Silent Hill f Review — CNET

I first performed Silent Hill on the unique PlayStation 26 years in the past, and after having fun with final 12 months’s Silent Hill 2 remake, I had excessive hopes for Silent Hill f. In the end, these hopes fell as flat because the knife-wielding monster youngsters of the unique sport.

Silent Hill f is a notable departure from the franchise’s earlier entries, with no ties to the city that drives the sequence’ horror. It looks like Konami could have slapped the Silent Hill identify on an unrelated sport, much like the net concept about 2004’s Silent Hill 4: The Room.

Do not miss any of our unbiased tech content material and lab-based opinions. Add CNET as a most popular Google supply.

To place it merely, Silent Hill f does not have the identical psychological thrill, fascinating lore and even likable characters the sequence is understood for. As a substitute, this sport comes off like an early 2000s anime involving Japanese schoolchildren secretly hiding how a lot they need to kill each other, which is sensible contemplating the author of the story is Ryukishi07, the pen identify of the creator of the Higurashi: When They Cry visible novel sequence, which is about Japanese schoolchildren killing one another. Only a bit an excessive amount of on the nostril.

So far as I can inform, a minimum of in my first playthrough, Silent Hill f has no connection to the opposite Silent Hill video games. There are three further endings in New Game Plus, which can have a hyperlink. Hell, I do not even know what the “f” even refers to. Nonetheless, it took me 10 hours to beat the sport as soon as, and I’ve zero curiosity in doing it once more only for the possibility of getting a nugget of a connection to the opposite video games.

Did I get some leap scares? Certain. Did I get pleasure from a number of the twists within the story? Completely. Did I comment that the female mechanical enemies that freeze in seductive poses after they’re about to assault you’re a signal of the builders being a bit too attractive? In fact I did, however however, I didn’t have an satisfying time with Silent Hill f.

I want a success of White Claudia

Silent Hill f follows Shimizu Hinako, an athletic schoolgirl from a troubled household in a rural Japanese city through the Nineteen Sixties. Sooner or later, her mother and father get into an enormous argument, so she goes to fulfill up together with her associates. The city shortly turns into a nightmare as unusual monsters seem, in addition to some mysterious crimson plant progress.

All through the sport, Hinako fights monsters with a spread of weapons resembling a crowbar, bat and axe. Although there are not any firearms sometimes seen in different Silent Hill video games, she ultimately will get a particular weapon later within the sport that may decimate enemies.

General, fight in Silent Hill f is not satisfying and feels outdated. Hinako can use gentle and heavy assaults together with her weapon, and she will be able to use a Focus assault by holding down a button (L2 for the PS5) to cost up after which hitting the sunshine assault button offers some additional harm to an enemy. Utilizing Focus depletes Hinako’s Sanity meter, and as soon as that is empty, she will be able to now not focus, and enemies that may harm her sanity will take off parts of her well being bar.

The fight loop revolves round Counters, which is once you use a heavy assault when an enemy sparkles crimson for a fast second. There is a timing to this, and when you get it down, the enemies are fairly simple to deal with.

Except for Hinako having a fast dodge, the fight, for essentially the most half, feels prefer it’s from the PS2 period. It is simply very boring for many of the sport, with the one fascinating fights being towards the bosses — even then, it is nonetheless unexciting. Even worse are the irritating moments when Hinako’s large swings with sure weapons get interrupted by environmental objects requiring her to be at simply the best angle to land her assaults, particularly in shut corridors. The enemies, nonetheless, do not have to fret about that very same situation, as their assaults clip via the surroundings.

There are some gentle roleplaying components. Leveling up occurs at shrines utilizing Religion, earned by providing objects. Sufficient Religion grants Hinako a wood plaque referred to as an Ema that reinforces well being, stamina and sanity. There are additionally equippable charms referred to as Omamoris, which improve attributes or harm.

