Silent Hill f: Deluxe Edition

Silent Hill f presents a fresh new setting to explore and a fascinatingly dark story to unravel, but its melee-focussed combat takes a big swing that doesn’t quite land.

With its brilliant writing, haunting atmosphere, well-designed gameplay, and spectacular visuals, Silent Hill f sets a new benchmark for the Silent Hill series.

Silent Hill f's frustrating first-half is outweighed by a brilliant, delirious second that's well worth the initial slog.

Silent Hill f is an excellent next step for this accomplished horror series. Proving that the horrors of Silent Hill aren't and shouldn't be restricted to the iconic American mountain town.

Silent Hill f is fantastic at evolving that sense of unease and vagueness that's so defined the series in the past.

Perhaps my biggest gripe as someone who loves to be scared is that you’ve seen the extent of how Silent Hill f plans to frighten you within its first half; beyond that, it’s diminishing returns with very few surprises. I like Silent Hill f, but I was prepared to have a love affair with it, and I’m left feeling as foggy as its quiet, ill-fated village.

Most of all, this is that rarest of things: a horror game that actually has something to say. Rather than simply throwing jumpscares and black-haired ghost maidens at you until you submit, it uses rural mythology and superstition as a lens through which to examine the harms of patriarchy and the rigidly gendered expectations it thrusts on to teenagers. It also proves that the survival horror genre still has so much to give, 30 years after its inception. You must come to Ebisugaoka as soon as you can, and stay at least a week, maybe longer.

Here, true horror isn’t in the fog, the blood or the monsters, but the shedding and rebuilding of the self until you no longer recognize who remains.

Silent Hill F is certainly a diversion from the main series in a lot of (mostly welcome) ways, but it's still very much a Silent Hill game at heart. By focusing more on action – especially after a surprising twist halfway through – it risks alienating some survival horror fans by making combat the priority rather than the last resort, while some of its puzzles are too obtuse for their own good, but it's still an astoundingly beautiful game that horror fans really should experience regardless of its flaws.

Psychological action horror at its finest. A new kind of Silent Hill that holds onto its roots and never falters. Experimental like SH4: The Room, f stands out by giving us something vastly different while sticking to and modernizing the fundamentals. Silent Hill f gets in your face, making it impossible to look away from Hinako's story.