A new, original entry into the classic survival horror franchise takes the series to 1960s Japan.
What Is It? You are Shimizu Hinako, a high school student in a fictional 1960s Japanese town. After arguing with your parents, you head outside to meet up with some friends in town. Within a few minutes, the town is overcome by a mysterious red substance, your friends might be dead, and you are left on your own with only a lead pipe to help survive.
With any survival horror game, there is always an expected element of surprise adding to the suspense and fun. WIth that in mind, I won’t discuss major plot or mechanics beyond the basics. This means I will be leaving out some very fun details on certain mechanics that show up in the game.
A third person survival horror game, Silent Hill f will be familiar to anyone with experience in prior Silent Hill games, or just survival horror games in general. You will partake in somewhat clunky combat in which you fend off disgusting foes, use limited storage space to decide between which type of healing items are most valuable, scavenge for precious currency used to buy upgrades, solve obtuse puzzles, and generally feel the pressure of barely surviving each section of the game until you reach a precious save point.
Hinako is armed with three melee weapon slots. These can be small, quick items like a kitchen knife or large, lumbering things such as a sledgehammer. The weapons feel appropriately light or hefty and choosing between to fit your playstyle is an important part of the game. They will wear down over time, eventually breaking if you don’t use a consumable toolkit to repair them. There are no non-melee weapons in the game.
A perfectly timed dodge or counter will help Hinako, but if a few hits land, she will be hurting and in need of healing. The enemies are of the basic varieties you would expect; small/large, fast/slow, normal ugly/super-duper ugly, etc… I would not say the enemy design is a strong point of the game, but it also doesn’t detract from anything. It’s serviceable, even if it is a bit routine.
Hinako also has stamina and sanity bars along with health. Stamina is used through swinging weapons, dodging, and running. If you deplete it, you cannot do any of those things, most notably attacking, until it refills. Sanity is used to focus on enemies which provides you a better chance to land a counter-attack and also allows you to unleash a special attack if you fully charge your focus. Healing items combine to heal various combinations of the three status bars.
I’m not a puzzle expert by any means, so take this with a grain of salt. I found the puzzles here to be a mixed bag. They all had some cryptic clues attached to them. Some of these were fairly obvious to me while others absolutely were not. I looked up the solution to a couple of them in my playthrough. They follow patterns of the genre in having you place various trinkets on walls or stands, opening doors in certain orders, etc… Fans of the genre who look forward to the puzzles will likely be happy with the selection here.
The game looks great for the most part. I thought some of the enemies were fairly generic and/or missing details in their visuals, but this is a minor nit. For the most part, the outrageously grotesque looking beings you meet along the way will look appropriately horrifying.
I saw the credits after about eight hours. I played on the default settings which were normal for combat and hard for puzzle difficulty. The game features five different endings, although players will all see the same one the first time through.
The Best Part: The story. I don’t want to spoil any of the story, but I will simply say that the game deftly finds the balance of showing you things without ever really letting you know what is actually happening. This would come off as obnoxious or simply half-baked in a lesser game, but this is one of the rare games where I had no idea what was happening most of the time but was still totally hooked on trying to figure it out.
The Worst Part: The combat. The only other Silent Hill I’ve played is the remake of 2. I bought into the somewhat clunky combat there being an ode to the original, but there is no excuse for it to carry over, and arguably be worse, in Silent Hill f. Not having any ranged attacks certainly doesn’t help as the slow, deliberate movement Hinako possesses makes melee combat a tough time. It is mostly okay in one-on-one situations, but falls apart fairly quickly when multiple enemies attack. There is a target lock but it’s not very good and too often switches between characters. It’s not outright bad, it is just a bit clunky and I’m not going to hand-wave that away as a feature not a bug due to some “survival horror is supposed to be clunky!” narrative excuse. To be clear, it isn’t significantly worse than many in the genre, it just isn’t very good either.
The Verdict: Silent Hill f is the first new game in the series in a long time. It moves the series to Japan 70 years in the past and removes the guns. This is an instant refresh that detaches itself a bit from the older, numbered games in the series. That is a smart move, as trying to live up to what those games have come to mean to people 20+ years later would be an uphill battle to say the least. Does this mean that this new direction actually works? Yes, I think it is a successful reintroduction of Silent Hill as a franchise..
The melee-only combat is a low point, but honestly isn’t terrible to me as someone who has played a lot of older survival horror games. The enemy design isn’t special but there is enough creepiness in these enemies to get by. Otherwise, this really hits the checkpoints I would expect from a survival horror game.
For example, the story, vibe, general creepiness factor, and jump scares all hit the mark. I’ve not mentioned item storage decisions, but rest assured it is here in full force. Here you get too many item pickups and you are mostly forced to decide which to leave behind rather than ever running out. Items can also be turned into currency for stat upgrades which adds a nice layer to things. The puzzles will be instantly familiar to anyone who’s played a Silent Hill or Resident Evil game.
Silent Hill f is a good, competent new entry into the series. It doesn’t break any real new ground in the genre, but sometimes throwing some creepy-as-hell scarecrows in the middle of a foggy field and telling the player to figure it out is all you need in a survival horror game.
How to Play: PlayStation 5*, Xbox Series, PC
*console played on for this review
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