One could argue that developer Bloober Team’s modernization of a survival horror classic was a very safe decision, but there are also many who would claim that last year’s Silent Hill 2 was an incredibly well-executed recreation of the 2001 original. In contrast, Neobards Entertainment’s Silent Hill f is a far more ambitious project. With a compelling protagonist who defies the series’ tendency to focus on gloomy, middle-aged men and keeps its firearms holstered in favor of a fighting system that is solely melee-focused, it provides a brand-new narrative in a wholly alien world.
Silent Hill F is a triumph in practically every other aspect and is undoubtedly one of the best new games in the series since the PlayStation 2 period, even though its pipe-swinging combat was unreliable and clumsy, forcing me to smile rather than smash it to pieces.
Every little detail combines to evoke a strong sense of place, from the muddy rice fields to slosh through to the ramune soda bottles to gulp down and the puzzles inspired by local folklore to solve, some of which proved to be seriously challenging for my ignorant Australian brain. (I’ve tracked down plenty of keys and crests in the survival horror genre over the years, but I’ve never needed to put my controller down and Google what a kudzu plant looks like before.)
The muddy rice fields to splash through, the ramune soda bottles to down, and the puzzles based on local legend to solve—some of which were extremely difficult for my uninformed Australian brain—all work together to create a strong sense of location. (Over the years, I’ve located many keys and crests in the survival horror genre, but I’ve never had to put down my controller to search up the definition of a kudzu plant on Google.)
Additionally, it’s the first mainline Silent Hill story in a long time that gives us the opportunity to fully inhabit a primary character—in this case, high school student Hinako Shimizu—with any kind of significant depth. Hinako, the family’s black sheep, is obviously the victim of her submissive, enabling mother and her violent, alcoholic father. As her tranquil village takes on an increasingly eerie appearance, Hinako’s numerous psychological scars materialize into frightening physical threats in true Silent Hill fashion, compelling her to change from a helpless damsel in distress to a resolute agent of her own fate.
From there, Silent Hill’s narrative boldly delves into the intricate themes of drug addiction, child abuse, and gender discrimination, among many other horrifying human sufferings. Through the discovery of private correspondence from Hinako’s school pals and her growing exposure to evil visual metaphors, the story progressively reveals the underlying causes of her suffering.
One especially gory sequence in this film makes the notorious pinky-severing scene from Heavy Rain appear like a paper cut.
There is a particularly gory scene in this that makes Heavy Rain’s famous pinky-severing scene seem like a paper cut. What follows is an absolutely captivating adventure that is tautly paced and full of surprises, including some truly unsettling moments of body horror and torture. All of this culminates in a genuinely terrifying finale at the end of Hinako’s nine-hour adventure, which left me with a lot of unsettling things to think about and a strong desire to return to New Game+ in order to investigate Hinako’s other possible outcomes through the four more endings that can be unlocked.
The advent of numerous terrifying creatures that pursue Hinako at every turn coincides with the fog that descends over Ebisugaoka and the entanglement of its enigmatic deserted alleyways by blood-red blossoms and veiny tendrils. Some of the neighborhood nasties, such as the mannequin-like dolls who reach for your throat with kitchen knives from random corners, seem quite typical for a Silent Hill campaign. But there are also some inspired new creature creations, like the twisted scarecrows that are based on Hinako’s classmates. They seem to be playing a more stab-happy version of schoolyard statues, changing from contorted stationary poses to startling lunges whenever you turn your back on them.
Later, some very repulsive, slack-mawed creatures try to overwhelm you by giving birth to wailing demon kinds while covered in bulbous bellies that resemble a giant cluster of decaying flesh grapes. Without a doubt, Silent Hill asked someone to hold its can of Asahi after taking one glance at the series’ commitment to evoking the most grotesque monstrosities possible.
I only wish I had enjoyed fighting these amazing creatures as much as I enjoyed admiring their incredibly hideous appearances, as facing them is typically neither enjoyable nor particularly scary.
It’s just annoying, and this doesn’t seem like the kind of survival horror where you’re meant to feel outmatched and stay out of fights as much as possible—at least not beyond the game’s opening hours. There isn’t a single shotgun or pistol in Silent Hill F to fight these animals with, in contrast to many other Silent Hill adventures. Instead, Hinako can only carry three breakable melee weapons, such as baseball bats and crowbars, that she finds around her. This makes sense given the setting, as it would be more difficult to find firearms in a Japanese mountainside village than it would be in the series’ typical American setting.
