I don’t think anyone will disagree that the Silent Hill series has been revitalized in recent years. Konami, keen to bring many of its IPs back from obscurity, continues a successful trend of making good games that still honour what made the originals so great.
Between Bloober Team’s Silent Hill 2 remake and NeoBard’s Silent Hill f, many others and I have been left feeling confident in the series’ future. Now, developer Screen Burn is the latest external partner working on the Silent Hill series, and in my opinion, has helped craft an exciting and worthy entry. It brings together many elements to deliver a mostly chilling experience that spans 20 hours.
Welcome To St. Amelia
You play as Simon Ordell as he heads back to the island. With the town covered in an ominous fog, Simon wakes up on a pier with an IV attached to his hand and with no clue how he got there. The opening moments are disorienting, and you’re immediately thrown into a situation no one wants. 
Set in St. Amelia, a Scottish coastal town, Simon heads into a town with no people around. It’s an ominous sight as you enter the main street and find it deserted; with no people around, you can hear everything creaking and groaning.
Simon is clearly out of his depth as he heads to the town square, which is littered with protest signs and flowers. Something has been unfolding within the island’s confines, but with no context, all you know is that this place isn’t safe.
As Simon heads to the center of town and explores, you learn that St. Amelia faces troubles of its own, whether through corporate expansion or bad leadership that takes the entire town to ruin. What I enjoyed was how much of the story is doled out in a jarring, disjointed way at times, seemingly to keep players disoriented as they explore the town.
The town itself is a character all on its own. Something has clearly caused the town to push back, with storefronts up for sale, while others blame a company that’s come to St. Amelia’s shores. Across several chapters, Simon and other playable characters will face traumas and other feelings of guilt that the series loves to explore. The perspective shifts work well because each side reveals more about what’s happening on the island.
Whether I was exploring a pharmacy, a home, or the town’s back alleys and gardens, whenever I felt I learned something, it wasn’t the clearest revelation, and I was pressed to keep going for the next clue to the truth of what was happening. The shifting perspectives alleviate the pressure of following one lead.
The shift to first-person perspective is a great shake-up for the series because of the tension it adds. Exploring the streets of an unsettlingly empty European town will make your skin crawl at times, with tight streets covered in dense fog and peril around every corner.
Simon carries a flashlight and uses the CRTV, a small portable TV screen that points you to the next location through choppy visuals. In a series, the shift to first person makes the events feel more personal as you explore St. Amelia and the surrounding areas. Entering the Otherworld is even creepier in first person, with no way to look around by tilting the camera.
The CRTV is a nice addition and fits the 1990s Scottish setting perfectly. It lets you scan different channels for secrets and replaces the radio from other titles. Here, you’ll use it to navigate stealth, interact with environments, and solve puzzles. It even helps you know where enemies are so you can actively avoid them (or tackle them head-on). By tuning frequencies, Simon sometimes learns where to go next. It’s a smart tool that helps on several fronts, especially on harder difficulties when you need to keep an eye on an enemy.
Can You Hear Me, Simon?
For all the sneaking you’ll do in Silent Hill: Townfall, the worst part is combat. It should be considered a last-ditch choice, if I’m honest, as it’s clunky and not the most responsive, but I get why. Simon’s your average person dealing with a supernatural situation, and rightfully, why should he be adept at fighting?
It’s the opposite, in fact: planks of wood feel difficult to use against the creatures that have appeared in town. You can block attacks, but it costs stamina, so your window is limited before enemies start tearing into you. Once you uncover a gun, it isn’t much better, but I like that you’re told not to use it unless necessary, since it draws other creatures with the sound. And limited ammo ensures you can’t pop off when you want to blast at the creatures.
However, while I appreciate the limited resources, Silent Hill: Townfall has a really bad respawn problem. When played as Simon, his IV lets you revive if an enemy takes you down. You can find empty IV bags and antiseptic to craft extra IV bags, which you’ll then waste because when you’re downed and return to life, the enemy that killed you is still right there. It becomes increasingly frustrating until about halfway through, when it becomes maddening.
In one section, Simon has to explore an underground bunker under the town’s clinic, which unsurprisingly has enemies lurking in the dark. With just a flashlight and the CRT, you can sense where enemies are and try to move around them quietly. But these enemies know exactly where you are and will appear within seconds to take you down, forcing you to waste resources on IV drips.
Some later areas also add obtuse puzzles that seem to exist only to pad the playtime. You’ll hit a stretch where you need to complete a series of tasks I didn’t expect, because they could’ve been bundled together much better in the first place.
Verdict
Silent Hill: Townfall mostly succeeds at emulating what makes the series so beloved. It captures the tension-filled town, dense fog, puzzles, and sense of dread; Townfall excels. While Simon’s abrupt appearance in St. Amelia is jarring at first, the slow burn that follows builds the tension well. The atmosphere feels like the older games and skews closer to them than Silent Hill f, with so many classic elements returning. Screen Burn knows what makes these games tick, but struggles to find the right balance.
[The publisher provided a copy of the game for review purposes.]
Reviewed on: PlayStation 5
