Silent Hill Townfall Review

Introduction:

Unlike most long-running and legendary IP, whenever there’s a new Silent Hill game announced, there’s always a weird feeling in the air…

Starting with Silent Hill 3’s development, Konami has had a long history of interfering with its iconic horror franchise. Rushing Silent Hill 3 and 4 during development, closing down Team Silent and handing the IP to western developers, cancelling P.T aka Silent Hills. It’s a long list of offences to one of gamings best series.

Konami has been trying over the past few years to have a Capcom-style resurgence. And honestly? It’s going way better than I ever would’ve thought. The last Silent Hill game we received was Silent Hill f, and while I didn’t love the entire package, there were three segments in particular that I felt were some of the best in the series’ history. It also recieved stellar critic reviews, whatever that’s worth. We’ve known about Screen Burn Interactive’s Silent Hill: Townfall for four long years; as it was originally announced with Silent Hill f and Silent Hill 2 remake. I think I had a similar first thought as many other fans:

“Wait, it’s first-person?”

Silent Hill fans have a bit of a rocky history with first-person gameplay. Silent Hill 4, while loved by plenty of fans, was rushed and unfinished thanks to Konami. And yeah…there’s also the scar of P.T. So what can Screen Burn Interactive offer Silent Hill?

Presentation:

Townfall is one of now many Silent Hill games that chooses to ignore the titular town. This is one of many debates within the fandom:

“Should Silent Hill games take place outside of Silent Hill?”

Technically the first game to experiment with this was 3 back on the PS2. The first third of the game takes place outside of Silent Hill, inevitably bringing our protagonist Heather to the town. I always liked to imagine this as the “curse” of Silent Hill seeping out of its central location in order to tease and invite its next target to town. Silent Hill 4 doesn’t even really do that. And f has very few connections to the town besides White Claudia flowers.

Townfall takes place in St. Amelia, a fishing town in Scotland. It’s hard for me to complain about the game not being in Silent Hill when it looks this good. I’m a sucker for tightly built and walkable towns. This feels like the type of town where your neighbors all know each other. The type of place where two strangers could become friends incredibly fast. Taking place in 1996 only accentuates this. I know this is an incredibly basic thing to say- but I can’t help loving the 90’s. It was a nice marriage between the old ways of society and the modern tech-driven ways of society. You’ll be seeing huge ancient PC monitors and CRT televisions everywhere. Some of the locations in the second half of the game are some of the grimiest and disturbing locations I’ve experienced in a first-person horror title (only overtaken by Resident Evil 7 and P.T).

Unfortunately, where the presentation truly disappoints is in the monsters. By my count, there’s only four monsters in this game. There’s the naked smooth guy who is wearing underwear. There’s the other naked smooth guy with a weird flat object its head. There’s some awesome tall and lanky creatures in the late game with photographs of people stitched to it. And finally, the controversial stalker enemy, The Weight. The Weight seems to serve the same purpose as Pyramid Head in SH2 or Sakura Head in Silent Hill Short Message- a creature meant to punish the protagonist. Sadly, The Weight sports a very boring design with a hunched back and head-like abnormalities on its back.

Enemy design is one of many aspects of Silent Hill games that has been overly dissected by fans online. Some Silent Hill 3 enemies are often considered to represent the shame and discomfort a teenager may feel in their own body. The Nurses from Silent Hill 2 are meant to represent that protagonists history in medical facilities and sexual frustration. At least that’s what the fans say and have scraped from interviews. But having fans being able to discuss and theorize about your designs is a huge part of the fun of these games, and Townfall offers nearly none of that.

As for the music which was done by Pilotpriest, I think he did a very good job. It’s suffocating and dreary. It’s hopeless and wandering. It feels as though he tried to emulate the style of earlier games while adding a bit more sadness to the tunes. Is it near to the same heights as Akira Yamaoka’s work on the original few games? Not even close. But that’s a bar very few games and composers can reach. Yamaoka understood Silent Hill so well through his musical compositions that he eventually became the producer of four of its games starting with Silent Hill 3; a career trajectory that is very rare.

Gameplay:

Many fans (myself included) despised the over reliance of combat in Silent Hill f. The actual combat mechanics weren’t bad, but there was too much of it. I could’ve done without the weapon durability and a mechanic that oddly feels like Devil Trigger from the Devil May Cry series.

