SILENT HILL: Townfall

It's good to be back.

I played this on my PS5.

Silent Hill Townfall is, well, the newest Silent Hill game. It's taken me a while to get through it (I had some life stuff happen, plus some other games I wanted to play first) but it's a new Silent Hill, alright, so I was excited to play it. Absent some true oddities, I've played all of the Silent Hill games so at this point I'd say I even had an obligation to check this out.

I'll start with the obvious: this isn't set in Silent Hill. It's kind of like Silent Hill f in that it's set in a new location and doesn't have any of the characters or Proper Nouns of Silent Hill, but it still very much "feels" like a Silent Hill thing. The new setting is also distinct from prior Silent Hill games if only because the aesthetics of a Scottish village are different than an American small town, but it still has the fog and all of the trappings you'd want from a new one of these. You've got a rusty Otherworld (referred to here as "different"), uncomfortable fleshy humanoid enemies, limited ammo, a steel pipe, a radio, and a story that feels at least sort of dreamlike. There are also details of the story that feel very in line with Silent Hill, but I won't go into specifics so as not to spoil things.

Where Silent Hill f attempted to do something new that evoked Silent Hill, Townfall very much feels like a new Silent Hill game in the vein of the classics. Having said that, there were times when it seemed almost like a spiritual successor rather than a sequel. Yes, the mechanics and themes are all Silent Hill, but without any of the Names and Places from Silent Hill it feels almost like an offbrand imitation that somehow managed to still get the license. I don't mean that as a negative! It feels faithful to Silent Hill in the ways that matter, it's just that without any real connective narrative tissue to the earlier games it does seem like this could have been released without the Silent Hill name and it would only have lost some brand recognition.

So, how does it play? If you exclude The Short Message and P.T., and don't count Silent Hill 4's first-person sequences, this is the first time they've made a "proper" Silent Hill in first-person, and I'd say it works remarkably well. You'll be doing a lot of hiding, and not being able to clearly see your surroundings adds to the horror in some obvious ways. To help counteract this, you have a portable TV-radio, a "CRTV", that you can use to tune into story frequencies or, more importantly, track enemies. 

 

It's a fun way to incorporate the radio static that's been a mainstay of the series and it feels reminiscent of something like the Motion Tracker from Aliens. There are a lot of stealth sequences in this and being able to track enemies through walls is a lifesaver. Like a lot of other stealth-centric games, you have bricks and bottles you can throw to distract enemies, though these were rare enough that I usually just waited for enemies to pathfind away from where I needed to go so I could save my throwable for later.  

As for when you do get caught, there's the combat. Combat in this is generally pretty good, all things considered. You have a melee weapon that you can use to either attack or block with, a few guns, and those throwable items I mentioned that you can use to stun enemies. There's a weapon durability mechanic in this, but with how limited the variety was when it came to melee weapons I really don't know why it was in here. I suppose it forces you to be conservative when it comes to taking on enemies, but I killed basically everything I came across and never really "ran out" of usable weapons. When I did break a weapon it was honestly just a bit of a mild annoyance.

It's a Silent Hill game so of course it has some obtuse puzzles. For the most part these are actually fairly logical (or, at least, straightforward) but you'll still be consulting plaques and audio recordings to determine how to line up the spokes on a wheel (or whatever). Strange puzzles are kind of par for the course but I never really felt like the solutions to any of these were unintuitive. I was taking notes (and consulting those notes) during my playthrough, however, so take my comments with that in mind.

On a somewhat similar note, the world is laid-out like the Silent Hill games of old. You'll be roaming "dungeons" in the form of apartment buildings or city streets (or what have you), running across locked doors and occasionally keys for those doors while constantly pulling out your map to check just where the heck you are. For people who wanted a new "traditional" Silent Hill game I'd say this hits the mark.

This next bit is sort of a mechanical spoiler, so skip ahead to the next paragraph if you don't want to hear what I have to say about this. Barring Silent Hill 2's Born From a Wish (and, sort of, Shattered Memories) this is the first time a Silent Hill game has had multiple protagonists. You'll be swapping between characters, and that helps stave off some of the power-creep that comes with any survival horror game. When you're constantly starting from scratch with a fresh inventory you're not necessarily able to just use your hoarded ammo and supplies on every encounter. Additionally, having multiple people reacting to the strangeness in the town gives a sense that each person has their own journey and internality.

I played through this and got the "Abandoned" ending. I imagine I'll seek out the other endings at some point; realistically I'll watch them on YouTube as, while I did like this game, I'm not sure I want to run through it four more times right now. As always, I've included my clear screen.

Silent Hill: Townfall is good. I don't think I like it as much as f, but for people who wanted a more "faithful" Silent Hill game I don't know that there's much more you could ask for. Sure, it's not set in (or near) Silent Hill, and Alessa and the cult aren't involved, but in every important way it's a new Silent Hill game that feels reminiscent of the old ones, and that's pretty cool!

In general I really like that Konami has been trying to bring Silent Hill back as a brand. It's kind of a shame that we probably won't get any new games dealing with the narrative and setting started in the old ones outside of the Bloober Team remakes, but I see it this way: we had the Team Silent games that collectively told a story, we had the spinoffs and external attempts to continue the series by other developers, and now we have a new era of Silent Hill games that are trying to reinvent what the series means. I generally think this new approach is working.