P.T.

The first thing I did after turning on my PS4 for the first time was download the P.T. demo. Hideo Kojima has made Silent Hill my favorite horror franchise with his understanding of how to make a video game scary, instead of just making a horror movie that you can play. Now Kojima has released a demo of the Silent Hill game still in production that is also being written by Guillermo Del Torro. It is fucking horrifying.

What makes Silent Hill games special is that they embrace the medium. Silent Hill is a video game, so the scares it provides are based on the fact that you are sitting on a couch controlling the character's movements. Resident Evil on the other hand, makes a cutscene with some gore in it then tries to scare you with jumps, just like a movie. Silent Hill games never act like a movie, instead they fuck with your pause screen, read your memory card, and give you long tension filled environments that the player must find the courage to explore. 

P.T. continues this ideology, giving the player an endless loop through a series of hallways inside the home of a murdered family. Everytime you arrive at the end of the hallway and open the door, the loop repeats with an ever escalating number of terrifying mind-fucks each time. This little demo looks great, is genuinely disturbing, and pure Silent Hill.

Silent Hill protagonists are usually bad people. The player may take control of a man who has murdered his girlfriend, or is responsible for the loss of his daughter. The town and magic of Silent Hill is cryptic but seems to serve as punishment for those who have committed horrible acts, and this P.T. demo puts you in the shoes of a dad who has murdered his wife and kids. You suffer with him, just like every game in the series, but what makes Silent Hill so unique is that while your character suffers and descends into madness, you know they deserve it. I can't wait.