Silent Hill Townfall first-person review
by 🔫 Not A Real Sugar: Silent Hill
Screen Burn Interactive just proved it can deliver an authentic first-person Silent Hill experience. The series has never gone first-person at this scale before Townfall, and honestly the shift pays off. Exploring St. Amelia as Simon, a guy who washes up on that Scottish island, is way more immersive, and the scares land harder because of it. You start with almost nothing to defend yourself, so boards and pipes early, guns later, and running or hiding is usually smarter since the monsters never let up. Some people worried this would be a walking simulator with no real gameplay. Those worries are dead. Puzzles, combat, stealth, it is all here. Exploration stays fun on any difficulty. A few bugs break the immersion here and there, but Konami has another stellar entry on its hands, and the heavy P.T. DNA running through it is impossible to miss.
Transcript (en)
Most Silent Hill games are played from a third-person perspective, but Silent Hill Townfall is a first-person experience. Switching to the first-person helps Silent Hill Townfall be more immersive and makes the scares hit a little harder than they sometimes do in other games. Players primarily explore Townfall's foggy, freaky world as a man named Simon, who washes up on the Scottish island town of St. Amelia at the beginning of the game. Like most other Silent Hill protagonists, Simon starts off with little in the way of defending himself against the minstrosities that cross his path, so avoiding combat is usually the best option. Simon is able to get his hands on melee weapons early on, like wooden boards and metal pipes, and eventually he even finds some guns. Running and hiding is almost always the best course of action in Silent Hill Townfall because the monsters are relentless. There was some concern that Silent Hill Townfall would be a walking simulator or otherwise feature limited gameplay compared to other games in the series, with too much focus on narrative. Those concerns can be laid to rest. Think of Townfall as a proper, full-fledged Silent Hill experience with all the puzzles and combat encounters one would expect, simply played from the first-person perspective and with a greater emphasis on stealth. No matter what difficulty settings you choose in Townfall, you will have fun exploring the world. Most of the time, Silent Hill Townfall delivers breathtaking visuals and an impressive level of polish, but immersion-breaking bugs occasionally rear their ugly head. Silent Hill Townfall isn't perfect, but it is still yet another stellar entry in Konami's ever-expanding survival horror franchise. Developer Screen Burn Interactive has proven itself capable of delivering an authentic, first-person Silent Hill experience, and I hope it gets another turn at bat in the future.
