Silent Hill f – horror classic comes back to life in a fog-bound 60s town | Games
AS The air humidity increases in 35-degree tokio, including the dead. Since the EDO period, the Japanese summer has been associated with the arrival of supernatural forces – a season that is defined by malicious spirits. When the country's temperatures rise, it is assumed that the barriers that separated the world of living and the dead to disappear, so that once spirits slide into our empire.
It stands in front of this sweaty backdrop that I hike the fog-loaded Japan from Silent Hill f. In the fictional city of Ebisugaoka in the 1960s, players were put into the dust -coated shoes of a misunderstood youthful girl named Hinako. Summer or no, Hinako's story begins in an appropriate bleak fashion. Hinako fled her drunken and misused father and strips the intrusive streets of her rural hometown miserably. Hinako, who does not do justice to the high standards of her incredibly beautiful older sister, is found by classmates – and struggles to understand their place in society.
“Gender is a large part of the story,” teases the series producer Motoi Okamoto. “We cannot really go into it too much, but the 1960s were than the rights of women in Japan.
Despite the inevitable scary nature of the city, Ebisugaoka is an extremely beautiful virtual area scheme. When I roam the almost outfit streets, I can't help but fit into every paved corner, open every translucent bamboo door and examine the wasteful details of each inari shrine. It is a refreshing change compared to the Japan, which is usually shown in games-a neon-sacrificed Tokyo or an Olde Samurai epic.
“Horror games from Japan – and in Japan – have seen no major publications in the past ten years,” says Okamoto. “Silent Hill has always been a marriage between western horror and horror in Japanese style, but over time we believed that the Japanese essence began to disappear. With Silent Hill F, we decided that we wanted to infusion the Japanese topics more.”
It doesn't take long for the troubling beauty of the city to make a seat to complete horror. As a fog rod that falls on Ebisugaoka, the doll-like beings Hinako follow, strikingly beautiful red vegetable tendrils that rise out of the ground. These purple flowers can be on their legs during the fight and helplessly tie them on the floor, while the mannequin-like monstrosities are threatening to them.
In accordance with the setting, there is no firearms in Silent Hill F. The agenda is a tense melee. Perfect time-controlled dodges and meters that fill up the endurance of Hinako so that she can land a follow-up attack, which leads to a surprisingly dark soul-like survival course.
“One of the first things I could go into this game was that I wanted to integrate more action,” says Okamoto. “But of course, since this is a horror game, we cannot fully rely on the action. We also had to have these tense moments in between … I think we managed to hit a fairly sensitive balance.”
At first I am not so convinced. In the first hour, the fight in Silent Hill F feels exhausting and sluggish. Every dodge and every hard -won hits are slow and inaccurate, which leads to a certain death. But where early battles frustrating, I slowly warm up on the tense melee and finally clicked with his considered cadence. While the inconsistent difficulty in this preview building could use a change of advance-a later demo boss suddenly saw me dying over 30 times-the scratchy fight fits surprisingly well.
“Many people say that they really enjoy being afraid of playing horror, but I think what they actually mean is that they enjoy the tension,” says Al Yang, Game Director at the Studio, who develops the game with Konami, Neobards. “The fear of the unknown is one thing, but they are always afraid? It gets very old, very quickly.”
Instead, Silent Hill F has installed stress into every system. In a Lovecrafian touch, players have to pay attention to their reasoning knife and leave sacrifices in shrines to restore Hinako's intellectual stability. “You need to know how close your candle is going to go Really Let it feel tense, “adds Yang.” You can see the durability of your weapons. You are very aware of your own limits how close you are – or the resources are – and none The is what creates tension. “
In the early hours of the morning you can see that you navigate labyrinthian alleys, the strictly knitting streets will soon give way to foggy rice fields and scary farmhouses. But for all the terrible monstrosities of Ebisugaoka there is a refreshing human yarn at the heart of Silent Hill F. While Hinako is looking for her friends while the city goes to hell, they keep investing in its past, present and future. As with earlier entries, there is a fantastic quality for every encounter, so that you are not sure which interactions are real, but the beautifully realized 60s settings are consistent.
“When it comes to exploring time periods, our familiar reality is distant in such a way that it basically borders the imagination,” says Ryukishi07 by Silent Hill F over the 1960s. “While the present is too grounded in reality … So there is really no room for interpretation. That's why I always have always [enjoyed] The possibilities that arise from the time between past and the present – that is Where imagination and reality cross. “
It feels appropriate while Japan's equivalent of Halloween plays a new Silent Hill. For years this was a series that seemed dead and buried – but now the silent Hill lives again like the spirits that cross to Japan.
“When I dealt with Silent Hill, my plan was that we not only have a remake and that the end can be the end,” says Okamoto. “We would have simply brought the old fans back and had a nostalgic meeting – but I wanted there to be a kind of progress. I think the fans can have more trust that Silent Hill has done a comeback … and that things will come ahead.”
Silent Hill F is released PCPS5 and Xbox, September 25th