Past the boring fight, the sport’s UI and puzzles are irritating. The Journal, meant for lore, is poorly organized, with letters and paperwork scattered underneath collectibles, making it exhausting to trace older notes. That is 2025, and interfaces shouldn’t be so awkward.

Second, and this actually bugs me, is the sport’s merchandise administration — particularly, how the objects stack. Like different survival horror video games, there are therapeutic objects to choose up. They’re scarce sufficient, however the objects even have totally different stack sizes: bandages have a max of three per stock slot, whereas a primary support equipment can solely have a stack of 1. In the event you collect, say, seven bandages and two first support kits, that can take up 5 slots in your stock, which begins off with solely eight slots. This would possibly make extra sense if the variety of objects held had been primarily based on the scale of the objects within the bag, much like Resident Evil 4. All through the sport, I needed to depart behind many objects as a result of I did not have sufficient area. 

The puzzles, which in earlier Silent Hill video games make you wrack your mind to know intelligent riddles, usually did not make sense. For instance, one puzzle entails a field that has sliding slots that uncover an image of a sort of meals, resembling oranges, apples, strawberries, a pumpkin and so forth. The clue says the reply is said to a cake that somebody ate that had candy and tart fruit on it, however that description of “candy and tart” does not assist me perceive what number of fruits I must reveal to unravel the puzzle. The reply was 5, and since I am not a scholar of Japanese tradition, placing grapes on truffles wasn’t apparent. There have been different puzzles that equally lacked the identical attraction present in different Silent Hill video games and had been extra irritating because of some cultural variations.

Take me again to the true Silent Hill

Boring fight I can (largely) overlook. Irritating interface, I can take care of. But I draw the road when a Silent Hill sport does not give me Silent Hill vibes. There’s merely not a touch of them right here.

Silent Hill video games sometimes break up their development between a standard world and a nightmarish otherworld. Silent Hill f substitutes the Darkish Shrine as its nightmare, which is devoid of that horror panorama of splattered blood and rusted steel flooring that echo the steps of enemies approaching. It was simply repetitive. The truth is, it looks like half of the sport is solely going backwards and forwards via the city, repeating your steps, with solely a faculty and two large homes to essentially discover. 

Additionally, I get that the Silent Hill f improvement workforce wished to provide the franchise a extra Japanese-focused sport, however there are some issues for gamers unfamiliar with Japan. An enormous evident situation is the shortage of translation in environmental textual content. There have been so many instances that Japanese phrases had been splattered on the partitions in blood, and I had no clue what they stated. So now I’ve to attend for some lore YouTuber to translate the whole lot for me after the sport comes out.

Cultural references are additionally misplaced in translation. The fox is a outstanding determine all through the sport and has ties to Japanese folklore, however its cultural significance is not actually defined. Whereas I do not want hand-holding, it looks like some context is lacking on why sure occasions occurred within the sport. 

The truth is, there’s only a lack of a cohesive lore for Silent Hill f. Like I discussed earlier, I obtained just one ending, and I am not even certain what is going on on. It is a Silent Hill sport, so there’s some psychological trauma that’s being performed out in some supernatural manner that must be dissected. However I used to be nonetheless totally confused about the way it ended, because the mid-roll credit scene implies what you might want to do to get one of many different endings. There’s additionally virtually nothing giving a ’60s vibe to the sport apart from the shortage of electronics.

The sport is colourful and creative however visually bland, with unremarkable character fashions and forgettable music, regardless of longtime Silent Hill composer Akira Yamaoka engaged on the sport.

To say I am dissatisfied with Silent Hill f is an understatement, however I am additionally not shocked. Once I noticed the primary trailer for the sport, I felt nothing that jogged my memory of the Silent Hill franchise that I like, and people emotions ended up coming true. You may give this sport a very totally different identify, and it will be only a satisfactory survival horror sport. Placing that “Silent Hill” identify on it’s downright offensive to followers of the sequence invested within the lore and vibes which were constructed over many years of the franchise’s video games.