Konami
Silent Hills P.T. (demo)

A true disappointment: it seems that the new Silent Hill will not be made. Or rather, it will not be made with the same staff that created this demo. A pity because the duo is (indeed) terrifying: Hideo Kojima, whom video game experts will remember as the father of Metal Gear Solid; and, believe it or not Guillermo Del Toro, the director of Pan's Labyrinth, just to be clear, and if it still doesn't come to mind for you, get yourself checked, because if you don't get it this way! In short, Konami already felt the scent of a "big hit" when it launched this prologue in the market with immediate and worldwide success: thousands of documented gameplay on YouTube, a myriad of positive feedback, and many, many scares to the point that just a few hours of play sufficed to define it as the most terrifying horror game of all time. Is it true?

First of all, let me give you a small, big revelation: I didn't play the Silent Hills P.T. demo! For this reason, I haven't evaluated it, since it's unthinkable for a reviewer to give a judgment on a game without having tried it, and thus examined its playability as well. Now, the average "Debaserian" user might rightly jump into the comment section and ask me: “So what the hell do you want?” Simple. I know every detail of the L-shaped corridor where the scene takes place and have experienced all the traps it contains. I have shared the scares of youtubers worldwide who have managed to comment on and show it in the tiniest details. In any case, I strip myself of the typical sobriety of the reviewer to speak to you in the first person. So, imagine me sitting on a couch while looking you in the eye: we have a chat, we talk about it, I try to convince you to play it or watch the video online (if you haven't already), in this way I also manage to maintain the basic peculiarity of the average reviewer, which is to tantalize your curiosity to urge you to launch into discovering the most chilling virtual experience ever created; I want to convince you to enter the nightmare and come out shocked as it happened to me!

The beginning is absurd: without understanding how or why you will be catapulted into a silent house, where you will find yourself repeatedly crossing the same section (the L-shaped corridor we were talking about before). It will therefore all seem the same to you, even in the most striking details, like a clock perpetually set at 23:59 and a crackling radio broadcasting frightening news. This will arouse in you a series of unpleasant sensations such as stress, boredom, anxiety, and claustrophobia; but you will not have yet realized that the darkness is instead emerging little by little, ready to slam their terrible plots in your face. You will therefore stumble upon many inexplicable events: animated pictures, writings that suddenly appear on the walls, a moaning fetus abandoned in a sink, and a sinister presence that will haunt you until your last steps. It is precisely this last "enemy" that is tasked with launching you into the greatest scare, through an unexpected and chilling manifestation that will actually make you scream, or at the very least, freeze your blood!

The demo, therefore, expresses itself with the purest and most traditional form of the the “horror” theme. Apart from some red blots here and there, and a fridge hanging from the ceiling from which a cascade of blood flows, the game predominantly proposes a less gory and more “dry” vision of human fear. There are no “splatter” sequences from Outlast nor any gunshots from Resident Evil. The terror experienced here is firmly tied to the challenge of the unknown and the paranormal, which the player faces with the only weapon at their disposal: courage. However, this courage always remains entangled with fear, especially after experiencing the most impressive moments. In this way, returning to inspect the corridor becomes the most distressing thing in the world: fear will rise to the limits of endurance, until the stroke of midnight decides to put an end to the martyrdom. Naturally, there is a puzzle to solve first, a riddle that will test your insight, while the fragmented information dictated by the plot leads you on the trail of a terrible crime.

I've told you everything and nothing, so I recommend it to you. Needless to say, playing it would be the best, something the undersigned will never do, because I have seen a lot of material online, therefore I know how to solve the riddle and especially where I need to use the diaper. If I played it, I would become a parody of myself, a "Spoilerman" playing the part of the most predictable superhero of the human species. I only say, play it, and you won't regret it... or maybe you will, but it will be the most satisfying regret you can imagine!

Federico “Dragonstar” Passarella.