Silent Hill f Review

It’s additionally the primary time in a very long time {that a} mainline Silent Hill story has allowed us to take management of a lead character with any type of significant depth, on this case highschool pupil Hinako Shimizu. The black sheep of her household, Hinako is clearly the sufferer of an abusive, alcoholic father and her subservient enabler of a mom. In typical Silent Hill trend, her many psychological scars manifest themselves into menacing bodily threats as her sleepy village adopts an more and more creepy visage, forcing Hinako to develop into a doggedly decided agent of her personal future slightly than a mere damsel in misery. From there, Silent Hill f’s story confidently explores the complicated themes of gender discrimination, little one abuse, and drug dependency – amongst many different horrific human afflictions – progressively teasing out the foundation causes of Hinako’s torment by way of the uncovering of personal letters from her college mates and more and more frequent encounters with malevolent visible metaphors.

What unfolds is an totally absorbing journey, tautly paced and full of surprises together with some moments of genuinely unsettling physique horror and torture – significantly, there’s one significantly grisly second in right here that makes Heavy Rain’s notorious pinky-severing scene look like little greater than a paper reduce. All of it builds to a totally harrowing conclusion on the finish of Hinako’s nine-hour journey that left me with loads of disturbing ideas to course of, in addition to a powerful urge to go again into New Sport+ to discover Hinako’s different potential fates additional by way of the 4 extra endings to unlock.

Soup Foggy Slog

As a fog descends on Ebisugaoka and blood-red flowers and veiny tendrils begin to entangle its mysteriously deserted streets, so begins the emergence of varied nightmarish creatures that hound Hinako at each flip. A few of the neighbourhood nasties appear fairly fog normal for a Silent Hill marketing campaign, just like the mannequin-esque dolls that go to your throat with kitchen knives from round unchecked corners. Nevertheless, there are a good variety of impressed new creature creations too, such because the twisted scarecrows modelled on Hinako’s schoolmates that shift from contorted stationary poses to startling lunges everytime you flip your again to them, like they’re taking part in a extra stab-happy sport of schoolyard statues. Later there are some really disgusting, slack-mawed beasts lined in bulbous bellies like an unlimited cluster of rotting flesh grapes, that give beginning to howling demon sorts in an try and overwhelm you. There’s little doubt that Silent Hill f took one take a look at the sequence’ dedication to conjuring up essentially the most repulsive monstrosities attainable, and requested somebody to carry its can of Asahi.

I simply want I had as a lot enjoyable preventing these magnificent monsters as I did marveling at their exceptionally ghastly types, as a result of truly taking them on often isn’t enjoyable and it isn’t significantly scary. It’s simply annoying – and this doesn’t look like the kind of survival horror the place you’re presupposed to really feel outmatched and keep away from fight at any time when attainable, no less than not past its opening hours. Not like many earlier Silent Hill tales, there isn’t a single shotgun or pistol to be present in Silent Hill f to battle these beasts with. As a substitute Hinako is simply able to carrying as much as three breakable melee weapons like crowbars and baseball bats that she finds in her environment – which is sensible in context, because you’d assume that firearms can be tougher to encounter in a mountainside village in Japan than they’d be within the sequence’ typical dwelling in the USA.

Consequently, the strictly close-quarters fight encounters largely contain delivering a mixture of gentle and heavy assaults in addition to performing dashes and dodges to evade incoming blows, all of which sap Hinako’s aggravatingly stingy stamina bar and momentarily curb her means to carry out any of those actions do you have to permit it to deplete. There’s additionally a spotlight means that permits you to pull off particular charged-up hits and simpler counters, and even blocks in the event you’re holding a heavy weapon just like the sledgehammer, however this too comes at a price – draining your sanity meter which, as soon as emptied, makes Hinako’s well being bar susceptible to each bodily and shrieking psychological assaults.

Having to continuously maintain tabs in your well being, stamina, sanity, and the state of your weapons, all felt like a bit an excessive amount of to steadiness for my tastes – actually off the again of Silent Hill 2’s concern and instinct-driven point-and-shoot simplicity – and I by no means actually settled into an fulfilling groove with Silent Hill f’s comparatively stilted and repetitive fight consequently. These attributes can admittedly be enhanced barely over time with buffs and consumables you acquire, and nailing an ideal dodge does reward you with a helpful stamina increase, however extra usually than I’d have appreciated Hinako would run out of puff sooner than an asthmatic in a smoker’s lounge and I’d be compelled to type of awkwardly shuffle backwards away from a snarling enemy whereas I waited for her to recollect how her arms labored. Even when there was nonetheless loads of stamina up her college uniform’s sleeve, there have been numerous occasions the place Hinako would simply stubbornly pause between strikes for prolonged durations whereas I furiously pumped the assault button in useless.

Dealing with the restrictive nature of the stamina bar wasn’t my principal downside with Silent Hill f’s melee fight, although. Nor was it that my gradual and energy-sapping swings would usually clang harmlessly into close by partitions regardless of the actual fact enemies had been usually in some way capable of hit me immediately by way of surroundings. It additionally wasn’t the way in which the lock-on goal switching appeared frustratingly unreliable when the marketing campaign’s second half places you up in opposition to enemy teams in larger numbers, or how monsters would sometimes hack chunks off my well being bar once I was defenselessly trapped in animations like getting into a doorway. No, my largest gripe with Silent Hill f’s preventing is that it’s all danger and no reward.

