Silent Hill F review: the horror series returns with mystery and rage

Even imbued with fog on another world, Silent Hill FThe picturesque period adjusting strands of authenticity. The traditional hardwood buildings line narrow alleys, while the babbling streams and the small trails travel with soaked rice fields. The ephemeral of daily life of the 1960s is everywhere: brilliant magazines, vintage toaster, exquisite floral arrangements. However, beyond this meaning of the place of bad mood, the details that feel the most authentic in Silent Hill F are of a kind that video games are rarely excellent. It is anxiety on the faces of his adolescent characters while exchanging barbed wire mockery, the emotional collapses scribbled on notes transmitted to school.

We see this finely drawn and often painful world through the eyes of the secondary student Hinako Shimizu. She is a “hard girl”, according to her friends. Quite quickly, the emblematic mist of the series goes down and Hinako is forced to use its athletic sequence, jumping on obstacles to flee the malignant mist. She collects pipes and batons of long legs with long legs; She finds arcane keys to unlock the doors decorated disturbingly. We once again explore a twisted city in grotally personal forms by the intense emotions of our protagonist. Classic ingredients of silent Hill Back, but there is a new freshness and vitality here.

Partly, this is due to delightful visuals: the border on photorealism but pictorial in their strange beauty. The light naturally diffuses in each cold and brooding street, bouncing on the Bob Prim-And-Propeur de Hinako and the buttoned uniform. A carpet of red spider lilies frequently unfolds through the fictitious mountain village of Ebisugaka, transforming the setting into a kind of ecological-horror hallucination. In an otherwise disatuated palette, plants are a lively and violent interruption.

Moreover, Silent Hill F Feels revitalized thanks to a story written by the author of Japanese manga renamed Ryukishi07. Hinako is at a pivotal moment in his life, still at school but at the dawn of a marriage arranged by her abusive and alcoholic father. She is tormented by social anxieties: the gossip of friends and the absence of her older sister. This route is patiently revealed through cinematics and dispersed letters. It is the typical narration of video games, but Silent Hill F Offers an attractive wedding of play and story space. The city of Ebisugaoka opens alongside the mysteries; The streets seem to double on themselves as this delicate story.

You discover other attractive treats: details on the pollution of arsenic, toxic gas leaks and the construction of a solid dam. Are they at the heart of the monstrous manifestations that Hinako must endure or simply red herring? I am still not sure, even having rolled credits around the hour 10.

Think about Silent Hill F Like the horror of survival meets the mystery fiction of the Honkaku of Japan, whose story continues to be lit with each subsequent game (all told through five possible ends). By wandering in frightening woods during my first session, I came across a giant and sacred tree. But I couldn’t interact with it. The tree remained an enigma until I start the game again, quickly discovering a new puzzle that seemed to center it. More details and kinematics arrive in subsequent games (and there is even a functionality that distinguishes the new cutscenes from the old so that you can press the Skip button).

The depth and the nuance of the mystery are striking, but the same goes for the lack of real fears. Silent Hill F is sinister, tense, melancholy and, in a handful of scenes, grumble a villain. But scary? Little. There is nothing here which corresponds to the terrifying abysmal descent in the foundation below the city Silent hill 2,, that Staircase that seemed to kill directly in James’ troubled subconscious. Closest Silent Hill F Come is Hinako’s family home. The doors and rooms are multiplying; The corridors lie down. The space – constantly repeating until you finish all its puzzles – hair with a nightmarish logic.

The absence of scrubs arises mainly from an inclination to the action. Hinako lands critical blows, performs dodges in Slo-Mo and even a pole weapon with a curved blade called Naginata. She is not a hero of action at the beginning, striving to lift weapons and sometimes rushing to the air thin. But the teenager is committed. “Don’t mind me,” she said at some point, more and more assertive.

During the fights, Hinako consumes the remedies on which she can place her hands – Kudzu tea, red pills, chocolate – and in sanctuaries, which double like spots, she can make sacrifices to the gods, thus improving her health, endurance and even sanction. This journey is therefore a test of faith for the young person who has a foot in tradition and another in modernity (a point reflected in the formidable partition, which mixes folk Japanese traditional music with the psychedelics of the 60s).

“The road twists and turns,” explains Hinako in a moment of silent reflection towards the end of the match. “It’s as if I got through my head.” The line is an awkward aberrant value in a script which generally has the intelligence not to spell its Freudian subtext. However, the remark raises a question: what is hidden in the darkest and most private corners of Hinako’s mind? Thanks to the design of expressive level, a skillfully told story and the fighting of combat, we find a young woman locked up in the battle with the expectations of society.

Silent Hill F Beautifully communicates his emotional bow, of the connection desperately for survival to release violent fury. Hinako does not flower as long as the lock. It becomes a powerful force of nature in its own right.

_{Silent Hill F Launches September 25 on the PS5, Xbox and PC.}