Silent Hill: Townfall Looks Like The Closest Thing We’re Getting To P.T.

[00:00] I just finished up watching 15 minutes of Silent Hill Townfall, and I think it's safe to say

[00:14] that this is probably the scariest Silent Hill game ever. What are you doing here? This is the first Silent Hill game that is entirely in first-person perspective.

[00:26] For those of you who have been waiting for the return of PT, this is the closest we've ever come, and because of that, it does feel very intimate and intense and frightening. The parts that I saw weren't necessarily as scary as I can tell based on the trailers as it's going to get, but there was still this eeriness even in the early stages of the game.

[00:47] The game is set in Scotland, which the developers told me was because it's already full of fog and monsters, and follows a character named Simon, who is far more timid and reserved, I think, than a lot of other Silent Hill protagonists.

[00:59] In fact he is so reserved we don really get a lot of kind of the chatter that you might normally get in those games where they like you know oh what what this doing here Instead that relegated to text that pops up on the left hand side of the screen that kind of represents his internal monologue

[01:13] I liked it because it didn't really detract away from the suspense. It didn't take you out of it by having this character who's supposed to be hiding from this bondaged up, fleshy demon type thing, but is somehow saying like, whoo, that was a close one.

[01:28] For those of you who love Silent Hill's puzzles, it looks like there will still be plenty of them, so don't you worry. In this particular section of the game, we had to restore power to someone named Zoe's house. She's a character who we saw in the trailers, though I'm not entirely sure how she plays into things yet, but that's Silent Hill for you.

[01:44] But in order to do that, you had to go to a local news store to buy a timed card for a subscription to electricity, which is apparently a throwback to how Scotland's power actually worked back in the 80s and 90s.

[01:57] It was something that some of the Scottish members of the team had to explain because it sounds baffling but that kind of the level of attention to detail that they bringing to this game In fact because it is in that first perspective they actually went through and scanned all of these various Scottish homes and imported them one into this game

[02:15] in order to create something that feels really, really authentic. It's probably not surprising to say that the game is absolutely gorgeous. Grotesque, yes, but gorgeous. And though I only saw one of the creatures that awaits us in this sleepy seaside town,

[02:28] it was pretty disturbing. It was, you know, fleshy. It was covered in what looked like leather ropes. And when it got a hold of Simon, I think more so than any Silent Hill game before it, they're aggressive.

[02:41] They are aggressive. They are fast. The developers described this as not a stealth game, but an evasion game. That is the focus of it. It's not so much being more clever than what's around you. It is just getting away from it before they get you.

[02:54] In Silent Hill Townfall, the main gameplay gimmick is you have control of this little CRTV, and as you walk around the town, you can hone in on different frequencies. One of these frequencies in the demo I saw was kind of leading our character to where the mystery was unfolding like where the action was what the next objective was However when you start to see enemies those will also have their own unique

[03:17] frequency. You can then tune into those to kind of monitor their positions and you can do that through walls. So, you know, if you know that there is something lurking around a corner without your CRTV, tune into that frequency and you'll be able to monitor them without putting yourself right out

[03:32] in the open. And speaking of not putting yourself right out in the open, they have a really intuitive peak system for lack of a better term in which once you are crouching behind a wall it's not just your normal like lean a little bit to the side you gain control of both sticks and can

[03:47] peek out like you have you have full control over how much you are peeking out you can choose just to do a little bit you can choose to kind of crouch as you do you can choose to stand up a little bit more on your tiptoes and that's important because these enemies are a little bit smarter i think

[04:01] than previous Silent Hill enemies. Like if you are sticking out and they would have line of sight, they're gonna come after you. For more on Silent Hill Townfall and Summer Game Fest, be sure to head over to gamespot.com.