Konami is attempting to determine the way to make Silent Hill video games once more. After greater than a decade away from the sequence (and arguably many extra years since a good one), a number of new Silent Hill tasks have lately debuted or quickly shall. Silent Hill devotees like me typically ponder whether the writer can recapture the magic of the sequence‘ early video games. However even when it might probably’t, not less than we have now Hollowbody. Made by a single particular person, Hollowbody typically goes too far previous being a homage, however more often than not, it stands aside as a memorable entry within the crowded area of horror video games drumming up the previous.
This 12 months, Hollowbody is the closest factor you will discover to Silent Hill 2 that is not Bloober Group’s forthcoming remake. Its solo developer, Nathan Hamley (working underneath the studio title Headware Video games), admits his love for the sequence is the driving drive in creating Hollowbody, and there are occasions when that adoration is even too apparent. Every thing from the way you discover its world and unlock new pathways by fixing tough puzzles to the way you struggle enemies and even unlock a number of endings all really feel pulled from the PS2 traditional. An early part of the third-person survival-horror recreation takes place in corridors which might be so much like Silent Hill 2’s hospital part that it gave me deja vu, and the monsters that stalk simply past the attain of your flashlight stumble into attacking you want that recreation’s iconic nurses.
There are even just a few moments during which you encounter threateningly deep, darkish holes that you just drop into with out understanding what’s on the opposite aspect. One hall, specifically, prompted me to ask myself the identical query that Silent Hill 2’s absurdly lengthy stairwell beforehand prompted: „How lengthy is this factor?“ The callbacks border on copies at instances, however Hollowbody does not accept being merely a clone of the developer’s favourite game–though it’s fascinating to see how one particular person in 2024 could make one thing very very similar to a recreation that required a a lot bigger group just some a long time in the past.
Inside its mission assertion of constructing a recreation very similar to SH2, it is the issues Hollowbody does in a different way that made me extra wanting to play it than the numerous different video games prefer it. I am not usually nostalgic for video games that play and look poorer than fashionable video games are inclined to, however Hawley captures the essence of that period so properly with out clinging to the interval’s worst points. Tank controls, for instance, are within the recreation, however they don’t seem to be in use by default. Masochists might want to toggle them on. Equally, you do save periodically–at a landline cellphone slightly than a vibrant pink ebook, thoughts you–but there are just a few autosaves within the recreation, too, often earlier than a more durable part.
These fashionable conveniences do properly to cut back frustrations that some equally minded studios misidentify as priceless, although the legacy pain-point of working alongside partitions, couches, beds, and cupboards searching for interplay factors stays, so Hollowbody does not reject each questionable design quirk of its style. On a couple of event, I needed to retread some areas a number of instances earlier than discovering an merchandise I wanted to progress, which pulled me out of an in any other case moody scene.
Fight in Hollowbody is similar to the video games that impressed it. Meaning it is best to keep away from it or use melee weapons in case you can, thus saving ammo. No matter technique of protection to which you resort, you will typically be navigating tight areas, which make it difficult to flee even after you’ve got made up your thoughts. The sport makes use of a dependable auto-aim system with a inexperienced reticle that you could shift from enemy to enemy with ease.
This makes staying alive simpler than in case you needed to depend on guesswork, like some early-2000s horror video games requested gamers to do. I used to be relieved to seek out that, regardless of this beneficial mechanic, fight nonetheless elicited a welcome sense of dread, partly as a result of the audiovisual cue once you take harm is so jarring that it felt virtually like monsters had been leaping off the display in a way. Enemies shut the gap deceptively rapidly, and the sport’s numerous melee weapons supply totally different animations, making them unequal of their attain, assault pace, and effectiveness–I like to recommend you persist with the guitar.
The sport’s environment is its greatest attribute, with a well-known low hum persisting via many of the story that constantly unnerved me through the four-hour expertise. Like nice horror builders who’ve come earlier than, Hamley understands when to lean into the sport’s creepy, somber music, and when to let the silence commandeer a scene. Every body of the sport captures the spirit of PS2-era horror video games so faithfully that in case you knew nothing concerning the recreation, you would possibly assume it is truly from 2001.
As a result of the sport is shorter than most of these it strives to resemble, a number of the style’s staples are expedited in a means. Puzzles, for instance, could be tough, however by no means as maddening as Silent Hill 2’s piano puzzle, and sometimes the area and time between discovering a puzzle-cracking merchandise and placing it to make use of is small and quick. I truly needed to get used to how the pause menu’s map would present me the way in which ahead as a result of I typically anticipated extra roadblocks, whilst an arrow would primarily inform me, „Go right here!“ It wasn’t till the again half of the sport that I began to belief that the map actually was simply pointing me towards the subsequent part, and even when there could be puzzles alongside the way in which to unlock that path, all interactable doorways had been equally spotlighted on the map.
Like one of the best Silent Hill video games, Hollowbody is not simply scary; it is tragic, and the world you are exploring reminds you of that in each nook. Although even its narrative thread weaves the same tale–you’re searching for a misplaced liked one in an eerie town–the thematic components assist Hollowbody rise above facsimile in a way that its darkened hallways and aggressive monsters typically do not enable. The story is definitely set sooner or later, however the city you discover was deserted years prior following an obvious bioterror assault. This implies you allow a cyberpunk world early on and shortly enter a dreary British city hamstrung not simply by an assault a long time earlier than, but in addition as a consequence of gentrification and abandonment years earlier than that.
Paperwork scattered throughout city inform a background plot of townspeople promised an financial stimulus, solely to have the rug pulled out from underneath them within the months and years to return by double-speaking buyers. It is a acquainted story, however not owing to Silent Hill on this case. As an alternative, it is pulled from the headlines of the actual world, and I recognize the way in which Hamley is ready to creatively tie an deserted, monster-infested city to the theme of financial inequality.
Hollowbody is frightening, dreary, and unhappy; it is all of the issues I really like about horror video games. Typically, it embodies these emotions as a result of it almost repurposes the identical monsters, locations, and predicaments from the video games that impressed it. Nevertheless it’s not all acquainted, and the issues it does in a different way are its greatest attributes, like telling a narrative acutely aware of and anxious about sociopolitics and providing a minimalistic however unsettling soundtrack of its personal. Possibly the final nice Silent Hill recreation is behind us. I do not know. However I do know its reminiscence stays alive in successes like Hollowbody.