Silent Hill: Townfall – the real enemy is [REDACTED]

Silent Hill is a consistently fascinating series to me. Initially incorrectly positioned (mostly by games journalists who didn’t know any better at the time) as a rival to Resident Evil, over the years the series has become increasingly creative and experimental.

Well, okay, there was a long period where, like many of Konami’s other classic series, everyone thought it was dead. But in the last few years we’ve seen three thoroughly interesting Silent Hill games: the remake of Silent Hill 2 (which is very good, but is best taken as a distinct work, separate from its source material), Silent Hill f (which I didn’t love the first time I played but intend to replay shortly) and now, Silent Hill: Townfall.

Probably one of the most interesting things is that each of these new Silent Hill games has been handled by a completely different developer. And the result is a much broader exploration of Silent Hill as a concept, rather than a geographical location. This is entirely in keeping with how the series has evolved. So let’s take a closer look at Townfall after the jump.

In Silent Hill: Townfall, you take on the role of Simon Ordell, an American man who has just washed up on the shores of a Scottish island town known as St. Amelia. Simon has vague memories of someone asking him to come to the town and “put things right”, but beyond that, he is very confused — particularly by the fact that he has an intravenous bag taped to his arm, delivering some sort of ominous, unknown fluid directly into his veins.

What then follows is a first-person adventure where Simon explores the apparently abandoned town, which has evidently suffered some sort of devastating tragedy in the not-too-distant past, and has to come to terms with his own sense of trauma and guilt over what went down here. Because as time goes on, Simon very much remembers what happened here, and his own part in it; he doesn’t necessarily make it explicit to you, the player, right away, but he definitely has plenty of baggage weighing him down.

Initially, like most Silent Hill games, Townfall is quiet, lonely and contemplative. The town is bathed in the series’ iconic fog, and nothing seems quite right. It is a beautiful place to explore, based on the real-life Scottish town of St. Monans, and absolutely nails the feeling of a mid-1990s working-class town that also carries some tourist appeal for those who want to “get away from it all”. I have been to places like St. Amelia in my real life; I have also been to places like the depressing monument to Brutalism found in the game’s latter half.

Before long, things start to get a bit strange. As Simon investigates a strange red flare and the sounds of distant protest, he answers a ringing payphone, where an unknown voice asks him for help. Emerging from the phone box, he encounters a man standing in the town square, inexplicably attached to some sort of impossible medical equipment coming down from the sky.

After rescuing the man from his apparent predicament, Simon finds himself transported to Townfall’s take on the series’ iconic “Otherworld” — this time known simply as “a different place”. Here, the world is bathed in darkness, and almost everything is covered with concrete; that which isn’t is made of rusty metal or impossibly complex networks of industrial pipes, sprouting from the scenery in improbable ways. Eventually, he stumbles his way through to a hotel room, where he discovers the game’s most important item: the “CRTV”, which is a portable television used for a number of different purposes.

The first of these is introduced right away: it allows you to “tune in” to short scenes that are relevant to the ongoing storyline. The exact context of these is kept deliberately vague throughout the entire duration of the narrative, but they often seem to be speaking directly to Simon. The first of these is the voice of a young woman asking him to “come back to her”.

These little vignettes are also often used as hints for puzzles, where you will have to decipher visual, often non-verbal clues in an attempt to solve the problem at hand. I won’t spoil the details of an example for the sake of those intending to play Townfall, but suffice to say, the use of the CRTV in this way means that the loving amount of detail in which the game’s environments are rendered is not simple graphical showing off; there are very often clues, hints and useful information buried in those seemingly incidental details.

The second function of the CRTV is as an enemy detection device, similar to the crackling radio found in several other Silent Hill games. The difference here is that the CRTV’s screen allows you to actually see enemies as well as just hear that they are nearby. Since the game has a very strong emphasis on stealth, this is a godsend; the CRTV effectively allows you to see through walls and keep an eye on enemies’ behaviour, allowing you to determine the patterns that they patrol on, and judge the best time at which to try and slip past them.

The one wrinkle in this is that you can only tune the CRTV to a single enemy’s frequency at a time, so if there are multiple enemies in the area, you’ll need to determine which are the most immediate threats, and pick your way through the environments carefully to avoid them.

If the worst happens, the game does feature combat, but it’s mostly inadvisable to engage in, at least early in the game. Enemies hit hard, and initially Simon only has planks of wood with which to defend himself. The game also features a weapon durability system, with weapons degrading a little when you block an incoming enemy attack, and significantly when you land a hit.

There are only a few different types of enemies in the game, so you’ll get thoroughly familiar with how to handle all of them as you progress.

The first you’ll encounter is a strait jacket-clad humanoid figure with an axe-shaped head; these run back and forth frantically and, if they see you, attempt to headbutt you into submission. They aren’t too hard to take down if it does come to a fight, but their main strength is their speed; you’ll need to time your movements very carefully if you want to avoid a confrontation.

The second you’ll come across is a sorrowful figure that shuffles around, occasionally wailing in anguish, bashing its head and fists on doors and walls or simply sobbing to itself. If these spot you, they will fire out IV needles from an unpleasant cavity in their chests, and also have a powerful grapple attack that deals hefty damage and can’t be blocked. Their slower movement makes them much easier to sneak around, so direct confrontation with them is best avoided.

In one late-game sequence, you’ll encounter screeching banshees known as Widows. These will often run and hide if you see them coming, but will also occasionally launch themselves at you, attempting to grapple you and batter you repeatedly in their rage. These are probably the most unnerving of the enemies.

