Hinako around an area, the controls act in a stop-turn-go type of manner. These controls are akin to what you would find in Resident Evil 4, as turning around or being accurate with one’s aim with a weapon takes a bit more patience and precision. Much like the story and presentation of the game, this type of control scheme simply makes the experience uncomfortable and uncertain.
All of this is by design, as it creates a sense of insecurity and a lack of faith in accuracy, which just compounds the horror theme of the game. If you ever feel stress when watching a horror film, when someone is clumsy, or when they can’t get a weapon to work perfectly, then you will easily understand what NeoBards Entertainment was doing with the controls of the game. It’s a piece of gameplay that is purposeful and simply magnifies the stressfulness of Hinako’s situation.
To make things worse, in a good way, Silent Hill f took a page from Metal Gear Solid 3 and decided to give weapons a finite lifespan. This means that a favorite weapon that a player may use, especially early in the game, is eventually going to wear down and either need replacing or repairing. What this creates is one simple question: Do you want to use this weapon on this enemy at this time? That simple question creates a hefty amount of forced player strategy during the game. The game will force the player to decide whether to fight or flee, as killing one monster might lead to something worse down the road, which means you’ll need to preserve that weapon as best as you can. It’s such a simple gameplay design that is frustrating as it is effective. Mixed with the loosey-goosey controls, this provides an additional layer of insecurity, which, as you may have guessed, further magnifies the horror the game is trying to perpetuate.
As someone who enjoys having reckless fun in horror games, this is the opposite of what I want, as it puts more stress on decision-making. There is no willy-nilly ‘kill-everything-in-sight’ moment in this game. Players must decide on how best to use their weapon and when. It doesn’t help that additional weapons are scarce throughout the game, so keeping hold of one as long as possible is a go-to strategy. Running is sometimes the best weapon.
The only safety net with weapons is having the ability to repair them. Occasionally, players will find a repair kit lying around that will restore some weapons to full health. It’s a temporary fix, and these kits are far and few between. It will certainly get players out of a bind sometimes, but guaranteeing finding more of the repair kits is unreliable at best.
Now, while a mysterious story, finite weapons, and horror-filled presentation are nice, and that could have been it for the game, and it still would have worked, the devs took this experience a step further. The inclusion of psychological horror and trying to keep Hinako’s sanity in check is another aspect of this game that counts for something.
There is literally a sanity meter on the hub that keeps that aspect of Hinako’s experience in check. It goes down when certain monsters unleash psychological attacks, while also acting as first-level protection for Hinako’s health. It’s basically the first meter that depletes when a psychological attack is unleashed.
To add more usefulness to this meter, if you hold down L2, the sanity meter can be used to create a more focused attack on enemies, delivering a powerful hit that damages them severely. The catch with the focused attack? If you wear down your sanity meter using it, then any psychological attack from monsters hurts Hinako’s health bar, which can lead to a quick death in the game.
It’s another layer of strategy that is paired with finite weapons, which makes decision-making more complicated than expected. The benefits do outweigh the cost, but only if the monster type is taken into consideration. Basic monsters that are stabby probably deserve basic attack strategies. More powerful monsters that reveal themselves later in the game are brought down with the help of this focused attack. Players must pick and choose when best to use this feature.
If this wasn’t enough to make the game deeper, then how about buffs? There are objects in the game called Omamori, which can be acquired and equipped through prayer stand stops (the place where you save your game). Omamori can be obtained by making an offering at these prayer stands with items players pick up along the journey that they can’t personally use. At the very least, finding offerings means that players will be exploring areas in the game, and thus, the game feels a lot bigger and less restrictive than it is.
Anyway, once players make offerings, they get currency in return, which can be used to purchase Omamori. The Omamori come in a variety of flavors, as some can help with the player’s health, increase attacks, and even protect Hinako more. These are simple buffs that add more player decision to the mix and make the gameplay far more tolerable when Hinako is in a sticky situation. Much like everything else talked about, the inclusion of this only stands to make the gameplay more complex and strategy-driven, and it does just that. It’s a good addition to the gameplay mix.
Still a puzzling experience
The game features a lot fewer puzzles and far more action than the typical Silent Hill experience. Compared to Silent Hill 2, which sent players on errands with the occasional creepy monster showing up to battle, Silent Hill f seems to focus far more on fighting than throwing a brain-teaser at the player. That is a part of the game that I noticed right out of the gate, as Hinako will have to fight monsters more than just navigate through buildings and solve puzzles.
Honestly, I prefer this lopsided gameplay, as I think having more of a Resident Evil feel, where fear and jump-scares lie everywhere, is far more engaging and entertaining than sitting around wondering where you’re going to find a key to unlock door B. At the very least, it forces players to keep their guard up through the entire experience.
Now, that said, that doesn’t mean this game doesn’t feature puzzles or some back-and-forth journeys to find items. That is still prominent and respectful to the Silent Hill design. For example, there is a part of the game where you must locate a key that a teacher dropped to progress forward. The key’s location is hinted at through notes left behind and visual clues. It takes a good amount of time to find the keys, but those types of moments don’t outweigh Hinako’s fighting ones. It’s not balanced, but I prefer it this way. It’s more action-oriented, which makes it far more entertaining than expected. I hope they keep this trend up.
Overall, you get a well-thought-through amount of gameplay with Silent Hill f. It brings the horror, a solid storyline, fantastic visuals, and atmosphere, while also delivering what players would expect from a Silent Hill game. In short, it’s a perfect addition to the SH family, and a welcome one.
On that sweet note, let’s wrap up this review.
Conclusion
Silent Hill f from developer NeoBards Entertainment and publisher Konami is a fresh take on the series. It features an unsettling story that honors the Silent Hill franchise, while bringing a fair amount of deep gameplay and fun fighting that will keep the experience fresh.
