Silent Hill: Townfall
Developer: Screen Burn
Publishers: Konami, Annapurna Interactive
Platform: PlayStation 5 (Reviewed), PC
Release Date: Available Now
Price: $49.99 USD – Available Here
Overview
After spending well over a decade keeping fans waiting for a revival of some sorts, Konami is now bringing out a Silent Hill game literally every year for the past couple of years, for better or worse but mostly for the better except in the case of The Short Message. Since then, not only have fans been treated to an incredibly well-done remake of Silent Hill 2 but also a completely unique take on the formula with Silent Hill f and now a new team is looking to put their own unique spin on things with Silent Hill: Townfall. Featuring a rarely used first-person perspective in the franchise and focusing more on stealth than anything else, is Silent Hill: Townfall worth it? Or is it simply borrowing the name of a franchise in an attempt to fit shoes far too large for the team to fit?
Story
Simon Ordell emerges from the waters just outside of the town of St. Amelia, an island town isolated from the rest of Scotland, with little memory of why he is there other than that he must find “her.” Simon is wearing a medical bracelet with his name on it as well as an IV bag on his upper arm that is running into his wrist. Upon venturing into the fog filled town it quickly becomes clear to Simon that something is wrong, between empty stalls in the main square and a strange phone call suddenly revealing that the world around him is also teeming with monsters and that the same town-square is also mourning a massive loss of life while protesting the very company Simon wears on his ballcap and vest, Simon must continue to search for his only clue, a girl named Zoe and the mysterious voice telling him to find her.
Using a mysterious handheld CRTV that is able to pick-up videos of other people and the past as well as highlight monsters nearby, Simon manages to meet with Zoe only to find out that she is experiencing the same mysterious circumstances, going through her own set of challenges while being criticized at every turn and navigating puzzles laid out before her by a strange force, all while suffering insult after insult and questions about her competency. As players swap between playing as Simon, Zoe, and a third character we won’t reveal here, they’ll eventually come to reveal what happened to the town and why these three are here within St. Amelia.
Generally when it comes to a Silent Hill game, players are expected to not understand various elements of the story or enemy types until near the end of the game or even after replaying it more than once in an attempt to keep the revelations as shocking as possible and maintain an air of mystery around what they are traveling through. Silent Hill: Townfall on the other hand is as subtle as a brick to the head. While it is entirely possible for some players to not understand what is happening, anyone familiar with the franchise, horror games in general, or even the way certain… disasters tend to be handled, which we can’t describe here for spoiler reasons, will immediately know what is happening within the first hour of the game’s fairly short run time of a little under ten hours the first time through.
This lack of subtlety runs throughout the entire narrative, between the various emails and notes that players will find scattered in the town, the signs plastered on walls warning residents about low supplies and protests, the IV fluid in Simon’s bag, and even the shockingly limited enemy designs. Throughout Simon’s adventure through St. Amelia players will continue to uncover various hints that they have already figured out, especially as they find themselves taking on the role of Zoe and seeing how her perspective of events play out and the interactions the characters have with one another as they meet and separate at oddly paced cutscenes.
This isn’t to say that Silent Hill: Townfall’s story is necessarily bad, it’s just not necessarily fitting for a Silent Hill game, nor does it really feel scary outside of the occasional jump scare provided by a specific enemy type. It feels as if it was designed to be approached in the simplest manner possible narratively, tackling the various levels of guilt and trauma that each character has and manifesting them either through a constantly stalking enemy, mocking voices, and being stuck within a place that they are unable to escape, trying to tick off boxes required to fit in as part of the franchise. It is also worth noting that while the game does feature five different endings, including the signature dog and alien endings, these humorous endings are only available as New Game+ offerings while the primary three endings are instead dependent on how many enemies the players kill, revives used, the amount of information they find, and how many mistakes they make with a certain puzzle dictating a final tally that will result in one of the three endings.
Gameplay
As mentioned before, Silent Hill: Townfall is an entirely first-person game where players will need to navigate around the city of St. Amelia and the occasional time in the otherworld all while, most of the time, sneaking past and avoiding enemies wherever possible. The title features many stealth elements that those familiar with a certain alien game will be familiar with such as the ability to crouch and even peak around corners, peak down to shrink down further, or even peak over cover to keep an eye on a possible threat with the music rising the closer the player is to being seen by an enemy. Once discovered, players will either need to run and hide somewhere to avoid having to fight the enemy, either by breaking their line of sight or hiding in a half-open doorway, closet, or even into a building where they can lock the door, locking an enemy out until they lose interest, or kill the foe with whatever they have on hand.
