Silent Hill: Townfall

Silent Hill: Townfall was provided by Konami for review. Thank you!

I may be a big baby when it comes to horror games, but there are certain ones that really speak to me. I love it when they mix fantastic action with a scary premise (like Dead Space or Resident Evil), or when they go all in on psychological horror to creep us out without relying on jump scares. I especially love the latter, and happily get behind games that truly utilize the environment, atmosphere, sound, and story to drive home just how creepy it is. Silent Hill: Townfall is one of those games, and not only does it succeed on every front, but it has also easily become one of the best horror games that I’ve ever played.

Before actually playing the game, I already had my hopes high. I was excited to see how they were going to translate the psychological horror of Silent Hill and translate it to a first-person experience. They are also sharing publishing duties with Annapurna Interactive, which actually gave me more confidence in how unique the game will be. And, after playing it from start to finish, I feel confident that this is one of the best Silent Hill experiences out there.

The narrative takes center stage, with its interesting premise and evolving storyline. We play as Simon Ordell, who is washed up on the shore of the town of St. Amelia. He has been called back by someone named Richard and tasked with finding a woman named Zoe to help him reach Richard. However, as we travel through the town, we will learn more about what actually transpired and how it has influenced the abandoned town.

I don’t want to spoil anything, but Silent Hill: Townfall's story is fantastic. It has great pacing, surprising revelations, and is told with enough nuance that it invokes critical thinking to put the pieces together as the story continues. I was completely taken back by some of the revelations towards the end of the game, and it makes some of the pieces that are revealed earlier start to make sense in an entirely different way. Even with the game having multiple endings, it all flows wonderfully.

The characters and their voice acting are done beautifully, but if I had to criticize, there were a few unbelievable moments. What’s happening is clearly unreal, but there are a few times where it just seems Simon isn’t shocked at all. It might make sense in some interpretation of the story, but it felt a little too unbelievable with all the events happening around him. However, I’d consider this nitpicky, and the majority of the story is fantastic.

A few elements are also told through the CRTV we carry with us. We may get messages from time to time on that small screen, and we need to tune the frequency to listen in. They provide more clues as to what happened in the story, while also being told in a way that induces more horror vibes. Whether it’s the breathy voice, static sound effects, or the way the video is being shown, it all blends together to make me feel creeped out.

It also weaves well into what is the best part of Townfall: its atmosphere. St. Amelia has been transformed into a creepy, fog-ridden shell of its former self, and just walking around it was enough to put me on my toes. The lighting (or lack thereof) felt almost perfect at times, while the fog provided a necessary backdrop to keep me wondering if there were any monsters hiding and waiting for me to turn the corner. The abandoned town, stores stripped of their supplies, and remnants of protests all started to paint a picture of a place that nobody should be in anymore, and as the story develops, it all starts to click.

The atmosphere stunned me, but it was the sound design that came out on top. Hearing the monsters howl in the distance under the guise of the fog, or the footsteps of creatures looking for me as I was hiding near them, was nerve-racking in all the right ways, while the creakiness of doors opening, turning valves, and slamming doors open to hide all worked together to create this air of creepy uncertainty for what could happen next.

It didn’t really hit me how great the sound design was until one specific part later in the game, as we have to deal with these crawling enemies that move extremely fast towards you. You can hear the sound of them slapping their hands against the concrete, which would always freak me out as I had to get my weapon ready and find where it’s coming from immediately. I would get constantly scared, but it was moments like that which made me appreciate just how great the design is.

The majority of the game will consist of walking around the town of St. Amelia, solving puzzles to figure out what’s actually going on, and sneaking around or fighting monsters when necessary. The puzzles are intricate and interesting, and feel so satisfying to complete. There wasn’t one that I felt was too difficult, and a majority of them required critical thinking to complete. There’s a setting to make puzzles easier by highlighting the items you may need for it, but even without it, I found it relatively obvious what items were needed for which puzzle.

There’s going to be a lot of them to complete, but that’s part of why I enjoy Silent Hill. I always found puzzles to be the main attraction in its gameplay loop over action, and I love that aspect here.

