With Silent Hill f being the first new, non-remake Silent Hill entry in well over a decade, there’s quite a bit riding on its success. Thankfully, despite some conflicting opinions, it’s mostly gone over as a strong, bold, and inventive new chapter in the long-running series, painting a promising picture of Silent Hill‘s future.
Naturally, gamers around the globe often feel that they know what’s best for a given IP, especially if it’s one they’re particularly fond of. This has very much been the nature of Silent Hill discourse in recent years, a dynamic that was aggravated by Konami’s decision to throw Silent Hills—and Hideo Kojima alongside it—in the bin back in 2015. All of this is to say that Silent Hill‘s identity has been in a state of flux for a while, and Silent Hill f had to chart a course to a more compelling, confident modus operandi. This was no trivial task, but Silent Hill f managed to stick the landing, generating new and captivating narrative and gameplay elements. This applies to the more obvious, crowd-pleasing elements like monster design, but also to smaller, more contentious systems, such as the oft-maligned weapon durability mechanic.
Weapon Durability Can Often Be Annoying, but Silent Hill f Makes It Sing
Weapon Durability Keeps Silent Hill f Challenging and Interesting
It’s no great secret that weapon durability is among gaming’s most hated mechanical trends. I don’t often mind it, but it has to synergize with the rest of a game’s design. For instance, gear durability and repairs make sense in a survival game, where resource management is a vital part of the gameplay loop. On the other hand, weapon durability in a game like Breath of the Wild can be more frustrating than fun, as it risks falling out of step with the rest of the game’s gear economy, progression, and the like.
Thankfully, Silent Hill f falls into the former camp. Since it’s a survival horror game without guns, it’s vital that it maintain some semblance of resource management, which underpins just about every decision the player makes. Think of it this way: weapon durability in Silent Hill f is akin to ammunition in a game like Resident Evil or Alan Wake. Ammo is limited in those games, especially on higher difficulty settings, and this ratchets up the fear and tension immeasurably. By making Hinako’s weapons relatively frail, Silent Hill f is able to reward long-term planning, exploration, and creative problem-solving. In some ways, Silent Hill f actually nails these gameplay facets better than many of its contemporaries.
Silent Hill f is a Much More Effective Horror Game Thanks to Weapon Durability
There’s nothing scarier than being in an unfamiliar, treacherous place with nothing more than an everyday object to use as a weapon. Silent Hill‘s creators are aware of this, which is why this kind of scenario is so common in each release. But in a game like Silent Hill 2, a metal pipe or wooden plank is something to fall back on, an old reliable, ready to help conserve ammunition or get James out of a jam. In Silent Hill f, that same pipe or plank is both the first and last line of defense.
On harder difficulties, Silent Hill f‘s weapon durability is even less forgiving, thanks to fewer resources. Players can even find themselves without any kind of weapon for long stretches of gameplay, if they aren’t careful.
The fact that these flimsy, improvised weapons can break helps drive home a clear message: players are vulnerable. Silent Hill f doesn’t put you in the shoes of a Leon Kennedy, or even a reality-bending Alan Wake, but a teenage girl in way over her head, only ever a few steps away from a hopeless situation.