Silent Hill F Review - Screenshot 1 of 4

We played the entirety of Silent Hill F on PS5 for this review, due to our early access code. We have since tested the game on Xbox Series X and S, the details of which are explained towards the end of the review.

A quaint, semi-rural Japanese town covered in a thick layer of fog that never seems to dissipate... despite a switch from the West to the East, Silent Hill F nails its setting very early on. You can feel the atmosphere building as soon as Hinako begins her twisted adventure through her hometown of Ebisugaoka, and while this new series entry from Konami takes a while to really sink its teeth into you, it's a bold new direction right from the off. Silent Hill is back.

Before I get further into this one here, I want to preface that I'm not super well-versed in Silent Hill. I've dabbled in bits of it as I've found my horror game footing over the years, but the series was a big thing long before I was ever playing video games that tackled this sort of subject matter - I was just nine years old when Silent Hill 4 wrapped up the original series back in 2004. I know the kind of impact and cultural reach it's had though, and I've always been keen for Konami to modernise the IP and bring it back - and in Silent Hill F, it's done just that.

Silent Hill F Review - Screenshot 2 of 4

The opening few hours of F are pretty conventional, mind you. You're doing basic exploration while the game continues to trickle out story beats to set up the whole adventure, but as we mentioned at the top, that signature Silent Hill atmosphere continues to build. What begins as a quick meetup with friends to escape an abusive father turns into a twisted tale of rituals, monster bashing and questionable pill-taking; the surreal is ever-present here and remains an unsettling feeling throughout.

Some stellar cutscene works sends the story on its way, and once you settle into things, you'll get your first taste of Silent Hill F combat. The early game — in fact, the first half of it or so — is pretty rudimentary when it comes to fighting - you pick up various objects from the environment such as rusty pipes and kitchen knives, and you have to scrape your way through pretty much every encounter. The game's dodge mechanic becomes vital, and you'll often feel like you've just about scraped through most fights. I wouldn't say the game was ever particularly difficult, but it wears the 'survival' part of its survival horror genre rather well.

Silent Hill F Review - Screenshot 3 of 4

You know what, it wears the 'horror' side of that genre tag equally well too. Silent Hill F's structure works as a constant back-and-forth, where sections of rural hometown exploration and scrappy fighting are interspliced with hallucinatory, nightmarish sequences that allow developer NeoBards to really flex its horror muscle. These sections are often dark, twisted, and more uniquely crafted than most of the pre-release media you'll have seen shared by Konami. The game's foggy hometown locale sets the stage, but it's these more horrific sequences that set Silent Hill F apart.

These parts of the game are also host to the more interesting combat and puzzle mechanics that Silent Hill F has to offer. I don't want to completely spoil how your character's fighting ability evolves as the game goes on, but let's say these sections give Hinako a more supernatural edge, and the puzzles here are pulling from that classic Silent Hill / Resident Evil survival horror handbook. There are some headscratchers but nothing too unfair, and I largely enjoyed how Silent Hill F managed to mix things up as it went along both in its puzzle design and its combat mechanics.

Silent Hill F Review - Screenshot 4 of 4

However, the game isn't entirely without issue. Fighting in the more grounded hometown sections of Silent Hill F begins to drag the longer the game goes on; it just doesn't offer enough weapon and enemy variety to keep things truly fresh. And, while the puzzles were largely fair and satisfying, some of the traversal in those nightmarish sections was a little confusing and at times frustrating. Expect to be smacking into loads of similar-looking doors that you often can't get through, or if they are open to you, there's sometimes nothing of note behind them. I guess that feeling of confusion matches the theme of these sections, and as I say, it never truly ruined anything. There were just one or two areas where I'd have liked things to be a little clearer in terms of where to go and what to do next.

In terms of the technical makeup of Silent Hill F, the game looks a little different on each console (PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S). First of all, you get just the one 30FPS mode on Series S, while the other two consoles contain a 60FPS mode as well. Due to the slow-paced nature of the experience, I largely stuck to the 30FPS mode, and the PS5 version looks a little more polished overall. The game's fog effect appears more pronounced on the Sony system to my eyes, compared to Series X which looks more saturated and Series S which (understandably) looks a little muddier. Performance varies and I did notice frame rate dips even at 30FPS, but again, the slower pace of the experience meant it never truly got in the way (I should note that I played the full game on PS5, and roughly one hour on each Xbox Series system).

Conclusion

Silent Hill F is a great survival horror title, and a true return to the classic series from Konami. It mixes things up well throughout its roughly 10-hour runtime, and I enjoyed both what the more grounded and the more hellish areas of the game had to offer. As a relative newbie to Silent Hill I can't wait to see where things go from here, and I really think developer NeoBards has what it takes to learn from F and improve on it for what's next. Silent Hill is finally back on Xbox, and it was worth the wait.