Even suffused in otherworldly fog, Silent Hill F’s picturesque period setting gleams with authenticity. Traditional hardwood buildings line narrow alleyways, while babbling brooks and small footpaths crisscross soaking paddy fields. The ephemera of 1960s everyday life is everywhere: glossy magazines, vintage toasters, exquisite flower arrangements. Yet beyond this moody sense of place, the details that feel most authentic in Silent Hill F are of a kind that video games rarely excel at. It’s the anxiety on the faces of its teen characters as they trade barbed taunts, the outpourings of emotion scribbled onto notes passed around at school.
We see this finely drawn, and frequently painful, world through the eyes of high school student Hinako Shimizu. She is a “tough girl,” according to her friends. Quickly enough, the series’ iconic mist descends and Hinako is forced to make use of her athletic streak, vaulting over obstacles to flee the malignant haze. She picks up pipes and bludgeons skittering, long-legged monsters; she finds arcane keys to unlock ominously decorated doors. We are yet again exploring a town twisted into grotesquely personal shapes by the intense emotions of our protagonist. The classic ingredients of Silent Hill return, yet there is newfound freshness and vitality here.
Partly, this is down to ravishing visuals: verging on photorealism yet painterly in their eerie prettiness. Light diffuses naturally down every cold and brooding street, bouncing off Hinako’s prim-and-proper bob and buttoned-up uniform. A carpet of red spider lilies frequently unfurls across the fictional mountain village of Ebisugaoka, transforming the setting into a kind of eco-horror hallucination. In an otherwise artfully desaturated palette, the plants are a vivid, violent interruption.
Moreover, Silent Hill F feels revitalized thanks to a story penned by renowned Japanese manga author Ryukishi07. Hinako is at a pivotal moment in her life, still at school yet on the cusp of an arranged marriage by her abusive, alcoholic father. She is tormented by social anxieties: the gossiping of friends and absence of her older sister. This plot is revealed patiently through cutscenes and scattered letters. It’s typical video game storytelling, but Silent Hill F offers a beguiling marriage of game space and narrative. The town of Ebisugaoka opens up alongside the mysteries; the streets seem to double back on themselves like this tricksy story.
You discover further tantalizing tidbits: details about arsenic pollution, toxic gas leaks, and the building of a massive dam. Are these central to the monstrous manifestations Hinako must endure or merely red herrings? I’m still not sure, even having rolled credits around hour 10.
Think of Silent Hill F as survival horror meets the honkaku mystery fiction of Japan, one whose story continues to be illuminated with each subsequent playthrough (all told through five possible endings). While wandering through creepy woods during my first session, I came across a giant, sacred tree. But I couldn’t interact with it. The tree remained an enigma until I started the game anew, quickly discovering a new puzzle which seemed to center it. More details and cutscenes arrive in subsequent playthroughs (and there is even a feature that distinguishes new cutscenes from old so you can hit the skip button).
The depth and nuance of the mystery is striking, but so is the lack of genuine scares. Silent Hill F is sinister, tense, melancholic, and, in a handful of scenes, wince-inducingly nasty. But scary? Not very. There’s nothing here that matches the terrifying abyssal descent into the bedrock below town in Silent Hill 2, that staircase that seemed to tunnel directly into James’ troubled subconscious. The closest Silent Hill F comes is Hinako’s family home. Doors and rooms multiply; corridors lengthen. The space — endlessly repeating until you complete all its puzzles — bristles with nightmarish logic.
The lack of frights stems mostly from a tilt toward action. Hinako lands critical hits, executes slo-mo dodges, and even wields a pole weapon with a curved blade called a naginata. She is no action hero at first, straining to lift weapons and sometimes flailing at thin air. But the teenager is committed. “Do not get in my way,” she says at one point, growing ever more assertive.
During bouts, Hinako consumes whatever remedies she can lay her hands on — kudzu tea, red pills, chocolate — and at shrines, which double as save spots, she can make sacrifices to the gods, thus upgrading her health, stamina, and even sanity. This journey, then, is a test of faith for the youngster who has one foot in tradition and another in modernity (a point reflected in the terrific score, which blends traditional Japanese folk music with ’60s psychedelia).
“The road twists and turns,” says Hinako in a moment of quiet reflection toward the end of the game. “It’s like I’m walking through my head.” The line is a clunky outlier in a script that typically has the smarts not to spell out its Freudian subtext. Still, the remark begs a question: what lurks in the darkest, most private recesses of Hinako’s mind? Through expressive level design, a deftly told story, and thrashing combat, we find a young woman locked into battle with societal expectations.
Silent Hill F beautifully communicates her emotional arc, from vying desperately for survival to unleashing violent fury. Hinako doesn’t so much blossom as erupt. She becomes a mighty force of nature in her own right.
Silent Hill F launches on September 25th on the PS5, Xbox, and PC.
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