Because of this, the purely close-quarters combat encounters mostly entail delivering a combination of light and heavy attacks as well as dashes and dodges to avoid incoming blows. All of these actions deplete Hinako’s already stingy stamina bar, temporarily preventing her from performing any of these actions if you let it run out. Additionally, you can use the focus ability to perform special charged-up hits, make counters easier, and even block if you’re wielding a heavy weapon like the sledgehammer. However, this ability also has a cost: it depletes your sanity meter, which leaves Hinako’s health bar open to psychological and physical attacks.
Due in large part to Silent Hill 2’s fear and instinct-driven point-and-shoot simplicity, I never really found a comfortable groove with Silent Hill F’s relatively stilted and repetitive combat because having to constantly monitor your health, stamina, sanity, and the condition of your weapons felt like a bit too much to balance for my tastes.
Although these attributes can be slightly improved over time with the help of buffs and consumables you gather, and mastering a flawless dodge does grant you a useful boost in stamina, Hinako would frequently run out of breath more quickly than an asthmatic in a smoker’s lounge, forcing me to sort of awkwardly shuffle backwards away from a snarling enemy while I waited for her to remember how her arms worked. There were innumerable instances where Hinako would obstinately halt between blows for prolonged periods of time as I angrily pressed the attack button in vain, even when she still had plenty of energy left in her school outfit.
However, my primary issue with Silent Hill f’s melee fighting was not adjusting to the stamina bar’s restrictiveness. It was also not the case that, even though adversaries could frequently attack me directly through scenery, my slow, energy-draining swings would frequently clang innocuously into adjacent walls. It wasn’t the way monsters would sometimes eat chunks off my health bar when I was helplessly trapped in animations like entering a doorway, or how the lock-on target switching seemed incredibly unreliable when you were up against larger groups of enemies in the second half of the campaign. No, the fact that fighting in Silent Hill is all danger and no return is what I dislike most about it.
In contrast to games like Dark Souls, where you can level up your character by killing enemies, or Resident Evil 4, where newly defeated enemies frequently drop healing herbs or essential ammo boxes, winning a battle in Silent Hill f probably means losing some of your health bar and undoubtedly causing some damage to your obnoxious, brittle weapons. (Hinako can’t use her bare hands to fight.) The main difference is that I found the breathless and instinctive thrills of Silent Hill 2’s shotgun-toting scraps to be its own reward. This was also true of last year’s Silent Hill 2 remake, if you replace the wear and tear on your breakable bats and sickles with a loss of ammunition.
I chose to simply avoid enemy interactions wherever possible because I didn’t find the fighting in Silent Hill to be nearly as exciting or urgent. This was especially true of the more formidable opponents who could withstand half a lead pipe’s worth of overhead swings before they died. (Really, I would anticipate something to suddenly spill Skittles packages all over the floor during a birthday party if I had to vigorously smack it eight or nine times with a large stick before it collapsed.)
The fact that combat in Silent Hill is all risk and no return is my biggest complaint.
Considering that most enemies can be easily sidestepped with the dodge button and that many of these easily distracted demons abandon the chase the moment you slip around a corner and break the line of sight, as if they were hellborn infants who haven’t fully grasped object permanence, this wasn’t too difficult to accomplish for the most part. As soon as I could, I began avoiding battle by just racing past each ghoul on my way to the next plot objective or by hiding in a side street to get supplies before hoofing it back.
There were long passages in the first half where I was hurrying along a sped-up run-through of Ebisugaoka that seemed more Benny Hill than Silent Hill, but this passive strategy of taking advantage of the enemies’ weak AI only worked for so long. In fact, there are more and more repetitive gauntlet-run slogs in the story’s final hours, where the path forward is completely blocked until you kill every creature in the area. No matter how persistently its truly menacing ambient music got, it was difficult for the town’s progressively depressing atmosphere to fully get under my skin because of this, but at least I was enjoying myself instead of getting angry.
Verdict
There are lots of twisted freaks to torture you with, a fascinatingly dark plot to discover, and a brand-new Japanese location to explore in Silent Hill F. All of it made me wish I were a little more infatuated with a fighting system that, although initially seeming too tedious to be enjoyable, eventually left me feeling too overwhelmed to be constantly afraid.
Although I respect creator Neobards Entertainment for taking a risk, the game hasn’t quite arrived where I’d like it to, resembling a laborious lunge from Hinako’s annoyingly brittle lead pipe. Nevertheless, this most recent mainstream edition in Konami’s groundbreaking survival horror series receives a grade higher than a Silent Hill F—probably closer to a B— thanks to some amazing art design, creative puzzles, and an engaging lead character.
