The Silent Hill franchise was on ice for years, but it's been making an incredible comeback. Bloober Team hit it out of the park with the Silent Hill 2 remake, and that was followed by the excellent original game Silent Hill f. Silent Hill: Townfall is the latest in Konami's Silent Hill revival efforts, and it offers something different while remaining distinctly Silent Hill. Rest assured, Silent Hill: Townfall keeps the franchise's hot streak going strong.
Most Silent Hill games are played from a third-person perspective, but Silent Hill: Townfall is a first-person experience. Switching to first-person helps Silent Hill: Townfall be more immersive and makes the scares hit a little harder than they sometimes do in the other games. Silent Hill has dabbled in first-person before, but never on the scale seen in Townfall, and like the Resident Evil franchise before it, the transition is a resounding success.
Players primarily explore Townfall's foggy, freaky world as a man named Simon, who washes up in the Scottish island town St. Amelia at the beginning of the game. Like most other Silent Hill protagonists, Simon starts off with little in the way of defending himself against the monstrosities that cross his path, and so avoiding combat is usually the best option.
Simon is able to get his hands on melee weapons early on, like wooden boards and metal pipes, and eventually he even finds some guns. These weapons come in handy when there's no avoiding a fight, but even then, players have to be cautious. Even the weakest enemies can make quick work of Simon, and resources are limited. Weapons can break, healing supplies are in short supply, and ammunition is hard to come by.
Running and hiding is almost always the best course of action in Silent Hill: Townfall because the monsters are relentless. In one early encounter, I was being chased down an alley by a twisted creature with what looked like an axe for a head. I burst into a building, turned around, and shut the door. Thinking I was safe, I started to loot and look for key items, only for the monster to open the door and beat me to death. Townfall is full of intense and memorable moments like this.
There was some concern that Silent Hill: Townfall would be a "walking simulator" or otherwise feature limited gameplay compared to other games in the series, with too much focus on narrative. Those concerns can be laid to rest. Think of Townfall as a proper, full-fledged Silent Hill experience with all the puzzles and combat encounters one would expect, simply played from the first-person perspective, and with a greater emphasis on stealth.
The stealth mechanics in Townfall are admittedly hit or miss. It often feels too simple, largely relying on old tropes like throwing things to distract enemies and then crouch-walking to the next area, but there are times when it effectively ratchets up the tension and adds serious stakes to any given stretch of gameplay. What's here is serviceable, but the game perhaps leans on stealth a little too often considering the mechanics aren't terribly deep.
Besides throwing bottles and slowly walking by enemies, Simon can also utilize his portable CRTV for stealth. The CRTV is Simon's most important tool throughout the game, as it can detect enemy locations through walls and sometimes gives players visual clues of where to go next. Townfall has some interesting motion control DualSense puzzles that utilize the CRTV as well, so the game gets a lot of mileage out of the gimmick.
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