Thankfully, Townfall goes back to the Silent Hill classics. You’ve got your trusty wooden plank and a small selection of firearms. The game emphasizes stealth as the preferable route for players, but Simon is more than capable of taking down enemies with four or five decent hits with his plank and maybe one well-timed block. Once again, I could’ve done without the weapon durability for the wooden plank. After about two enemies, your wooden plank will break and you’ll need a new one. This is a way to force players into stealthing around enemies and managing their resources. This might be a hot take, but I never identified Silent Hill with resource management. Even back in the original PlayStation title resources were plentiful. The original Silent Hill 2 is a complete joke with how much handgun ammo it gives you. But people still adore those original games not because of any resource management and tight combat mechanics. Luckily, the melee combat does have that heft and clunk from series’ origins. If Townfall didn’t have durability for melee weapons it would genuinely feel like a first-person version of that original trilogy.

Note: After five hours I installed an infinite melee weapon mod. This made me enjoy the game even more, because yeah, it does feel like I’m playing Silent Hill 1, 2 , or 3 in first-person. I don’t like the idea of ignoring the developers intentions, but after five hours I feel comfortable in my decision. I know what I like, and weapon durability is not on that list.

I believe the biggest change that Townfall brings is its level design. I always likened the original trilogy as “horror Zelda games”. A player will enter a building/dungeon and spend roughly an hour or so solving puzzles, picking up a new handy weapon, and finally fighting that locations boss before exiting. Even Silent Hill f had this with the amazing school and Hinako’s house segments. Townfall would rather you get comfortable and familiar with St. Amelia for its first half. You’ll be travelling through the town back and forth, navigating new paths every time. It’s in the back half that you’ll be entering buildings and their Otherworld forms, spending upwards of an hour in them. While I appreciate the atmosphere and design of these areas, I think leaving St. Amelia behind was a mistake. I can understand how hard it would’ve been to design an entire game around a fairly small map, but I would’ve liked to see them try. Also introduced in the back half of the game is the stalker enemy I mentioned before- The Weight. A not so cleverly named enemy meant to represent the weight of guilt Simon Ordell feels. It’s not until the end of course that we figure out the cause of that guilt. The Weight is heavily criticized by players and I am no fan either. His routes feel unpredictable, and if he catches you he’s a one-hit kill. This is when Townfall begins to feel more like Outlast than Silent Hill. I’m not one of these new Outlast haters, but nonetheless I didn’t really find The Weight at home in Silent Hill.

To be perfectly blunt, I enjoyed the second half of the game significantly less. Abandoning St. Amelia, The Weight, obnoxious puzzles, all of these thing made me grow fatigued of playing it. And sadly, the narrative beats I was hoping would get hit get saved for the very end.

Story (No Actual Story Spoilers):

Silent Hill usually functions in one of two ways. Either a helpless protagonists is manipulated into coming, to town or a guilty protagonist is summoned to town to be punished for past crimes. We know that our two protagonists Simon and Zoe are guilty of something, but it takes time to find out what. In Zoe’s case, we find out fairly quickly. But Simon’s reveal is saved for the very end. Of course, Silent Hill 2 does the same with James’ reveal. But in Silent Hill 1, 2, and 3, the protagonist is constantly interacting with bizarre and intriguing characters. Silent Hill 1 has Harry bumping into Cybil Bennett, Lisa Garland, and Dr. Kaufmann. Silent Hill 2 has James talking to Eddie, Laura, Maria, and Angela. Silent Hill 3 has Heather interact with Vincent, Douglas, and Claudia.

Silent Hill Townfall only offers players Simon, Zoe, and Richard. These three hardly have meaningful or interesting interactions. There’s nothing like Harry and Cybil in the diner. Nothing like the mirror scene or bowling alley scene in 2. Nothing like the “They look like monsters to you?” in 3. None of that. The lack of interesting character dynamics is perhaps my biggest disappointment with Townfall.

Of course, there’s probably extra insight given by the multiple endings. but that’s not a subsitute for having interesting cutscenes scattered through a standard playthrough.

All that aside, I actually did find the story concept behind Simon’s guilt very interesting.

Overall:

Nothing in the gaming space tires me quite like Silent Hill discourse. What I thought would be at the very least tolerated by fans was heavily hated. But did I hate Townfall? Not really. But much like with Silent Hill f last year, I was left feeling slightly disappointed. I always have a desire to revisit the original trilogy of SH games. But I can safely say I will never touch Silent Hill Townfall again. But do I regret my time with it? No.

Overall, I felt neutral on Silent Hill Townfall.

(In an effort to move away from traditional numerical scores, I will use the following metric: Hated, Disliked, Felt Neutral, Liked, Loved, Can’t Stop Thinking About)