New Silent Hill - Del Toro and Kojima

Retr0gamer wrote:

The more I read about this the more it sounds like it's a lot of jump scares, well done jump scares but certainly far from the psychological horror of Silent Hill 2.

Nope, don't think that's fair or accurate commentary at all.

PT expends a lot of effort on manifesting the psychological distress of its protagonist through game design. The looping structure articulates the living hell he is living through - each day is a fresh nightmare, the lines between reality and his fragile state of mind becoming blurrier and blurrier. It's a game about guilt and tragedy and loss, and how they are eating away at this person. It is literally inescapable.

It's also, like Eraserhead, an abstract look at fear of parenthood. The character's terror or confusion at his newborn child is exaggarated to increasing extremes - that piercing scream and the horrific foetus you find in the sink. Again, all a manifestation of internal uncertainty and unease. The imagery throughout the game are dark subversions of everyday sights - making the familiar disturbingly and even dangerously unfamiliar. That radio, for example, just broadcasting the news, drives our 'hero' deeper into a hole, until it seems as if it's actively toying with him.

There's also some strong environmental storytelling, with everything you need to know about this man carefully explored through background details (whether that's a radio broadcast or a table littered with medication). This is the disturbing story of a life in ruins, and a lot of tools are used to explore that. Even the visual design, heavy on the shadows, grain, blur, subtly varying lighting and soft focus, goes towards emphasising a world of psychological unease and dread. The hallway changes just enough each time that the player approaches it with distrust and caution - bad things are afoot.

Yes, there are some familiar horror game tools employed - whether that's a creepy soundtrack or one or two surprises that may or may not make a player jump. But to say that's all the game has to offer to me seems like the comments of someone who hasn't considered the game in much depth at all. Heck, even one of the 'jumpiest moments' does not arrive with a loud screech of strings, but only if the player opts to casually look upwards. I'm not saying PT is a masterpiece or anything - certainly even a lot of the above tools are familiar - but it provided me with encouragement the full game will have ambitions to explore its horror through smart, cohesive design rather than cheap 'boo!'s.