CONTENT WARNING: this article will contain some spoilers as well as mentions of suicide and self harm as they're brought up in the games story, read only if you can handle these subjects, thank you.

so, i don't like first person horror games, not all of them i dislike, there are a few here and there but as a rule this is just not a genre i care for, neither the action style ones or the slender PT style of horror either, it's just not my thing and theres very rarely been one that i didnt feel would have been better in third person, PT is one of those, the game silent hill: the short message takes the most inspiration from. i do not like PT, i havent played it since my first run back in 2014 but it left a sour enough taste in my mouth that i never felt a need to go back, even though i have it installed and still can if i so wish, at the time i just hated the idea of one of my favourite third person series going first person, it's a direction i hope it never goes as it didn't work well for resi and it didnt work fot PT, but as game shows, it could still work well for silent hill, i went in expexting to hate this just like PT, but i came out of it with it being one of my favourite games in the series, this is something special.

though the caviat first, i would have preffered this was third person, or ideally even tank controls, it's not like this style of horror isn't better in third person as we've seen with games like clock tower 3 and haunting ground, hell even in silent hill downpour the chases worked better than here, the gameplay isn't bad at all, first person does work well for the urbex style exploration that the series has always been really good at, but i just would have loved some fixed camera angles here, the game is pretty enough that i think it could have looked even better like that. usually i am very mixed on non-combat horror since most can be pretty boring, with extended closet hiding sections that make many of those games difficult to play for me, soma is better with the monsters turned off for example, these games are very rarely that scary and just uninteresting, but this does away with the stealth aspects in favour of straight chase sequences and it's better for it, you need to scramble in the dark to find the right path in repeating hallways and its a lot less cryptic than PT was here, it's very managable to beat the game without a guide and even for that alone its better than PT. the environment you explore is also very interesting, it's a large abandoned apartment building covered in graffiti, tons of environmental storytelling and cute, or even scary, details to be found, it's a scary place to be even before the supernatural stuff comes in and it's interesting how for some of it i found it difficult to tell weather it was the real world or the otherworld partially because of how realistically abandoned it looked, which while i'm not sure if that was intended, it really impressed me, it's one of the aspects of photorealism i think can work really well artistically but is something that's not often brought up. it's also impressive how, despite the games really cool use of FMV, that the games environments look just as good as the FMV, sure the character models aren't perfect, neither is the animation, but that environmental work is phenominal, this could be the prettiest game i've ever played, when i first saw those screenshots i didn't know weather it was gameplay or concept art, it's that good.

the story is also really really good and it's characters are too, everyone gets time to shine and has a story to tell, it's not always a happy one and this is a game that deals with some really heavy stuff, suicide and self harm are both shown and the former is a very core story beat so if you can't handle that then please dont play, as much as i do want to reccomend this, it may also have some LGBT themes? maybe? it can be read that way and i think that's the intention, but it's not at the forefront and there's a lot of reading you have to do into it, but it's nice it's there at all. it takes cue's from games like the missing with its focus on storytelling via texts and it has some FMV cutscenes and use of it for things like phone backgrounds, sure it maybe doesn't go the subtle route, it's very on the nose, but i also think people can forget that's not always a bad thing, sure for people who know these subjects well it can feel a little badly told, but for groups with much less experiance with this, in this case men who maybe don't have that perspective, a less subtle story can really help them understand the subject better and empathise more and i think there's a lot of value in that, even as someone with experiance with a lot of the subjects covered it still hit me hard and i resonated with it a lot, but i get that not everyone will, it's the kind of deeply personal story that many just won't vibe with, i also just really appreciated the happy ending, well, as happy as you'll get in a game like this, they could have easily went an edgier route with it and i'm glad they didn't, i hope this game finds its audiance because i really do think it'll really speak to the right people in a big way. it also sets up some interesting stuff that i think will tie into silent hill F in a big way and is a really interesting direction for the series if true, i'll be excited to see what direction it goes.

it's a new studio here too, hexadrive was at the helm here, a studio i talk about very frequently on here it seems, between this, resident evil 7: not a hero (the best part of that game) and another game that i'll be covering very soon, they did really well here considering this was their first shot at the series, you do have some older silent hill alumni here too of course, masahiro ito on the creature design and i do think it's one of his best works honestly and akira yamaoka on the music, and while his score feels much less notable than a lot of classic SH, it's still really good and there's a fantastic vocal track at the end too, better than his work on stray souls and the messenger thats for sure, games much better than those too. i'm excited to see where the series goes from now overall, 2 remake looks, well, it'll be interesting regardless of quality and F seems like it has a lot of potential, but if this is the best it gets then honestly i'm okay with that, this was one of my favourites in the series, it might be tied with 2 for my 5th favourite and i hope we maybe get a physical version eventually, i'd even be happy with it being a bonus on the disc for F, games this special deserve it, give it a shot sometime, it's free and only about 2 hours long so really what do you have to lose.