There are a lot of long-running horror franchises in the gaming world, so what is it about Silent Hill that makes fans talk about the series like it's sacred? Why should you still take the time to get into Silent Hill today? Why are they some of the best horror games? The simple answer is these games aren't just masterclasses of horror, but psychological horror in particular – a genre that's tough to get right in an interactive medium, and that few games even now can really nail. Including, sometimes, Silent Hill itself – though Silent Hill f looks set to put the series back on track.
It's all added to by the series' iconic tonic and atmosphere. The foggy streets of the first game may have been arrived at due to the PS1's load-distance limitations, but the idea of monsters coming from just out of sight is fantastic. While there is action in the series – guns and great big pipes – it's true survival horror that always makes you feel on the backfoot. Not to mention the vibes often make you question what you're seeing, the psychological horror unsettling and allowing room for interpretation with the events that unfold. Consider the below my beginner's guide to Silent Hill!
What is Silent Hill about?
For the most part, each game in the series revolves around a town named Silent Hill and its surrounding area, usually following the people who end up lost within it. Visually, it looks a bit different in each entry, but broadly Silent Hill is a pastiche of small town America. By the time your character gets there, it's always in the aftermath of some kind of event that's left the town abandoned and ruined, with monsters on the prowl, and more fog than a glam rock festival.
Usually there's some reason the protagonist is compelled to push through the creatures and fog on the search for something – such as a missing daughter or wife. But, as well as battering beasties with melee weapons and the odd shotgun shell as a treat, the deeper they go the further into their own traumatic issues they delve. Crucially, though, the best Silent hill games leave the gap between fact and fiction a bit vague – it's on you to interpret just quite what the characters you're playing as are going through. Silent Hill f, like the others, will be standalone, and with a shift in location from the US to small town Japan it'll feel even more separate to the others.
Where to begin before Silent Hill f
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Up until the surprisingly rather good Silent Hill 2 remake, the series' long legacy has been neatly split into two eras: the original critically acclaimed games developed by Konami's in-house Team Silent, and then the less well-received games developed by western studios (which all feature some great moments).
The best and easiest way to just jump in is to play the Silent Hill 2 remake on PC or PS5, which is faithful enough to get across what fans loved about the original while also packing enough changes to allow a supplementary playthrough of the original to feel additive if you decide to go back. Mechanically, from the first five hours we've played of Silent Hill f at an event, it the combat is similar in principles to Silent Hill 2 remake, meaning you'll likely be able to go right from that game to Silent Hill f while feeling familiar with how to play it.
If you want to dig deeper, you can't go wrong with the first four games in the series, though these aren't the easiest to play on modern equipment . For now, the original game is only on PS1, and not backwards compatible on PS5/PS4. With that said, Silent Hill 2, Silent Hill 3, and Silent Hill 4 have PC ports that you can get working with some basic patches.
What you don't need to worry about before Silent Hill f
With a fresh Japanese setting and a standalone story there's literally nothing to get in the way of enjoying it as it is.
Even without jumping into any of the great games above, you don't have to worry about anything before playing Silent Hill f. With a fresh Japanese setting and a standalone story there's literally nothing to get in the way of enjoying it as it is.
Still, if you are diving into the rest of the series, it's worth keeping in mind that Silent Hill f seems to have the most in common with the first four games, so playing anything between 2007-2012 is even more unnecessary, and are more of a mixed bag anyway. That means Silent Hill: Origins, Silent Hill: Homecoming, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, and Silent Hill: Downpour.
Small playable experiences such as PT and Silent Hill: The Short Message don't seem to be necessary either. The former is a stellar demo for the cancelled Silent Hills that's delisted anyway, and the latter is a small free game that mixes narrative-heavy sequences with tense escapes but doesn't seem to have much in common with Silent Hill f (it also wasn't amazing). Likewise spin-offs like Silent Hill: The Arcade and Silent Hill: Book of Memories can be skipped. The Silent Hill movies, very variable in quality, are also entirely set within their own canon and diverge from the games quite significantly so you don't need to watch those.
What does the future look like for Silent Hill?
It feels like we've reached a real turning point in the series for Silent Hill. For a long time, it's felt like a series that has been tough to get right in modern day, bouncing between developers and unable to recapture the greatness of its original releases. It's one of the reasons everyone was so anxious about the Silent Hill 2 remake – revitalizing one of the most beloved horror games of all time was simply a tough prospect. But Bloober Team came through, giving Konami its first real step forward with the series in a long time.
Fittingly, Bloober Team are working on another Silent Hill remake for the first game, and Silent Hill 3 follow given the references added in the second game's remake (SH1 and SH3 have a lot of common ground). We could end up with a similar release cadence to Resident Evil's remakes.
If Silent Hill f can continue this trend, feeling like a true new main series entry while making its fresh setting feel like the right choice, the series will be well positioned to strike on with more releases of this caliber – truly scary and atmospheric psychological horrors that make full use of modern technology without holding back on survival horror mechanics.
Elsewhere, Silent Hill Townfall, from No Code and Annapurna Interactive, will be a smaller indie-scoped project, but it goes to show that Silent Hill is stepping out of its own shadow, moving beyond pastiches of what made it great into something once again experimental and unexpected. Join me for Silent Hill f when it comes out, and we can peer through the fog of the future together!
I love Silent Hill 2, but remakes would be better off as second lives for games that truly need it.
