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After last year’s Silent Hill f took Konami’s long-running horror series to Japan for a terrifying expansion of what the franchise can be, Screen Burn Interactive and Annapurna Interactive are taking the series to another global location for their upcoming title Silent Hill: Townfall. Set in the Scottish coastal town of St. Amelia during the ‘90s, the game follows amnesiac protagonist Simon Ordell as he investigates the ominous hamlet to learn about his past and connection to the location. Den of Geek was invited to a special early hands-on preview of the game in Los Angeles and we’re ready to share our thoughts about it ahead of its September launch on PlayStation 5 and PC.
In a first for the venerable series, Silent Hill: Townfall is played from a first-person perspective rather than the franchise’s third-person norm, providing a much more immersive experience to players. This is aided by the game taking full advantage of the PlayStation 5 hardware and enhanced for those who play the title on a PlayStation 5 Pro, which is what I played the demo build on. With this change in perspective, environments are incredibly detailed and everything from fog and lighting effects set the eerie mood perfectly. Simply put, Townfall is a gorgeously rendered game and arguably the best-looking game in the entire Silent Hill series so far.
Several of the game’s development team at Screen Burn Interactive previously worked on 2014’s Alien: Isolation and those suspense-fueled sensibilities are apparent throughout the build that I played. Players can use a handheld CRTV which crackles with static whenever enemies or clues are nearby, in a clear nod to the classic Silent Hill mechanic of using radios for the same context clues. But aligning with Alien: Isolation, the CRTV also lets Simon glimpse where enemies are once they’re detected and plan accordingly to advance, either to confront them head-on or distract and evade them. Getting into my fair share of combat situations and resulting game over screens, believe me, evasion and stealth is an approach that is strongly encouraged.
Every Silent Hill game places an emphasis on melee combat, especially Silent Hill f, with occasional moments of gunplay. These skirmishes are never stylized, but always carry an air of brutal desperation about them, as players do whatever they can to fight to survive enemy encounters. That element is heightened in Townfall, with even crossing paths with a base enemy feeling like this grueling confrontation could result in a game if players aren’t careful. There is a guard mechanic to block incoming blows, but enemies are absolutely vicious here and naturally try to flank you to move around your guard. The foes aren’t quite as seemingly unkillable as the Alien: Isolation xenomorph, but no less tension-inducing in how formidable they are.
What that means is the game places a heavy emphasis on stealth to navigate St. Amelia – while straightforward combat is an option, an enemy can kill Simon within a handful of hits if you’re not careful and just try to go in swinging. That first-person perspective makes the whole combat and evasion experience all the more visceral, especially when you’re playing while wearing headphones like I was, trying to ascertain how close enemies were, listening to their footsteps while hiding in dingy bathrooms or behind parked cars. Yes, there is also an element of gunplay to Townfall, but I quickly realized that a gunshot can clue in multiple monsters to my immediate location so any firearms that I picked up became a last resort option.
The series’ penchant for puzzle-solving makes a return in a big way too and in my multi-hour sitdown with the game, I found myself solving several puzzles built around environmental clues in my immediate surroundings to proceed. Some puzzles also use the motion inputs within the DualSense PlayStation 5 controller, but fortunately those can be toggled on and off. The difficulty of the puzzles themselves weren’t too bad for me – I fared much better at puzzle-solving than combat – but solutions aren’t spoonfed to players either. It’s also important to note that, like other modern Silent Hill games, the difficulty in combat and puzzles in Townfall can be adjusted by players according to their individual preferences.
Arguably the most intensely challenging of the new wave of Silent Hill games that began with the 2024 Silent Hill remake, Silent Hill: Townfall has me intrigued after playing through an early build for several hours. The atmosphere hews closer to the classic aesthetics of the franchise more than the radical direction that Silent Hill f took while the series’ gleefully melancholic tone and many of its usual hallmarks are retained. I want to go back to St. Amelia and dig deeper into its sad mysteries, including how Simon is connected to it, even knowing how formidable its monsters are. Continuing Konami’s successful revival of Silent Hill, Townfall brings an exciting new perspective to the series, both literally and figuratively, while celebrating the ethos of the franchise itself.
Developed by Screen Burn Interactive and published by Konami and Annapurna Interactive, Silent Hill: Townfall releases September 24 for PlayStation 5 and PC.
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