Silent Hill f review: "The legendary horror series' most unsettling atmosphere and writing to date butts heads with combat that's more irritating than scary"

Key art for Silent Hill f, cropped for a thumbnail, showing Hinako Shimizu standing in an alley of Ebisugaoka, a 1960s rural Japanese town, which has been taken over by red sprouting growths, including spider lilies.

Trading smalltown America for a 1960s rural Japan works well for Silent Hill f. Recognizably the same brand of horror, this is still Silent Hill as you know it, from its twitchy body horror monster designs to how it blends literal frights with the psychological. The new setting allows for some gorgeous stomach-churning visuals as the fog brings with it sprouting blood red spider lilies that begin to take over the town, transforming it into something altogether fleshier. Criss-crossing lanterns in the market street begin to give way to strands of, well, something else entirely. "Beauty in terror" is the pitch Konami gave for this revamp, and Silent Hill f nails the landing by whacking said nail with a hammer and watching it gush.

So too do the fears of schoolgirl Hinako Shimazu, dealing with the pressures of likewise encroaching womanhood, provide new avenues of horror for the series to explore. Blending those anxieties into a mix where you become uncertain of what's real and what isn't the more you play, the unease dialling up to match and drilling down into the animal part of your brain that stops you from caring about the distinction – the horror becoming manifest regardless. Without a doubt, the incredible foggy atmosphere of Hinako's hometown, Ebisugaoka, and the mysterious Dark Shrine she also finds herself transported to, is some of the best Silent Hill has to offer.