While Remedy’s CONTROL Resonant unlocked this morning, the quieter scoreboard story of the day belongs to Silent Hill: Townfall. Konami and Annapurna’s Scottish spin-off is live on PS5 and PC after a Monday embargo that left roughly 68 critic reviews on Metacritic and a firm-but-not-ecstatic 81 aggregate. That is a lot of ink for a midweek launch, and the disagreement is sharper than the number suggests.
Our NGC Rating averages 12 published critic scores we could verify and normalize to a 100-point scale (out of ten times ten, out of five times twenty, percentages as written). Unscored write-ups such as The Guardian and Polygon’s roundup are left out. The result is 84, Great, a touch above Metacritic’s opening 81 because this sample is smaller and leans on outlets that posted clear numbers early.
| Outlet | Published | Score | Normalized bar |
|---|---|---|---|
| IGN | 8/10 | 80 | |
| PC Gamer | 89 | 89 | |
| Eurogamer | 4/5 | 80 | |
| VGC | 3/5 | 60 | |
| Push Square | 7/10 | 70 | |
| PlayStation LifeStyle | 9/10 | 90 | |
| GameSpot | 8/10 | 80 | |
| DualShockers | 9/10 | 90 | |
| GamesRadar+ | 90 | 90 | |
| Tom’s Guide | 4.5/5 | 90 | |
| Hobby Consolas | 87 | 87 | |
| PCGamesN | 100 | 100 |
Excluded: The Guardian (no numeric score); Polygon (roundup only).
Silent Hill: Townfall, St. Amelia dazzles, The Weight divides (PS5 / PC)
Screen Burn Interactive’s first-person Silent Hill sends American outsider Simon Ordell into St. Amelia, a fogged 1996 fishing town based on Scotland’s East Neuk of Fife. Across the reviews that matter, the setting is the consensus win. VGC’s Chris Scullion calls St. Amelia “one of the most detailed settings” he has seen, down to era-correct Post Office posters and floppy-disk boxes. The Guardian’s Lewis Gordon tastes “briny seaside tang diluted by rainy mist,” and Eurogamer’s Matt Wales (four stars) praises the street signs, bunting, and a quiet rage aimed at corporate colonisation. IGN’s Tristan Ogilvie lands at 8/10 and frames Townfall as the series returning to slow-burn survival horror after last year’s more action-forward Silent Hill f, with CRTV tracking, letterboxed first-person dread, and “some of the most cleverly designed” period-tech puzzles he has played in horror lately.
The split opens wherever a stalker called The Weight takes over. Scullion’s VGC review drops to 3/5 specifically because those near-invincible, instant-kill stealth stretches “ruin things entirely” and yank the game from immersion into reverse-engineering AI. Polygon’s Elijah Gonzalez reports the same arc: scary, then workmanlike, then annoying. GamesRadar+ calls the stealth “wearingly” heavy even while praising the atmosphere as astonishing. On the warmer side, PC Gamer’s Elie Gould goes 89 for the three-character trauma lens, PlayStation LifeStyle opens at 9/10, and GameSpot’s positive write-up (reported at 8/10 in early roundups) still flags some Weight sections as predictable or frustrating without letting them sink the whole grade. The result is a Metacritic 81 that sits under Silent Hill f’s 86 and above a pure disaster, with OpenCritic’s early Top Critic Average hovering around the low 80s and a high recommend rate among tracked critics.
Read the reviews: IGN, Silent Hill: Townfall (8/10) · VGC, Silent Hill: Townfall (3/5) · The Guardian, Silent Hill: Townfall · Polygon, Townfall review roundup · Metacritic, Silent Hill: Townfall
What the scoreboard actually means for buyers
Individual reviews describe the fog and the frustration well, but they rarely put the launch math next to the rest of Konami’s revival. Here is the short comparison we could only get by stacking outlets and storefronts together:
| Reference | Score / note |
|---|---|
| Metacritic (Townfall, ~68 reviews) | 81 |
| Silent Hill f (Metacritic, for context) | 86 |
| IGN | 8/10 |
| PC Gamer | 89 |
| Eurogamer | 4/5 |
| PlayStation LifeStyle | 9/10 |
| Push Square | 7/10 |
| VGC | 3/5 |
| Platforms at launch | PS5 and PC only (no Xbox announced) |
| Standard price (Steam / US) | $49.99 (Deluxe $59.99 with 48-hour early access) |
| Reported length | roughly 10–14 hours (IGN ~13), multiple endings |
That table points to a clear buyer split. If you bounced off Silent Hill f’s combat systems and want classic hide-or-fight tension, CRTV puzzles, and a setting critics keep calling authentically Scottish, Townfall is the Thursday purchase at fifty dollars. If Alien: Isolation-style stalker sequences make you put a pad down, wait for day-one patches, a sale, or a longer sample of how The Weight lands with players. Xbox owners have no decision yet. Deluxe buyers already lived with the game for two days; Standard owners are the ones the critic fight is for.
One more piece of context the single reviews leave aside: this is the third well-reviewed Silent Hill game in Konami’s current streak after the Silent Hill 2 remake and Silent Hill f, and 81 with zero negative Metacritic classifications so far is still a healthy franchise result even when it trails last year’s Japanese sidestep. The argument is not whether Townfall is broken. It is whether St. Amelia’s atmosphere is worth the hours you spend waiting out The Weight.
NextGenConsole exclusive, September 24, 2026. Scores and links point to the original outlets; aggregates can still move as more reviews land.