I can’t stop thinking Silent Hill F. Konami’s last entry into the longtime survival horror frankness, this time developed by Neobards Entertainment, is easily the most fascinating game I played all year round. From its disturbing tradition and its links with Japanese mythology, its strangely disturbing distribution of characters, each crosses the misty streets of Rural Ebisugaoka reveals major revelations on the city and its inhabitants.
Spoiler warning!
For this article, I tried to keep the spoilers to Silent Hill F at least. But if you are not familiar with the game, I strongly suggest going blind before reading this piece, because I touch the narrative elements and themes that only become apparent once you are stuck. Consider this as a light spoiler warning if you even have the slightest interest in Silent Hill f.
This is not only the usual case to identify prefiguration moments on repeated games – although there are certainly many. Instead, Silent Hill F At one of the best implementations of New Game Plus I played in a certain time. Take a sheet from Deny game book, Silent Hill F requires that you play it several times to reconstruct the complete image.
However, it is not as much an SLOG as it may seem. New game more in Silent Hill F Changes things considerably. Many cutscenes take place differently, enemy investments can vary, entirely new areas open to you, and some puzzles even have different solutions to face. Although the main game skeleton is there, all these elements make sure you never know what to expect on subsequent games.
But it’s not just Silent Hill F’s Approach to the new game plus that made me sing its praises. Even according to the standards of the series, its intrigue is overwhelming. Misogyny, drug addiction, abandonment and control. Everyone shapes the life of the deeply tragic main distribution of the game, and it is both rewarding and heartbreaking to see the protagonist Shimizu Hinako fight horrors to overcome his personal demons.
Silent Hill F It could well be my game of the year, if only because its totality lives without rent in my head.
Adapt to
If you are not familiar with the game, first plan to play it for yourself. I wouldn’t want to spoil the experience for you here. Silent Hill F In the United States, does not take place in the fictitious city of Maine. Instead, we were transported in the 1960s in Japan, to the sleeping – and also fictitious – rural city of Ebisugaka.
Our protagonist is the Lycée Shimizu Hinako, a girl who despises the requirements and expectations of patriarchal standards of the time, something that saw him ostracize like a child with her aversion to play with dolls and his preference for dragging with boys. Growing up, Hinako and his best friend Shu, for example, often played “space wars” with each other – an elaborate simulation game that fought them against an imaginary extraterrestrial force.
The Hinako newspaper, which you consult to find out more about the characters, places and notes on puzzles, is all written by it. Not only do we see that she is an excellent sketch artist, but Hinako does not hesitate to broadcast her grievances and her frustrations with Ebisugaka, her parents and even her friends to a certain extent.
One thing that I find quite ingenious about Hinako’s personality is how she is effortless in her abilities as a survival horror protagonist. His experience as an trophy winning track star contributes greatly to explain a well without a background of endurance and his ability to defend himself in combat.
Like Harry, James and Heather before her in the city of Silent Hill, the `Curse ” which arrives Ebisugaka seems adapted around Hinako’s past, her fears and traumatic moments she experienced. At home, her father is an abusive drunk, while her mother is someone she describes as “pitiful”, living slowly in the shadow of the father. It is a dreary existence that threatens to consume it on every occasion given.
Renard tale
The horrors to which Hinako faces Ebisugaoka – dolls brandishing knives with draped scarecrows in the school costume – are not even about being the most terrifying thing Silent Hill f. Hinako’s house and social life are one thing, but the city’s insidious obsession for superstition is also manifested to make its existence living hell.
No doubt the main antagonistic force in Silent Hill F is – as always in this series – a kind of supernatural worship, often called the Fox clan. They live in a strange kingdom of another world in which Hinako is transported throughout history whenever she slips from consciousness.
Playing in the paranoid superstitions of Ebisugaoka and its reverence for the foxes as creatures, the clan seems to be a known entity, of what we can bring together documents scattered on the city. Their main objective is to ruin young girls, do them in bride and inevitably offer them as sacrifices. To be frank, they are vile.
In essence, it is the central fight of Hinako’s travel – such a powerful force that it can succeed in eliminating the identity (both physically and metaphorically) even of a person as independent as it is. My heart was flowing every time Hinako entered the bizarre kingdom of the Fox clan, because it would inevitably end up losing a part of itself (once again, physically and metaphorically) in the service of their objectives.
Hinako’s journey is brutally overwhelming. Which is not surprising, really, given the previous works of the main writer Ryukishi07, including the painful Higurashi when they cry Visual Novel Series, which deals with similar themes. But there is at least a unleashing of hope here, because each new shorter game after your first edges of play more and more of Ebisugaka’s truth.
Again and again
Silent Hill F’s Take the new game Plus (NG +) is incredibly refreshing, in particular at an era of play where such a mode is often treated as a reflection after the fact, or worse, recorded for an update after the launch. In Silent Hill F, NG + has all the usual characteristics. You will regain things like your inventory, upgrades of statistics, documents, omamristrates, newspaper entries and certain key elements.
Here, however, New Game Plus is not only a bonus mode; A way for you to take revenge Silent Hill F’s monstrous horrors with a much more robust Hinako. No, the new subsequent game races more are absolutely a requirement if you want to discover the whole story of the game. Again, not different from the way in which Replicant deny And Deny Manage repeated games.
Silent Hill F For four purposes in total (finally, five if you count the end of the end of UFO), the last of which is the “real” conclusion of the game. But to get there, you will have to have witnessed at least two other ends, including the one in which you are locked at your first blow.
And it’s a hell of a trip to get there. The cutscenes are extended, providing an additional context and hidden details. New documents that have highlighted the city and its history can be collected. There is also no shortage of new pieces to discover, new fears to take you off guard, and a general feeling of great discomfort because the areas which once seemed to dress with new frightening details (a certain sanctuary that you can find at the start of the game there).
There are also shiny quality of quality of life. The end guide of the main menu (which you can display by beating the game once) lists the criteria to reach each conclusion. And if you want to accelerate things by jumping from cutscenes, an invite will be known if the one you look at has changed or not in any way by declaring that it was new.
I just can’t have enough Silent Hill f. It is one of the best horror games I played in recent memory, and firmly finds a place in my three best silent titles next to the original Silent hill 2 And Silent Hill 3. The rural Japanese framework is such a refreshing change, and the integration of the country’s history and mythology plays exceptionally well Silent Hill F’s horror mark.
If you are looking for a deeply impactful and unforgettable horror experience this Halloween season, I cannot recommend Silent Hill F Enough, and you can recover it today for PS5, Xbox Series X, Series S and PC via Steam.