Not like, say, Darkish Souls, the place you earn XP from killing enemies with a purpose to degree up your character, or Resident Evil 4 the place freshly dispatched foes will usually drop very important ammo bins or therapeutic herbs, successful a battle in Silent Hill f means probably dropping a few of your well being bar and positively performing some injury to your annoyingly brittle weapons. (Hinako is unable to combat together with her naked fingers.) This was additionally true of final yr’s Silent Hill 2 remake – in the event you substitute a lack of ammo rather than put on and tear in your breakable bats and sickles, that’s – however the main distinction is that I discovered the breathless and intuitive thrills of Silent Hill 2’s shotgun-toting scraps to be its personal reward. Since I didn’t discover Silent Hill f’s preventing to be wherever close to as pressing or thrilling, I opted to only straight-up keep away from enemy encounters wherever I might – particularly the extra heavy-set foes that may take up half a lead pipe’s price of overhead swings earlier than they expired. (Significantly, if I’ve to make use of an enormous stick with violently smack one thing eight or 9 occasions earlier than it caves in, I’d no less than anticipate it to instantly spill packets of Skittles everywhere in the ground at a party.)

Surprisingly, this wasn’t too exhausting to do for essentially the most half given that the majority enemies may be comfortably juked round with the dodge button, and plenty of of those simply distracted demons quit the chase the moment you slip round a nook and break the road of sight, as if they’re hellborn infants who’re but to totally comprehend object permanence. I rapidly began skipping fight wherever attainable by simply operating previous every ghoul on the way in which to my subsequent story goal, or ducking right into a facet road to seek for provides earlier than hoofing it proper again.

This passive technique of exploiting the enemies’ weak AI solely labored for therefore lengthy, and certainly within the story’s last hours there are an growing quantity of repetitive gauntlet-run slogs the place the trail ahead is totally blocked till you kill each creature within the neighborhood, however there have been prolonged stretches within the first half the place I used to be hustling alongside a sped-up run-through of Ebisugaoka that appeared extra Benny Hill than Silent Hill. That made it powerful for the city’s more and more bleak environment to utterly work its means below my pores and skin, irrespective of how insistent its genuinely ominous ambient audio grew to become, however no less than I used to be having enjoyable slightly than feeling pissed off.

Phantasmic Mr. Fox

In the meantime, the Torii gate and lantern-lined shrine realm that Hinako drifts out and in of over the course of her journey does mitigate a few of these fight points, but it surely additionally progressively empowers her to some extent the place preventing turns into arguably too straightforward at occasions. Visits to this ethereal otherworld, which offers a sinister but surprisingly stunning distinction to the village’s more and more festering streets, sees Hinako slowly slip below the spell of a morally ambiguous thriller man carrying a fox masks, who’s given the decidedly Kojima-esque identify of ‘Fox Masks’.

Early on, Hinako is given an indestructible dagger and polearm in these sections, permitting her to sort out the identical monster mobs from the true world minus the danger of every weapon splintering to bits in her fingers mid-scrap. Nevertheless, by the story’s midpoint she’s gained the supernatural means to siphon the soul energy from every enemy she kills and channel it right into a type of beast mode that makes her overpowered and invulnerable for brief bursts at a time. To be truthful, Hinako’s otherworld evolution does make sense thematically, however her newfound, fox-powered preventing means is sort of at odds with the basics of survival horror, since unleashing it made me really feel much less like a susceptible little purple using hood and extra like the large dangerous wolf.

The shrine realm additionally introduced some frustrations with Silent Hill f’s stock system to the floor. Having restricted pocket area in a survival horror journey is a given, however I want that there had been an merchandise storage field of some kind at every Shinto shrine save level in order that I might carry consumables that made extra sense within the ornate otherworld than they did within the village. For instance, I tended to stockpile the toolkits required to restore weapons out in Hinako’s hometown, however since they had been ineffective within the shrine realm I used to be compelled to both offload them utterly or sacrifice some treasured stock slots to carry onto them till Hinako returned to the true world. I imply, her assortment of earthbound weapons are there ready for her upon her reemergence from the shrine realm, why not the toolkits too?

Having mentioned that, Silent Hill f’s otherworld does no less than play host to the majority of its boss fights, which supply bursts of flashy spectacle on par with different melee-focussed adventures like Elden Ring or Lies of P, however fortunately with out being practically as punishing to beat – no less than, not on the usual fight issue setting. Once more, there are some actually placing character designs on show right here, such because the aggressive apparition that shrouds the sector with a purple mist to masks its sneaky teleportations, assaults from lengthy distance with a spiked flail, and wraps Hinako in a bear hug to gnaw on her face in the event you get too shut. Whereas these battles nonetheless depend on the identical sluggish slashing and dodging as each different enemy encounter, they no less than present a bit extra in the way in which of strategic depth.

Extra importantly, the majority of the shrine realm’s ranges are structured as elaborate puzzle bins which are persistently satisfying to resolve, from disorientating switch-based mazes to confoundingly cryptic treasure hunts. The truth is, normally the puzzles in Silent Hill f do a wonderful job of momentarily sidelining fight for a extra cerebral problem, and likewise serving as essential storytelling units. Taking part in on the exhausting puzzle issue setting, I used to be usually compelled to pore over each scrap of knowledge in Hinako’s journal for clues, and there are some actually intelligent puzzle sequences to discover right here, resembling amassing scattered calendar pages in Hinako’s household dwelling after which utilizing them to leap by way of totally different time durations to seek out the disturbing ghosts from her previous. If the following Silent Hill focuses extra on this type of factor than on aggravating fight, it can actually be onto one thing.