Silent Hill F evaluation: the horror sequence returns with thriller and rage

Even suffused in otherworldly fog, Silent Hill F’s picturesque interval setting gleams with authenticity. Conventional hardwood buildings line slender alleyways, whereas babbling brooks and small footpaths crisscross soaking paddy fields. The ephemera of Nineteen Sixties on a regular basis life is all over the place: shiny magazines, classic toasters, beautiful flower preparations. But past this moody sense of place, the main points that really feel most genuine in Silent Hill F are of a form that video video games not often excel at. It’s the anxiousness on the faces of its teen characters as they commerce barbed taunts, the outpourings of emotion scribbled onto notes handed round at college.

We see this finely drawn, and continuously painful, world via the eyes of highschool pupil Hinako Shimizu. She is a “robust lady,” in line with her buddies. Shortly sufficient, the sequence’ iconic mist descends and Hinako is pressured to utilize her athletic streak, vaulting over obstacles to flee the malignant haze. She picks up pipes and bludgeons skittering, long-legged monsters; she finds arcane keys to unlock ominously adorned doorways. We’re but once more exploring a city twisted into grotesquely private shapes by the extreme feelings of our protagonist. The basic components of Silent Hill return, but there’s newfound freshness and vitality right here.

Partly, that is right down to ravishing visuals: verging on photorealism but painterly of their eerie prettiness. Mild diffuses naturally down each chilly and brooding avenue, bouncing off Hinako’s prim-and-proper bob and buttoned-up uniform. A carpet of pink spider lilies continuously unfurls throughout the fictional mountain village of Ebisugaoka, reworking the setting right into a type of eco-horror hallucination. In an in any other case artfully desaturated palette, the vegetation are a vivid, violent interruption.

Furthermore, Silent Hill F feels revitalized due to a narrative penned by famend Japanese manga creator Ryukishi07. Hinako is at a pivotal second in her life, nonetheless at college but on the cusp of an organized marriage by her abusive, alcoholic father. She is laid low with social anxieties: the gossiping of buddies and absence of her older sister. This plot is revealed patiently via cutscenes and scattered letters. It’s typical online game storytelling, however Silent Hill F affords a beguiling marriage of sport house and narrative. The city of Ebisugaoka opens up alongside the mysteries; the streets appear to double again on themselves like this tricksy story.

You uncover additional tantalizing tidbits: particulars about arsenic air pollution, poisonous fuel leaks, and the constructing of an enormous dam. Are these central to the monstrous manifestations Hinako should endure or merely pink herrings? I’m nonetheless undecided, even having rolled credit round hour 10.

Consider Silent Hill F as survival horror meets the honkaku thriller fiction of Japan, one whose story continues to be illuminated with every subsequent playthrough (all informed via 5 potential endings). Whereas wandering via creepy woods throughout my first session, I got here throughout a large, sacred tree. However I couldn’t work together with it. The tree remained an enigma till I began the sport anew, shortly discovering a brand new puzzle which appeared to heart it. Extra particulars and cutscenes arrive in subsequent playthroughs (and there’s even a function that distinguishes new cutscenes from previous so you may hit the skip button).

The depth and nuance of the thriller is placing, however so is the dearth of real scares. Silent Hill F is sinister, tense, melancholic, and, in a handful of scenes, wince-inducingly nasty. However scary? Not very. There’s nothing right here that matches the terrifying abyssal descent into the bedrock beneath city in Silent Hill 2, that staircase that appeared to tunnel straight into James’ troubled unconscious. The closest Silent Hill F comes is Hinako’s household dwelling. Doorways and rooms multiply; corridors lengthen. The house — endlessly repeating till you full all its puzzles — bristles with nightmarish logic.

The dearth of frights stems largely from a tilt towards motion. Hinako lands essential hits, executes slo-mo dodges, and even wields a pole weapon with a curved blade known as a naginata. She isn’t any motion hero at first, straining to carry weapons and typically flailing at skinny air. However the teenager is dedicated. “Don’t get in my manner,” she says at one level, rising ever extra assertive.

Throughout bouts, Hinako consumes no matter cures she will lay her fingers on — kudzu tea, pink tablets, chocolate — and at shrines, which double as save spots, she will make sacrifices to the gods, thus upgrading her well being, stamina, and even sanity. This journey, then, is a take a look at of religion for the teen who has one foot in custom and one other in modernity (some extent mirrored within the terrific rating, which blends conventional Japanese people music with ’60s psychedelia).

“The street twists and turns,” says Hinako in a second of quiet reflection towards the top of the sport. “It’s like I’m strolling via my head.” The road is a clunky outlier in a script that sometimes has the smarts to not spell out its Freudian subtext. Nonetheless, the comment begs a query: what lurks within the darkest, most personal recesses of Hinako’s thoughts? By expressive degree design, a deftly informed story, and thrashing fight, we discover a younger girl locked into battle with societal expectations.

Silent Hill F superbly communicates her emotional arc, from vying desperately for survival to unleashing violent fury. Hinako doesn’t a lot blossom as erupt. She turns into a mighty power of nature in her personal proper.

_{Silent Hill F launches on September twenty fifth on the PS5, Xbox, and PC.}