Fighting in the game is fairly predictable but also not recommended as it is easy to become outnumbered and enemies deal quite a bit of damage and, in the case of grabbing enemies, don’t have any stagger window between grabs and being thrown off, meaning they can and will initiate the same attack three times in a row before players can try to strike. It is also worth noting that, at least initially, the plank weapon players use is quite fragile and loses durability for blocking and attacking, meaning having no melee weapon will require players to either hoof it or use their limited firearm if they have one at the time. The gunplay is simple, with players having a revolver that packs a punch and can even stun an annoying invulnerable enemy but alerts anything nearby, a flare gun that also does plenty of damage and can distract enemies, as well as a shotgun that is devastatingly powerful.
Ironically, by the second half of the game players will likely have so much ammo they can choose to ignore stealth almost entirely if they feel like it, which is a rather odd decision given the game is so focused on stealth that it avoids designing much else in the game’s world. Sure, players can break glass or trigger car alarms to draw enemies away from their usual patrol path or throw a brick or bottle at them to stun an enemy and run past, but nearly everything else in the game is as sterile and non-interactable as possible. Sifting through a home that seems like it may have useful items or collectables often results in little more than some gauze and nothing else, containing copy-pasted rooms and cabinet interiors from other houses and a slew of hiding places players may not need unless they are playing on the hardest difficulty or aiming for a no-kill run.
This design choice is all the stranger when players factor in the main CRTV and beeper components. As Simon players will use his CRTV to locate enemies in the environment and see their silhouettes through a red haze on the screen to know where they are and when to move to best avoid them, though simply using the map and also the player’s own eyes often works just as well, while Zoe’s beeper has little icons displaying where enemies are in direction to her, showing where she’ll need to keep an eye out when sneaking between locations and searching for what she needs to complete the next puzzle or reach a location.
One thing that is handled fairly well are the game’s puzzles. Each of these puzzles are quite intuitive and none of them feel “obtuse” just for the sake of it. Players will find various environmental clues and can even turn on hints if need be to highlight in documents what is important text, and other puzzles simply involve finding and slotting in the proper items as one would require, such as administering proper dosage going off of a laptop, inserting floppy discs and printing things out, etc. It is also nice to note that the game does use the CRTV in combination with the PlayStation 5’s DualSense motion controls to fiddle around with picking up fine tuned signals that either contain clues to a main puzzle or optional puzzle that will reward the player with extra ammo, healing items, and documents. It is worth noting that the game does want to turn auto-motion aiming on and it is terrible, so players will want to turn that off right away.
Audio & Visuals
Silent Hill: Townfall does deliver some gorgeous looking graphics when it comes to navigating the island town and, while minimal in their actual designs, the few enemy types that there are do look quite impressive at least. There is a certain level of dread that is provided, thanks mostly to the fog, in most locations but rarely feels particularly scary most likely due to how clean most elements of the game seem to be outside of a few specific locations, and these are usually narratively designed that way, along with a lack of gore and even minimal blood. It doesn’t help that, as mentioned before, many interior buildings throughout the town feature copy-pasted insides that see players navigating the same bathrooms and bedrooms or only featuring one small difference to try and make it stand out.
The voice work throughout the game is handled quite well with the English voice cast handling their characters well, though it is a bit odd that a game set in Scotland doesn’t have any Scottish voice actors or even accents. The background music is fairly fitting for the genre and does a fitting job portraying the danger players are in as they grow closer to being seen by an enemy and blowing their hiding spot.
Overall
It takes more than fog and a series of checked boxes to make a Silent Hill game and nowhere is that more evident than Silent Hill: Townfall. While it may feature the franchise’s signature name, its obvious storytelling and predictable developments will leave players wishing it was handled better. Combine that with some surprisingly solid puzzle work and the stealth focus that works quite well but also loses its meaning halfway through an already short runtime and Silent Hill: Townfall is a rare miss in Konami’s latest batch of hits with the franchise.
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