We all remember the legend of P.T. Konami allowed Hideo Kojima and Guillermo Del Toro to mastermind a playable teaser for what was to be a reboot of the Silent Hill franchise.
Unfortunately, the teaser is all we ever got. Konami split with Kojima and swiftly cancelled Silent Hills. The demo was then unceremoniously erased from the PlayStation store and is impossible to re-download, even if it’s already in your library.
What makes all of this even worse is that P.T was a genuinely phenomenal experience that took the world by storm and reinvigorated the survival horror genre. I would suggest for example, that Resident Evil 7 would not have looked or played quite the way it did if it wasn’t for P.T.
I’m sure you’d agree then, that it’s a genuine shame that a game quite so influential, inventive, and terrifying is now next to impossible to play. This has only managed to amplify P.T’s legend though, inspiring a wave of remakes and indie horror games directly inspired by the demo.
Konami tends to shut most of these direct remakes down (their stance on P.T is genuinely baffling, to be honest), but the most recent effort by Artur Łączkowski is still available for download at the time of writing, and is honestly as close to playing the game again as a lot of us are ever likely to get.
The remake manages to recreate the spooky looping hallway in admirable fashion, and everybody’s favourite sinister sink foetus puts a shift in. The character model for Lisa isn’t exactly the same, but you’re still stalked by a terrifying ghost girl, so that’s great.
It’s worth noting that this isn’t the entire P.T experience yet, but Łączkowski is looking to finish the game as soon as possible.
I usually finish articles by mentioning when the next game in the franchise I’ve been talking about is due for release, but God only knows when we’ll see Silent Hill again – if ever.
On that cheery note, go and download this remake before Konami inevitably shuts it down.
Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.