Silent Hill F

It's a brave developer that takes on a revered series like Silent Hill, but Neobards Entertainment certainly hasn't shirked from the challenge.

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KONAMI FINDS ITS ROOTS

While Silent Hill F doesn't quite reach the dizzying heights of Team Silent’s original trilogy, this is an assured addition to the series that, whilst not always looking or playing like a Silent Hill game, absolutely feels like one.

Silent Hill F takes place in Ebisugaoka, a quiet rural village in Sixties Japan and follows Shimizu Hinako, a young woman who meets up with her friends after having another argument with her parents. It's not long before their tranquillity is disturbed by grotesque-looking monsters and an unsettling growth of Red Tiger Lilies that consume everything in their path. With the village getting overgrown, Hinako soon gets separated from her friends and finds herself in a mysterious place called the Dark Shrine. Tended by a mask-wearing stranger she's told not to trust, Hinako soon finds herself flipping between the village and the Dark Shrine as she attempts to reconnect with her friends.

If all that sounds a long way from a traditional Silent Hill game you're absolutely right, but the nods to the long-running series are all present and correct and masterfully unfold as the game continues. In many ways this could be considered a brand-new survival horror game from Konami, as so much of it feels new and different from past games in the series, but as play continues the usual Silent Hill themes push their way to the surface.