Konami is making an attempt to determine the right 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 not too long ago debuted or quickly shall. Silent Hill devotees like me typically wonder if the writer can recapture the magic of the sequence’ early video games. However even when it will probably’t, not less than we have now Hollowbody. Made by a single individual, Hollowbody typically goes too far previous being a homage, however more often than not, it stands aside as a memorable entry within the crowded house of horror video games drumming up the previous.
This 12 months, Hollowbody is the closest factor you may discover to Silent Hill 2 that is not Bloober Crew’s forthcoming remake. Its solo developer, Nathan Hamley (working beneath 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 part from the way you discover its world and unlock new pathways by fixing tough puzzles to the way you combat enemies and even unlock a number of endings all really feel pulled from the PS2 basic. An early part of the third-person survival-horror sport takes place in corridors which can 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 sport’s iconic nurses.
There are even a couple of moments through which you stumble upon threateningly deep, darkish holes that you simply drop into with out figuring out 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 occasions, however Hollowbody does not accept being merely a clone of the developer’s favourite game–though it’s fascinating to see how one individual in 2024 could make one thing very very similar to a sport that required a a lot bigger group just some many years in the past.
Inside its mission assertion of creating a sport very similar to SH2, it is the issues Hollowbody does otherwise that made me extra desirous 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 likely to, however Hawley captures the essence of that period so properly with out clinging to the interval’s worst features. Tank controls, for instance, are within the sport, 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 somewhat than a vivid crimson e-book, thoughts you–but there are a couple of autosaves within the sport, too, normally earlier than a harder part.
These fashionable conveniences do properly to cut back frustrations that some equally minded studios misidentify as worthwhile, although the legacy pain-point of operating 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 occasions 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. Which means it is best to keep away from it or use melee weapons when you can, thus saving ammo. No matter technique of protection to which you resort, you may 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 would be able to shift from enemy to enemy with ease.
This makes staying alive simpler than when 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 useful mechanic, fight nonetheless elicited a welcome sense of dread, partly as a result of the audiovisual cue whenever you take harm is so jarring that it felt nearly like monsters had been leaping off the display in a way. Enemies shut the gap deceptively rapidly, and the sport’s numerous melee weapons provide 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 finest attribute, with a well-recognized low hum persisting via a lot of the story that constantly unnerved me throughout 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 when you knew nothing concerning the sport, 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 few of the style’s staples are expedited in a method. Puzzles, for instance, may be tough, however by no means as maddening as Silent Hill 2’s piano puzzle, and sometimes the house 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 best way ahead as a result of I typically anticipated extra roadblocks, at the same time as 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 really was simply pointing me towards the subsequent part, and even when there can be puzzles alongside the best way to unlock that path, all interactable doorways had been equally spotlighted on the map.
Like the perfect 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 fashion that its darkened hallways and aggressive monsters typically do not permit. 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 permit a cyberpunk world early on and shortly enter a dreary British city hamstrung not simply by an assault many years earlier than, but in addition as a result 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 beneath 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 best way 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 like about horror video games. Generally, 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 otherwise are its finest attributes, like telling a narrative acutely aware of and anxious about sociopolitics and providing a minimalistic however unsettling soundtrack of its personal. Perhaps the final nice Silent Hill sport is behind us. I do not know. However I do know its reminiscence stays alive in successes like Hollowbody.