Probably the biggest problem is a huge, unkillable enemy known as The Weight. This bastard, representing the guilt Simon continues to carry with him, only appears in a couple of sequences but he’s a monumental pain to deal with. Like most other enemies, he patrols a set area, but seems to be quite a bit more sensitive to both noises and catching a glimpse of Simon. He can just about be outrun if he happens to spot Simon and you take a suitably circuitous route, preferably with lots of obstacles in the way, but if he catches Simon it’s an instant kill.

Well, I say instant kill; one of the things that mysterious IV bag on Simon’s arm does is allow him to revive once if he is knocked out. This consumes the IV bag — there are replacements you can find throughout the game — but gives you a certain amount of margin for error when dealing with the game’s tougher enemies, like The Weight.

It is, however, worth noting that there are a couple of sequences in the game where you play as a character other than Simon, and neither of these characters have either the CRTV or the IV bag. One of them has a pager which shows the rough direction of nearby enemies, and the other has no means of keeping tabs on foes aside from simply listening out for the noises they make.

Later in the game, you do get access to a few firearms, including a revolver, a flare gun and a shotgun, but ammunition for these is extremely limited, even by genre standards. Rather than finding boxes of ammo, you tend to find individual bullets or shells lying around, meaning that in most cases you will probably want to think carefully before pulling a gun; if you can avoid an enemy rather than shooting them, it’s usually a better option.

As is apparently series tradition, there is an absolutely terrible final boss to contend with right at the end, and at this point resource management almost ceases to be an issue, as new ammunition and healing items continually spawn throughout the fight, making the whole thing more of a war of attrition against a damage sponge of an enemy rather than a tense climactic confrontation. It’s a bit disappointing, but it’s also just something that Silent Hill has always felt the need to do for some reason. Thankfully, it is the only boss in the game and doesn’t ruin the rest of the excellent things the game is doing.

The game has some very good puzzles. Perhaps not quite as many as in some other Silent Hill games — and nothing as outright fiendish as those found in Silent Hill f on its hard puzzle difficulty — but all of them are satisfying to complete. They vary from the relatively simple (determining a combination for a lock based on visual clues) to more complex (matching up blood packs with patient records and recordings about their carer’s observations) and borderline esoteric (operating a complex control panel for machinery without a manual indicating what all the icons mean) but all strike a good balance between offering a workout for your brain and ensuring that they’re not so counterintuitive that you’ll never solve them without a guide.

A particular highlight comes in a chapter where you have to perform various medical procedures on a patient who has clearly had some sort of horrific mishap. This sequence is set up to stress you out as much as possible, with various pieces of instrumentation displaying seemingly nonsensical information, equipment that you need being in the most inconvenient places imaginable, and a doctor constantly yelling at you for your incompetence over the intercom. Some unsubtle commentary on how nurses are a consistently underappreciated and undervalued part of the health service, methinks.

For those who have trouble with puzzles, there’s a “Hinted” mode, which automatically highlights the parts of documents you find that are relevant to a nearby puzzle, and a “Normal” mode, which turns all these hints off. There is, sadly, no “Hard” puzzle mode like some other entries in the series; there is only a “Hard” action difficulty, which makes the stealth elements much more challenging by allowing the monsters to detect you by the beam of your torch as well as noises and direct visual sightings.

Story-wise, the game is solid, and uses its setting well. It’s a little less vague than some other entries in the series — it probably won’t take you long to figure out what Simon’s role in everything was, even before you get it pretty much laid out in front of you — but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The way the game’s setting evolves from the picturesque seaside town of St. Amelia to the depressing Brutalist plaza constructed in the name of capitalism attempting to “save” the community works well, particularly when punctuated with the occasional trips to “a different place”.

The only real letdown environment-wise, for me, was the area in which the last main part of the story unfolds; as an Otherworldly take on an industrial area, its concrete corridors were considerably less interesting than the beautifully rendered environments from earlier in the game, but perhaps that’s just intended to reflect Simon’s descent further into the darkness of grief, guilt and trauma.

The story’s eventual point is perhaps a little simplistic and obvious when compared to the heavily interpretation-dependent narratives of other entries in the series — it’s a strong contrast to Silent Hill f in this regard — but, again, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It means the game is accessible and understandable while still having something worthwhile to say. You’ll likely end up with the “bad” ending on your first playthrough, but this isn’t an unsatisfying conclusion to proceedings; in many ways, it feels entirely appropriate. You will, however, have to put in some effort to get the other endings — which include two joke endings, as usual, along with some unlockable weapons that make fighting your way through much more straightforward.

On the whole, I enjoyed Silent Hill: Townfall. There were a few sequences, mostly involving The Weight, where the stealth elements were a little annoying and frustrating, but there was no point where I found the game’s challenges to be completely insurmountable. The narrative was compelling and had some worthwhile things to say, particularly about people treating key workers like shit; the horror aspects were genuinely unsettling; the different playable characters each had their own distinct sense of rhythm and pacing, making for a varied experience; and the whole thing felt just about the right length, clocking in at about 15 hours for a first playthrough.

I’m not sure I’d rank it quite as highly as my absolute favourite entries in the series — the original Silent Hill 2 is still the absolute benchmark for what a Silent Hill game is, so far as I’m concerned — but it’s definitely a significant number of cuts above the series’ lowest points, and well worth spending some time with. Taken more broadly in the context of the series as a whole, it’s another great example of Konami being willing to let a variety of developers loose on the idea of Silent Hill as a concept, not a place, and this approach very much seems to be giving the series a new lease on life.

I’m all for it. Thus far this approach may have resulted in “imperfect” games, but they’re all the more interesting specifically for those imperfections.

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More about Silent Hill: Townfall

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Want more Pete? Check my personal blog I’m Not Doctor Who, and my YouTube channel ThisIsPete. If you enjoy what you read here, please consider buying me a coffee.

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