Silent Hill: Townfall Review – Medical Marvel

The Silent Hill franchise has enjoyed a successful (and long overdue) revival with 2024’s Silent Hill 2 remake and Silent Hill f just a year later. Now, with a third consecutive yearly instalment in the form of Silent Hill: Townfall, the series has kept that streak going. Developed by Screen Burn Interactive of Observation fame, Townfall attempts to deliver a different kind of Silent Hill outing once again, and the results are impressive. With an engaging story, unsettling atmosphere, compelling design, and stunning visuals, this newest entry in Konami’s resurgent psychological horror franchise delivers a memorable experience that series fans won’t want to miss. Silent Hill: Townfall sees players stepping into the shoes of Simon, who awakens to find himself in the Scottish island town of St. Amelia, with no memory of how he got there, and nothing on him except an IV drip in his arm and a hospital tag with his name around his wrist. With no inhabitants to be found and a thick blanket of fog covering the entire town, it quickly becomes clear that all is not well in St. Amelia. As Simon works his way through the nightmares of the town and follows the voices of people from his past, he must unravel the mysteries surrounding the town, what happened to it and its people, and how it all connects to his own past. Story and storytelling are always at the heart of every Silent Hill experience, and that is very much the case here as well. Townfall tells an engrossing story with excellently written and performed characters, while also boasting the sort of thematic depth and nuance that the series is so well known for. New information is doled out at a tantalizing, deliberate pace, revealing more about Simon’s past, his relationship with deuteragonist Zoe, and the disasters that struck the town of St. Amelia, and from its first moment to its last, the narrative never loses its grip on you. "Story and storytelling are always at the heart of every Silent Hill experience, and that is very much the case here as well." Going into detail will be an injustice to Silent Hill: Townfall’s story, which is best experience blind and unspoiled, but suffice to say that both on a personal, character-driven scale and with its anti-corporate themes, the game does more than enough to keep you hooked, thanks to strong writing, performances, and direction. Townfall also benefits from strong pacing, which I’ve already touched on. The story moves at a solid pace, delivering new information in small doses at just the right moments and consistently maintaining an excellent balance between mystery and ambiguity on one hand, and answers and revelations on the other. You rarely ever spend more than half an hour in a single location, while chapters also move at a fairly quick pace. Meanwhile, Simon’s gameplay sections – which serve as the meat and potatoes of game – are also occasionally punctuated by sections where players play as Zoe, helping inject considerable gameplay variety into the experience while also contributing to the game’s narrative. St. Amelia itself is, of course, a big part of why the game works as well as it does, thanks primarily to its unsettling atmosphere. Silent Hill: Townfall is a slow burn in every sense of the word, which means it doesn’t constantly bombard you with enemies or set pieces to deal with, but it somehow still manages to maintain constant tension, and knows exactly when to ratchet it up. The thick cover of fog that blankets the town is, in true Silent Hill fashion, partially responsible for that, but just as important are the incredible lighting and audio design. Whether you’re navigating the empty, silent streets of St. Amelia or the dimly lit, claustrophobic corridors of an apartment building, the atmosphere on display is consistently top notch, making every step forward and every turn around a corner feel rife with dread and palpable tension. Meanwhile, there’s plenty to like about Silent Hill: Townfall from a gameplay and design perspective as well, albeit with some minor caveats here and there. The town of St. Amelia, for instance, is usually engaging to navigate and explore, though going off the beaten bath to tackle optional objectives doesn’t always feel as rewarding as it should. Granted, there are valuable resources to be found, story tidbits to discover through notes, and some limited collectibles to track down, but exploration can still sometimes feel a little too barebones. That is thanks primarily to the level design occasionally being quite straightforward, especially when you’re in indoor locations. In contrast, opening up shortcuts and unlocking the environment in the town itself feels much more like what you’d expect to see in a survival horror experience where exploration is concerned, which only serves to shine a brighter light on locations in the game that feel much more simplistically designed. "Combat and stealth are also areas where Silent Hill: Townfall impresses." That said, strong puzzle design does help make up for inconsistencies in the exploration department. Silent Hill as a franchise has always been known for its puzzles, and Townfall doesn’t disappoint. In true survival horror (and Silent Hill) fashion, puzzles typically task you with exploration different locations to find specific items, but Townfall puts its own unique twist on things with Simon’s portable CRTV, which frequently shows him clips and videos that contain hints about where you should go next. Zoe’s sections, meanwhile, also contain some of the game’s strongest and most engaging puzzles- including one particular section that tasks you with following instructions from a doctor over an intercom and navigating complicated medical machinery as part of a tense, complex procedure. Though there are times where puzzles can feel a little obtuse at times, the majority of them are thoughtfully designed challenges that are consistently satisfying to solve. On a side note, personally, I would recommend playing the game with puzzle hints turned off for an even more engaging and immersive experience. Combat and stealth are also areas where Silent Hill: Townfall impresses. Though it isn’t a game that goes heavy on either of those two, Townfall knows exactly when to hit players with combat or stealth scenarios, and more often than not, they tend to land incredibly well. Your toolset overall is fairly limited, with a choice of breakable melee weapons, a pistol, bottles and bricks to distract enemies with, and the like, though it’s in their usage that Townfall finds its gameplay strengths. Thanks to strong encounter design, making your way past enemies – whether you’re choosing to sneak past them or engaging in messy, hectic combat – is always an incredibly tense experience. Simon’s aforementioned CRTV – or Zoe’s pager in her sections – is also a crucial element where combat and stealth are concerned. Tuning into different frequencies, Simon can see silhouettes of nearby monsters on his portable device’s screen, allowing you to keep an eye on your foes as you hide behind cover to avoid attention. Meanwhile, Simon can also hide in cupboards and closets, or peak around cover to get glimpses of monsters in the vicinity, a la Alien: Isolation. Taken together, Silent Hill: Townfall’s seemingly straightforward and simple gameplay mechanics make for a consistently engaging and stressful experience. That said, Townfall’s lack of enemy variety is a little disappointing. On one hand, the game deserves props for its strong artistic design and visual flair, with the town of St. Amelia and the nightmares that occupy it consistently delivering striking visual imagery. At the same time, however, it feels like there’s more that the game could have done with its concepts and ideas. Though things do start to open up on this front in the game’s back half in particular, overall, compared to Silent Hill’s best outings, Townfall feels disappointingly limited in terms of things such as enemy variety or bosses. "All said and done, Silent Hill: Townfall is yet another memorable outing for Konami’s psychological horror franchise, cementing its resurgent success once again." One area where the game deserves unequivocal praise, however, is how tactile the entire experience feels. Developer Screen Burn Interactive made the choice to set the game in 1996, and the decision pays off in spades. From Simon’s CRTV to the old school computers you occasionally use throughout the game, from Zoe’s pager to the phones you use to save your progress, from in-world map you use to navigate the town to so much more, everything in the game feels tactical and grounds you into the world. From Metro to Dead Space and others, there have been several games that have successfully used diegetic UI elements to heighten their world’s atmosphere, and Silent Hill: Townfall does the same with similar levels of success. All said and done, Silent Hill: Townfall is yet another memorable outing for Konami’s psychological horror franchise, cementing its resurgent success once again. Though much more contained and straightforward than recent entries like Silent Hill 2 and Silent Hill f, Townfall nonetheless manages to deliver an excellent, tightly written, and memorable story while also boasting strong atmosphere, engaging puzzles, tense combat and stealth, and stunning visual and audio design- all the hallmarks that make for a good Silent Hill experience. This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 5.