Later this year, Bloober Team’s remake of Silent Hill 2 will finally hit our screens, for better or worse (probably the latter, in my opinion). A 13-minute gameplay demo was shown off last week, and it looked… okay, but honestly, it’s going to be hard to beat if you ask it. Hollow bodyIt’s a survival horror game inspired by Silent Hill 2, Ghost in the Shell and Blade Runner, set in the most terrifying setting in human history: Britain.
OK, I admit I sound a bit sarcastic (because I am), but the fact that the game is set in the UK, or at least a fictional version of the future, does feel pretty unsettling. On the one hand, it’s definitely because the Steam Next Fest demo put me in the middle of a street in a city that looked vaguely familiar but a bit run-down and felt a little too much like home. On the other hand, I’d say there was some kind of growth, spreading everywhere, that made me feel sick just by looking at it, and I was desperately hoping it wouldn’t suddenly move and touch me.
Hollowbody casts you in the role of Mica, an “unlicensed black market shipper who will stop at nothing to find her missing partner,” reads the game’s Steam description. The game’s design and rendering could easily have been ripped off of a PS2 horror game that would probably cost a lot more on eBay. Hollowbody is indeed a PS2 game, complete with tank controls and fixed camera angles that, like the classics, take away some of the player’s autonomy.
Despite the retro feel of the gameplay, it feels refreshing to play because you understand that the old ways aren’t bad – fixed camera angles can serve an important structural purpose and allow you to deliver information to the player in specific and sometimes terrifying ways. Yes, there are jump scares, but the tension mainly comes from not being able to look around corners before walking down a corridor.
Like the fixed camera angles, the combat is reminiscent of Silent Hill 2, with simple melee attacks and guns with limited ammo. The demo wasn’t particularly long, taking me only about 45 minutes to get through, and I was playing at a very slow pace, so I wasn’t entirely sure how the simple gameplay would pan out. There was one puzzle that I had to solve, and while it wasn’t overly complex, it did make me think a bit, and combined with the environmental narrative being told, it ended up being quite satisfying.
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I wish the whole game had really developed to this point, as the combat does feel very similar to Silent Hill 2, but most importantly it was the setting that won me over. I was a little frustrated by how rarely games are set in the real world, and when they are, they tend to be set in the United States, or in some nondescript jungle or desert setting, with no real sense of culture or history.
Hollowbody does a good job of presenting itself even in its brief demo, showing the wreckage of a near-future and now-devastated future in a more distant future that feels both believable and worrying. Even just walking around and seeing the traffic bollards on the side of the road gave me that “this is Chappie” feeling, silly as it may sound.
The mystery it sets up about your missing partner is also tantalizing, especially because it’s keeping so much information from you. The only real glimpses you get of this world in the demo are through these snippets of past conversations you can listen to on the radio, which hint at what might have happened and come with fun collectible text files. They’re all ominous, hinting at the imminent societal collapse that’s clearly already happening, and it feels very much like Britain has been under the influence of a certain political party for the past decade and a half.
With such a short and tight demo, you should set aside time to play it because even with a few minor issues here and there, Hollowbody could easily be the best Silent Hill 2 game of the year.
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Check out Hollowbody on Steam – and play the demo for yourself.