So Silent Hill F is quite literally just "woman moment" the game. That's unintentionally hilarious.

Turns out the whole thing is a fever dream and the bitch just OD'd on Tylenol and started hacking people up because she had shitty parents and doesn't want to get married or whatever.

Don't forget that the game was made from China and has Japanese characters and a Japanese setting and its plot and symbolism preach the "virtue" of not getting married or having kids because it will result in the loss of your "identity." And everyone who is a Silent Hill tourist is eating it up because it's not a Silent Hill game and it's Souls-lite in its combat structure.

Well... "China"(Hong Kong and Taiwan) but the story was written by the dude that wrote Higurashi. It honestly feels like a different IP that they knew was going to be dogshit so they slapped "Silent Hill" on it to sell some copies. "Silent Hill" is never uttered once in the game.

That's even fucking worse.

EVERY ENDING IS SHIT HOLY FUCK.

Normal ending: Hinako schizos out and kills two men at her wedding because Shu was drugging her to try to prevent the marriage.

Bad ending: Hinako doesn't take Shu's pills and truly becomes Foxnako (her part that accepts changing for society's expectations), Shu crashes the wedding, isn't okay with being friendzoned, gets a beating, then accepts the marriage seeing that Hinako actually wants to be with Fox Mask

(her IRL groom-to-be). Shu is okay with it as long as she is happy and they let him watch in a corner chair (fistbumping with Fox Mask watching the sunset).

Good ending: Fox Mask is actually an abusive guy and evil. Shu was right and crashes the wedding, runs away (platonically) with Hinako and is okay with being friendzoned.

True ending: Fox Mask is actually a good guy and doesn't want a forced marriage either because he wonders if his infactuation for her wasn't just his father forcing him to marry her, they both choose to call it off and run away, both want to experience more before settling down and hope to meet each other again in the future if their love is really "meant to be".

@Goalkeeper @Owl i haven't seen enough of the game to criticize the plot but holy fuck the combat is atrocious for a horror game

One of the first things I saw in the game was a monster pinning Hinako to the ground and you get a button prompt to do a double-leg kick that launches him across the room. he's at least four times her size. She's a tiny Japanese schoolgirl. Her limbs are like twigs. But somehow, when you're pinned down, she can pull a superhuman kick to launch something and then pull out a fucking polearm and start stabbing away like it's nothing?

I laughed when I saw that, because it didn't just shatter my immersion, it shattered any expectations it would be a horror game. A core component of effective horror is a sense of powerlessness communicated through gameplay. Whether it's turning slowly in Resident Evil or the stick combat in Silent Hill, the fear of losing a fight is a key aspect of genuine ludonarrative horror.

That bitch can squat 1,200 and launches enemies across the room and you want me to feel afraid? She can perfect dodge around attacks and counterattack with elegant flowing combos and you want me to feel afraid? Every aspect of the gameplay screams power/skill fantasy, from the combo system to the Rage of the Gods mode when she gets her arm power-up.

If the game wanted me to take it seriously as a horror game, when the bigger monster pins Hanako down, it should be for all intents and purposes a game over. It's a drawn-out pseudo-scripted death sequence where it beats on her until she dies. If you don't have a knife already in hand to stab the thing's face, you just die.

Or maybe it just does a bunch of damage and chooses to let you go of its own free will. Either case communicates "the player is weak, helpless, and in a dangerous situation," which is the core fucking experience of horror. A schoolgirl kicking enemies through walls while flash-stepping across the room is not horror.

Once this video I've been working on is done I really need to go back to that horror game I've been working on where getting slowly beaten to death by something you can't actually fight against followed by several minutes of passing out from pain and waking back up until you die of hypoxia from repeated vasovagal syncopes is a core gameplay experience.