Silent Hill f - Review

I have been looking forward to playing Silent Hill f ever since it was announced. I stayed away from as much of the promo as I could and I am now so glad I did, going into this blind was a beautiful and terrifying experience.

Silent Hill f is a break-away from the previous western influences in past Silent Hill games, focusing instead on the terrifying, yet beautiful influence of Japanese horror; from location to mythology and folklore, while still keeping the essence of what makes us love Silent Hill.

Silent Hill f is a self-contained story within the Silent Hill series, allowing both fans of Silent Hill to jump into a new story, but feel right at home (if home is a mind horror with lots of convenient steel pipes) and also a great place for new players to start.

Silent Hill f takes place in Ebisugaoka, a fictional re-imagining of 1960’s Japanese towns, with the protagonist Hinako going from living an average teenage life, to her small town being taken over by a mysterious fog that has covered the landscape in beautiful and grotesque horrors.

Will you be confused and horrified the first time playing through Silent Hill f? Yes. Does this trap you in wanting more? Yes. One of the many reasons why I’m still going after every ending the game has to offer, is because I so badly needed to know what is going on here in this town.

I really enjoy how Silent Hill f tells it’s story, is it new for this type of game, no, but it does do it really well; It’s not just watch this cut scene and read a few random pages scattered around and boom you understand what’s going on. You slowly unfold this mind-bending series of terrifying events, leaving you guessing if you’re going crazy or is this really happening. Everything from the landscape shifting to environmental details, to clothing mimicking other story revelations, has kept me engrossed in this story, coming back for another one of its five endings.

I have a few gripes with the controls and combat in Silent Hill f, a few more times than I’d like, I have gotten stuck on the corner of a step or the detail of the wall. In a horror game where you’re running away from a huge rotting monster with a giant knife, I’d like this not to happen. And maybe I’m just bad at the game but, I felt like I’d dodge an attack from a knife wielding flesh puppet and it would just home back around and drop me.

Besides the nitpicky “oh I keep getting caught on a step” my main concern/annoyance/off feeling is that I am too powerful when it comes to my ability to run up to a big spider lily covered monster and say, “now you’ll be afraid of me” and proceed to beat it into the ground and get some health back after I’ve done so. I feel more afraid when there is no monsters around then when there is a horde of them coming to slice me into tiny pieces. I will say I haven’t played on Lost in the Fog difficulty for combat, so maybe that will change how I feel about combat.

As much as I say about the combat so far not being difficult or scary, the mental and psychological horror is where f really shines with the heavy focus on Japanese folklore, culture and their main tag line “beauty in terror, and terror from beauty” is present in every aspect of the game. Where at first the feeling of unease from reading a disturbing note, to the skin crawling sensation after a horrific scene unfold in front of your eyes, to a second later you can’t help but think that this is still a stunning picturesque scene.

Horror games don’t freak me out nearly as much as horror movies do, and I’m the worst with jump scares in anything, so I find myself covering my eyes in the cut scenes but running headfirst into a gruesome monster, or casually walking around a house filled with blood and gore, and a creature chasing me no problem.

Having played on both Hard and Lost in the Fog for puzzle difficulty, I probably should have said before that you have change both combat and puzzle difficulty independently, both are a good challenge. Where hard required finding all the right clues and deciphering them, Lost in the Fog requires a lot of out of the box thinking and re reading the clues 50 times over wondering if I too am losing your mind. I’ve never played a game that you’re able to change the difficulty of the puzzles so I had no idea what to expect, but switching difficulties did make them feel new, even with the same base mechanics with a lot more mental energy required to solve them.

Silent Hill f is a great stand-alone title for the Silent Hill franchise; the story and art direction of f has brought the game back to its roots and embraces Japanese horror in full force. Each playthrough brings you deeper into the story of Hinako and the towns own mystery, never wanting to let you out of its foggy embrace. I’m excited to see what the future of Silent Hill holds for die-hard fans and new ones brought into this world from this game.

The Score

8.5

Review code provided by Konami

The Pros

Independent puzzle difficulty

Multiple endings for even more questions to be uncovered

Design and aesthetic

Feeling of unease at every turn

The Cons

Combat at lower difficulty

Randomly getting stuck