Prior to getting a big, fat, four-hour demo with it at Gamescom, I was worried that banging on about Silent Hill f’s newfound enthusiasm for monster fighting – with all its parries, zippy dodges, and slow-mo focus meters – would be doing a disservice to its bolder, more ‘interesting’ series departures, like the new 1960s setting or its deep embrace of homegrown Japanese culture and myths. A certain missing of the point, like setting out for a lovely drive through the Scottish highlands then stopping to gawp at a lightly crashed Peugeot on the hard shoulder.
But no. Combat is as deeply ingrained within Silent Hill f as guilty moping was to Silent Hill 2, and from what I’ve played, doesn’t work nearly as well.
To be clear, I don’t believe that thonking wretches with metal pipes is antithetical to good survival horror. Almost every mainline Silent Hill (save 2024’s experimental The Short Message) has had its share of fighting back, and it’s not like SHf’s leading survivor Hinako is busting out the backflipping weapon arts. Her offensive moves are still mostly sluggish, unskilled swings or slashes, and even the more advanced techniques (parrying included) are presented through competent animation work as the desperate, often lucky hits of a struggling teenager.
There are problems, though. The biggest lies in Hinako’s more defensive skillset, which includes a dodge-dash that already seems weirdly generous even before it adds in a whooshing slow motion effect on particularly well-timed evasions. This is no modest, SH2 Remake-style sidestep – the girl damn near flies off the screen, easily swooping out of most monsters’ attack ranges unless you completely bung the timing.
The effect on the horror aspect is… unfortunate. When everything short of a scripted boss can be sprinted past or danced around, the fact that your isolated hometown is infested with murderbeasts suddenly becomes a lot less intimidating. And the dodge undermines some of the heavier-handed moments of tension, too. Late in the demo, I was forced to flee a spooky Shinto shrine as a lethal red mist nibbled away at my health and sanity bars. Enemies spawned on narrow walkways to block the path, and sporadic bursts of pain limited my ability to sprint – but my dodging prowess was left completely unaffected, allowing me to casually breeze past dangers and reach the exit with plenty of life to spare.
Trading scares for battle drama isn’t necessarily a bad deal, and I personally don’t mind an actionised sequel as long as the action is done well. Unfortunately, Silent Hill f’s aggressive play also needs significant tightening-up. Even the simplest melee swings are frustratingly inconsistent: sometimes it’s like Hinato lunges halfway across the prefecture to land a strike, other times she’ll swipe at a baddie that’s right up in her face and hit air. I’m not even sure it’s a hit detection problem, as there were numerous occasions where I’d lock on to a foe, move into eyelash-tickling range, and could only watch as Hinako slashed two feet to the abomination’s side. But I was locked on! Locked! And when a blow does connect, it might produce a bizarre non-response. Too many times, my enemy-stunning heavy attacks were met by delayed stun animations, as if the enemy momentarily forgot the “fall down” stage direction.
The impression I’m getting so far, then, is of an action-horror game where the action isn’t very compelling and the horror isn’t very scary. Uh and, indeed, oh. Though that still wouldn’t be so bad, if there weren’t also heaps of genuine qualities to Silent Hill f that I otherwise really liked. Loved, even.
Take the replacement for Silent Hill itself, the rural, past-its-prime town of Ebisugaoka. No acre-wide roads or towering apartment blocks here: it’s all narrow alleyways and creaking wood, a place of incredible density that’s somehow become a ghost town, and thus the perfect set for chases and ambushes. I’ve only fought (or dodged) a handful of creature types but these are strongly designed, too, especially the twitchy, double-jointed flesh/doll hybrids and a decaying, uncomfortably lanky shrine maiden who serves as the first major boss.
Silent Hill f isn’t anywhere near the first horror game to do so, but it does dig deep into Japanese folklore and custom. Shortly after duelling the above mad miko, there’s even a lovingly rendered scene of one character performing the full Temizuya ritual. Again, it’s not special for covering this stuff, but it does cover an awful lot, and works the culture into characters, scenery, puzzles, and mechanics extensively.
Even if the demo was rarely capable of scariness, it was very capable of eeriness – a feeling that, in some ways, takes greater artistry to pull off. No story spoilers, but I remain intrigued by the mysteries that the game spins around Hinako and her increasingly weird friends, and for what it’s worth, there are times when the combat backs off and lets you explore or work on puzzles. The high point of my four hours was a trek through a supernaturally vast, fog-smothered farm field, your only company being clusters of school-uniformed scarecrows. This section can actually involve quite a lot of fighting if you don’t grasp its puzzle hints, as the mannequins will spring to life with murderous intent upon you interacting with the wrong ones, yet the combination of odd backdrop, sparse sound design, and lingering sense of an imminent threat makes it a memorable set-piece even if you never get the pipe out at all.
I worry, though, whether moments like this will be worth slogging through a full game’s worth of iffy brawls, assuming they’re not all immediately compromised by that superhuman dodge. As it stands, Silent Hill f’s opening hours suggest a struggle to balance its action and horror halves, and while it could theoretically polish its fighting so that it at least doesn’t feel so wonky, a September 25th launch means it has less than a month to do so. That’s a big ask – maybe too big, at this stage.
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