Silent Hill F review: A gorgeously grotesque spin-off that fascinates despite its flaws

Silent Hill has gone through more than its fair share of reinventions over the years, but Silent Hill F might be its biggest change yet – not just in terms of where it’s set, but how it plays too.

Silent Hill F tells the story of Hinako Shimizu, a high school student who lives with a violent drunken father and a subservient mother who just wants to keep the peace.

Juggling her awful family life with the awkwardness of high school politics would be bad enough, but when her home town of Ebisugaoka is enshrouded by fog and starts to become infested with grotesque monsters, it’s fair to say she’s having a rough time of it.

Initially, the aim is for Hinako and her friends to stick together, but as the game progresses a far more curious plot emerges, one in which Hinako finds herself in a mysterious environment she’s never been to before.

As a spin-off from the main series, Silent Hill F has the freedom to mess around with the formula a bit. Obviously one of the main examples of this is the shift from the typical setting – an American town, often Silent Hill itself – to a small Japanese village in the 1960s.

This makes for some astounding scenery, as Ebisugaoka is created with an impressive degree of detail. In the early parts of the game when you’re actually able to study the environment without too much pressure, the streets and houses have been wonderfully designed and really do feel like a real sleepy Japanese town from the past.

The detail extends to the numerous grotesque monsters Hinako encounters on her journey. Whether they’re actually scary is a matter of taste – I personally don’t think they’re up there with such series staples as the nurses or Pyramid Head – and one or two of them are a bit of a chore to fight (especially one massive one which takes up so much space and just soaks up attacks for ages), but they’re certainly fascinating to look at.

A weird creature made out of doll heads that slowly hopscotches towards you is undoubtedly a unique sight, but as the game progresses it becomes less a case of “oh no, don’t let it near me” and more “oh no, I’m going to have to figure out how to get past that”.

There are occasional jump scares (quite literally) where enemies will leap out at you, but in general there are so many enemies in the game that for the most part when you see one appearing out of the fog you prepare to fight rather than run.

That’s because Silent Hill F has a much greater emphasis on combat than other games in the series. There’s a steady stream of lead pipes, baseball bats, knives, sickles and the like lying around, each with their own power and durability stats, and while they eventually break you can also find toolkits which can be used to repair them on the fly.

The game’s developers have already asked that people stop describing it as a Soulslike, and with good reason. On one hand, it’s easy to tell how people come to that conclusion – it’s melee-only with no guns to speak of, and there’s a lot of dodging to avoid big, slow attacks then landing some big, slow attacks of your own.

That’s really where the similarities end, though, and anyone expecting the sort of huge challenge provided by other games in that genre will be disappointed. There may be far more combat in Silent Hill F than in any other game in the series, but it’s certainly not as deep or challenging as FromSoftware’s output.

Without wishing to spoil too much of the storyline (which, incidentally, is as head-scratchingly confusing as other Silent Hill games a lot of the time), Silent Hill F is mostly split into two types of world – the real world and ‘another’ world – with the game switching between them at different points in the story.

The sections taking place in the real world are the most like your typical Silent Hill game. Resources are limited, weapons have durability, that trademark fog is ever-present, it’s very much a survival horror situation. You can take on every monster if you want, but you may find yourself breaking all your weapons if you do, so choosing when to fight and when to dodge is crucial.

When things switch to the other world the situation is the same in some ways – health items are still finite and you’re still limited with things like stamina and ‘sanity’ meters (the latter of which is used for ‘focus’ attacks) – but the most crucial aspect is that the weapons you find here have infinite durability.

This really changes the dynamic of these sections, and the ‘survival’ aspect very much switches from flight to fight. It’s in these alternate world areas, then, where some Silent Hill purists may start to feel the gameplay slipping away from what they’re used to, and whether that’s a good or bad thing will be down to personal taste.

This change becomes even greater halfway through, where – without spoiling anything –a wild pivot takes place (and will doubtless split the fanbase). From this point on any semblance of survival horror goes out the window and all enemy encounters in the alternate world become a straight-up action game.

“This change becomes even greater halfway through, where – without spoiling anything – a wild pivot takes place (and will doubtless split the fanbase). From this point on any semblance of survival horror goes out the window and all enemy encounters in the alternate world become a straight-up action game.”

Even when the game reaches this form it still retains some Silent Hill elements. The series has had some brilliant map screens over the years and it’s the same here, constantly updating with visited areas drawn in and red markers over key areas of interest to make sure you don’t get lost too much.

It’s also got the puzzles typical of a survival horror game like this, although they aren’t the best in this case. The best of the bunch involves a series of locker room combinations which ends up putting a fun spin on the usual ‘find a note with the number on it’ trope, but not all of them are this entertaining.

One puzzle in particular involving fox and bird crests, which appears near the end of the game, is absolutely infuriating and simply won’t provide enough information to most players to help them avoid going through a potentially lengthy period of pure guesswork.

While I’m on the negatives, the game’s focus more on combat than previous Silent Hill games doesn’t always clash well (so to speak) with the environments expected from the series. When you’re out in the open, exploring the town or other large areas, everything works perfectly well and the dodge, counter and stun mechanics are all really satisfying.

However, the nature of Silent Hill means there are also areas in the game – house interiors, labyrinths, another school – where there are a lot of tight corridors and small rooms, and this is where things break down a bit, especially when it comes to the camera.

It’s maybe done by design to encourage the player to avoid these situations, but it also manufactures enough set pieces to force them to happen, and battling a dashing, knife-wielding enemy (or two) while also fighting with the camera – not to mention your weapon clanging off the walls and stunning you because you don’t have enough room to swing it – is massively infuriating at times.

It speaks volumes of the rest of the game’s quality, however, that the more annoying puzzles and combat elements aren’t complete game breakers, but rather downgrade Silent Hill F from absolutely essential to ‘merely’ excellent.

“It speaks volumes of the rest of the game’s quality, however, that the more annoying puzzles and combat elements aren’t complete game breakers, but rather downgrade Silent Hill F from absolutely essential to ‘merely’ excellent.”

It’s still very much an experience that fans of the series and survival horror games in general should definitely try out, as long as you’re prepared for more action than usual and are willing to accept things going pretty left-field and completely changing the combat mechanics about halfway through.

It looks absolutely gorgeous, it sounds superb – the soundtrack, including contributions from Akira Yamaoka, is amazing and you really should play with headphones to hear the grotesque, otherworldly sounds going on around you – and the plot is as strange as it is engaging (though the usual content warnings apply, with a lot of abuse and self-harm references to be found here).

It’s a game that somehow manages to feel just like a Silent Hill game and nothing like a Silent Hill game in equal measure, but given that the series has had its fair share of disappointing releases over the years I’ll happily take more games like this which take the formula in different, sometimes very surprising directions.

With the trademark multiple endings the Silent Hill series is known for there’s plenty of replay value to be had here, and the plot is so downright odd that you’ll likely need a few playthroughs to fully get your head around it anyway. Luckily, the game’s enjoyable enough that the prospect of taking Hinako through her own personal hell one more time won’t feel like a chore.

Well, for you, at least.