PlayStation 5 Critic Reviews

Silent Hill f is a bold new direction for Konami’s iconic survival horror series. While it may put a heavier emphasis on combat, NeoBards has expertly concocted a nightmarish cocktail oozing with enough stomach-churning monsters, disgustingly beautiful environments, and psychological dread to be just as good, if not better than, Silent Hill 2…Hinako’s world is suffocating and compelling, and I can’t wait to delve even further into the dark, damp town of Ebisugaoka to uncover more endings. If this is the quality we can expect from Silent Hill going forward, then I have never been more excited to step into its fog-filled future.

It’s a game that manages to honor the series’ legacy, while simultaneously pushing it in a new direction, and it might just be the best Silent Hill to date.

Silent Hill f expertly weaves elements of Japanese mythology and folklore into the history of Ebisugaoka, creating a truly disturbing backdrop against which our tale of adolescence and the unfortunate realities of Showa Era customs is told. Despite the occasional missteps in the gameplay department, Konami and Ryukishi07 have created the most unique and fresh mainline Silent Hill game we've seen since Silent Hill 2.

Hinako's journey in Silent Hill f is brutal, beautiful, and brilliant. As someone that has been playing survival-horror games for decades, Silent Hill f is exactly what I want from a modern-day entry in the genre. It features challenging puzzles, gruesome monsters, and a ton of replay value wrapped in stunning graphics, great performance, and smart quality-of-life features that ensure it meets today's standards. Silent Hill f is a masterful horror game that stands tall alongside the likes of Silent Hill 2 and other survival-horror classics.

Silent Hill f marks the return of the franchise in a big way. It’s revitalised, it’s exciting, it’s haunting and it’s terrifying. With the doors wide open for more horror and experimentation to expand the franchise, I can’t wait for more.

Silent Hill f is a tremendous new entry in the horror series that blends well-known hallmarks into something engaging, challenging, and wholly original.

The long and short of it is that Silent Hill f is brilliant. It’s an exceptional story told exceptionally well, with a depth of theme and artistic heritage that makes it worth actual study. That is backed up with an entertaining blend of well-designed combat and intelligent, challenging puzzles. Silent Hill f will – or at least should – make you uncomfortable, and it will haunt your thoughts long after you’ve stopped playing. And that’s the hallmark of a truly special horror game.

Most of all, this is that rarest of things: a horror game that actually has something to say. Rather than simply throwing jumpscares and black-haired ghost maidens at you until you submit, it uses rural mythology and superstition as a lens through which to examine the harms of patriarchy and the rigidly gendered expectations it thrusts on to teenagers. It also proves that the survival horror genre still has so much to give, 30 years after its inception. You must come to Ebisugaoka as soon as you can, and stay at least a week, maybe longer.

Here, true horror isn’t in the fog, the blood or the monsters, but the shedding and rebuilding of the self until you no longer recognize who remains.

Do I recommend Silent Hill f if you like horror, the Silent Hill series in general, and good games? For the love of God yes, I do. I may not be the right audience, but I do know that, and I freely admit this might be recency bias and I’ll have to come back to this question at the end of the year when it’s GOTY time, that this is currently tied with Silent Hill 3 as my favorite game in the series. It’s terrifying, you want to see what happens next, and, this is somewhat unusual for a horror title, you want to play it again immediately afterwards, because there are unanswered questions on a first playthrough that do in fact get answered on further returns. I genuinely love this game and cannot recommend it enough, especially ahead of October and horror month.