Silent Hill: Townfall is a departure from the series in that it features a new town, St. Amelia, and carries over minimal narrative from the previous games. This means the newest Silent Hill is as beginner-friendly as it is separate from the main series.
It opens in media res, with the protagonist Simon lost on the docks of St. Amelia as an eerie fog covers the limits of visibility. There is a slow-creeping soundtrack, a relative staple of the series, and nothing but questions in the earliest moments of the game.
As players delve into the mystery of the town, a mysterious caller in the phone box, and strange hallucinations, Silent Hill: Townfall’s story is woven together slowly, piece by piece and puzzle by puzzle.
Most of the combat is more often a way to stun and evade enemies rather than eliminate them altogether. Simon has a few weapons at his disposal, gathered over the course of the game’s events, with limited ammo and utility.
The puzzles, which tie into the narrative itself, are usually “find an object to interact with, find a clue, go somewhere, grab an item, and return.” They aren’t bad and don’t take away from Townfall‘s more carefully designed features, but they hardly feel new or impressive to the horror genre.
For most of the adventure, Simon carries a small radio receiver with a screen known as the “CRTV”. Players can tune it to both detect threats and clues in their immediate vicinity, doing a small mini-game to lock the signals in place so they can swap between them quickly. Using the CRTV as both a story tool and a gameplay device is excellent for the immersion but can become a bother when fleeing so many enemies that a new signal is coming up every few seconds.
The environmental storytelling in Silent Hill: Townfall is one of its most thought-out features. The constant string of “for sale” signs on homes and businesses is eerie, the series staple fog makes it easy to get lost in the small town, and many of the buildings have more than one way to enter or exit. Players often use locks on doors and selected paths to avoid hostile enemies while they look for the next clue or puzzle piece to progress the story.
Silent Hill: Townfall has little to no connection to established lore, while the series’ themes, like overwhelming guilt and psychological fog-based horror, are all here in St. Amelia but set in a different location with new characters.
Story via Cubed3. Read the original article