However, I have to admit that fending off monsters or getting around them fits in wonderfully. Finding ammo and weapons to defend yourself in Townfall is rare, so it’s recommended to find ways to sneak past or distract the monsters skulking around the town. Not only can we find bottles and such to throw and distract them, but we also have a CRTV that essentially locks onto the frequencies of each monster, and we can see them through walls. This gives us a major edge in finding them, but we do have drawbacks, like only being able to see one at a time, and it’s on a relatively small screen with static. It perfectly adds to the horror element with its static noises, red filter, and the stress of only being able to see one monster at a time. Some of them can turn around at any moment as well, so even though we can see them, it’s not always going to help us get past them without a scratch.

For the ones we can’t get past, we can fight. We have melee weapons that have durability, and guns that have limited ammo. Both of which can be used effectively to defend ourselves, but melee weapons are preferred since they don’t make as much noise and have less of a chance of attracting other monsters. Towards the end of the game, we do have to rely more on fighting than sneaking, but I didn’t feel like it took away from the overall experience.

What I did dislike is how some enemies know exactly where we are at all times, unnaturally. There are a couple of spots where we have to hide from certain monsters, and for whatever reason, these monsters always know exactly where I am and will patrol the area that I’m in even if I don’t make a noise. It felt a little unfair when all I would do was crouch, walk upstairs, and go into a room, and somehow the monster knows. I just entered that room, and it comes to investigate. From there, it will only patrol that area until I find a way to leave and go to a different area for it to follow me, even if I didn’t make any extra noise. There are only a few enemies that actually do this, so it’s not a common problem, but I did get annoyed from time to time when just trying to get to the exit.

Silent Hill: Townfall - Steam Deck Performance

With Silent Hill: Townfall, I was hoping that it would perform decently and be fully playable on the Steam Deck. After playing and testing the settings, I would consider it borderline playable, with a major caveat that could be annoying for a lot of people who want stable performance.

For the most part, if you’re taking your time and walking around, the game will stick to 30 FPS at the low settings with TSR or FSR upscaling at Performance or Ultra Performance. It’s a pretty demanding game, and you’ll have high battery drain no matter what, but playing this way is doable, and I can only see possibly one or two areas that will drop no matter what.

TSR and FSR upscaling both felt very similar in terms of performance, but I prefer the visuals with TSR upscaling. The glistening from FSR is easily noticeable and distracting, and that glistening is pretty much eliminated when using TSR. With similar performance, I see no reason not to go with TSR upscaling in this case.

The major caveat is that trying to run through the town, or in some more complicated areas, will induce frame rate drops. It can be pretty consistent, dropping down into the 10 FPS range at times. It’s a lot of stuttering, and if we’re running away from enemies, it can feel jarring. I could see this being a CPU bottleneck or shader compilation issue, and if it’s the latter, it could be fixed with Steam’s shared shader cache a few days after it releases. However, I’m not 100% sure, so I’d err on the cautious side when getting this game to play on the Steam Deck.

This is another one of those games that I would give 2.5 stars if we did half-stars for our Steam Deck performance score. However, I will round up to 3 stars because it is technically playable. However, expect drops that could cause stuttering often.

I also did try the game with lossless scaling and MAKO frame generation, but the result isn't great. It does feel smoother when it works, and I didn't feel much input lag, but the base framerate being erratic creates more stuttering that is worse. It

結論

Silent Hill: Townfall is exactly the kind of horror game that I love. It focuses on atmospheric horror, creepy puzzles, and incredible sound design to keep me on my toes. The combat and sneaking around were better than I expected, and the trusty CRTV gave a nice edge while adding to the creepiness. There are some minor issues with how Simon reacts to the events of the game, and some enemies feel a little bit too obnoxious, but at the end of the day, this is one of the best horror games I’ve ever played.

It's borderline playable on the Steam Deck, and can hold 30 FPS more often than not when taking things slow and in smaller areas. However, even on the lowest settings, there are drops when running around the town or turning around in some areas. It's not the best experience, but I would consider it playable.

このレビューはPC版に基づいています。

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