Silent Hill Townfall Review
A hill worth dying on, even if one monster makes sure you die on it a lot.
Silent Hill Townfall is the latest entry in a series that, not all that long ago, genuinely felt like it was fading away. Fast forward to today and Silent Hill is back in full swing, with multiple recent releases from multiple different studios, each putting their own spin on the fog. This time around it's Screen Burn's turn, a small studio from Scotland that I'll openly admit I had never heard of before. And after finishing Townfall, it was honestly surprising to learn just how small the team behind it actually is, because it certainly doesn't play like it.
Townfall takes you to a Scottish fishing village that calls people back to "put things right", a setup that will feel instantly familiar to anyone who has spent time with previous Silent Hill games. It's a smart starting point. It gives long time fans that comforting sense of dread they know and love, while still giving the studio room to build something of its own.
And build something they did. Right off the bat, Screen Burn does an absolutely amazing job of taking this newer, more modern and more grounded village and making it feel like it belongs in Silent Hill. That's not an easy thing to pull off. A quiet coastal town in Scotland could very easily have ended up feeling like a generic horror setting with a Silent Hill logo slapped on top, but every street and every foggy stretch of harbour feels like it was designed with the series in mind.
On a technical level, this is by far the best looking Silent Hill game to date, and that's even while playing in performance mode. The environments in particular are something else. The level of detail is frankly ridiculous at times, and there were plenty of moments where I just stopped to take in a room or a street corner. Pair that fidelity with the strange, twisted atmosphere the series is known for and you end up with a game that is a real treat for the eyes, even when what you're looking at is deeply unsettling.
The biggest and most obvious change this time is the move to first person, making Townfall the first Silent Hill game to take that route. I know some purists will hesitate at the idea, and I understand why. But it's implemented so well that after a few hours you'll genuinely forget the game is even in first person. It still feels like Silent Hill through and through. If anything, I'd argue horror games are simply more immersive in first person, and personally I think it fits the series like a glove and works wonderfully for this kind of atmosphere.
Speaking of atmosphere, everything you'd expect from a Silent Hill game is present and accounted for. The mist, the Otherworld, the secret NG+ endings, that constant feeling that the town itself is watching you. It's all here, and as I mentioned above, Screen Burn did a perfect job of translating those classic vibes into a brand new setting. Fans will feel right at home, or at least as at home as anyone can feel in Silent Hill.
One area where Townfall really stands out, and arguably outshines any previous Silent Hill game, is the puzzles. Some of the puzzles, especially closer to the end of the game, are genuinely clever and original. At the end of the day, most of them come down to reading the documents you find and applying a bit of logic, but the game doesn't hold your hand at all while you do it. There were a few that had me sitting there with notes, piecing things together, and the satisfaction of finally cracking them was fantastic. For me, this was one of the highlights of the whole experience and something I'd love to see future entries take inspiration from.
You also control multiple characters throughout the story, each with their own traumatic backstory, which fits the series perfectly from a narrative point of view. Where it falls a little flat is mechanically. Early on, while playing as Simon, the main protagonist, you get a CRTV device that lets you see enemies in the area through walls. It's a neat little touch, and it had me thinking every character was going to get their own unique mechanic to set them apart. Sadly, that just isn't the case. Everyone plays more or less the same, which feels like a bit of a missed opportunity. It's a nitpick more than a real problem, but giving each character their own tool or ability would have added a lot to the variety.
Which brings me to my one real gripe with the game, and that's the combat and the enemies.
Townfall feels less like a pure horror game and more like a survival horror game. The psychological Silent Hill horror is absolutely there, but the gameplay itself sits in a strange spot somewhere between classic Silent Hill and something like Resident Evil. The problem is that it feels like Resident Evil without the Resident Evil arsenal and without any way to dodge.
Now, I'll be upfront. Some people will always find enemies annoying in this genre, while others will quite reasonably argue that the tension and resource management is part of what makes survival horror what it is. I agree with that. But without holding back, the enemies in Townfall are annoying as hell. The more standard enemies can be avoided, or eventually taken down once you've gathered a few more weapons, and while they did push me into full stealth mode a lot more often than I would have liked, they're manageable. It doesn't help that there are only around three enemy types in the entire game, and honestly, they all look pretty similar too.
Then there's one enemy in particular that I just couldn't make sense of. It shows up a handful of times throughout the game (thankfully only a few), it's completely unkillable, and it kills you in one hit if it touches you. On paper, it's the classic roaming threat you're supposed to avoid, which is fine. In practice, it constantly seemed to spawn right on the other side of whatever door I just walked through, killing me instantly with absolutely no way of knowing it would be there. Other times it would simply park itself in the middle of the critical path and stay there, and there were genuine moments where all I could do was accept my fate. On top of that, it detects you far too easily, and once it does, nine times out of ten you're done for. Even when you do get an auto revive, it's a coin flip whether it's standing right next to you ready to finish the job the second you get back up.
I really didn't understand the AI behind this enemy. Like I said, it only appears in a few areas, but that first encounter was memorable enough, for all the wrong reasons, to drag down my overall impression of the game more than it probably should have.
What makes it more frustrating is that I could see how close the combat was to working. During my NG+ playthrough you get an infinite axe that one shots enemies. Obviously I wouldn't want that in a standard playthrough, but it was a blast to use, and it had me thinking that if regular weapons took enemies down in three or four hits and there was a dodge button, I would have been completely fine with it. This might be a slightly unpopular opinion, but I actually liked what Silent Hill f did with its combat. It fixed a lot of my issues with the slower paced combat the series has traditionally had. Townfall not only undoes that progress, it almost feels like it went in the opposite direction.
That being said, take the combat and that one specific enemy out of the equation and Townfall is a genuinely great Silent Hill game. Even with those issues, they're nowhere near enough to stop me from recommending it, whether you're a lifelong Silent Hill fan or simply someone who enjoys a good survival horror.
At the end of the day, Silent Hill Townfall is another great entry in the series. Everything feels exactly how a Silent Hill game should, and in some areas, particularly the environments and the puzzles, it's even better than what came before. For a small studio most people had never heard of, that's a seriously impressive achievement. Just keep your eyes peeled every time you open a door.
