Silent Hill: Townfall Delivers on PS5 and Pro, but PC Version Needs Urgent Fixes

Silent Hill: Townfall has arrived on PlayStation consoles and PC, bringing the iconic horror series to a Scottish setting in rare first-person perspective. Digital Foundry's review praises the game's visual presentation while flagging significant technical concerns that warrant attention before purchase.

Visually, Townfall impresses with its atmospheric design. The game uses hardware-accelerated Lumen across all performance modes, delivering more convincing reflections than software-based solutions. It shares artistic qualities with the recent Silent Hill 2 remake through volumetric fog, indirect diffuse lighting and detailed environments. One notable design choice: the player character doesn't appear in reflections, likely a pragmatic decision to avoid animation complexity in a first-person title.

PlayStation 5 performance is generally solid, though traversal stutter appears occasionally during cinematic cutscenes. On the base PS5, quality mode runs at 1080p to 1152p internal resolution, while performance mode dips to roughly 792p to 864p, creating noticeable shimmering in high-contrast scenes. The PlayStation 5 Pro offers a substantial upgrade, delivering approximately 1620p in quality mode and 1215p in performance mode. With PSSR enabled, the Pro achieves a fixed 1440p base in quality mode and 864p in performance mode, resulting in greater detail and better temporal stability.

The PC version presents a more problematic picture. While mid-range hardware like an RTX 4060 achieves respectable frame rates at 1440p and runs reasonably at 4K in DLSS performance mode with ray tracing off, egregious shader compilation stutter mars the experience. Traversal stutter on PC is worse than on console, particularly damaging for a horror game where atmospheric immersion is essential. The PC version lacks integrated frame generation despite shipping with Unreal Engine 5, an unusual omission given the engine's native support. Additionally, the game uses an older DLSS CNN-based model rather than the newer DLSS 4.0 Transformer model included in the files. PC players can enable FSR 3 frame generation through third-party mods and must edit configuration files to disable film grain and chromatic aberration, which lack menu options.

At £45/$50, Townfall's price sits well below typical triple-A releases. Despite its aesthetic quality and successful capture of the series' essence, the technical friction on PC and performance inconsistencies on console require urgent patches before the game merits an unqualified recommendation.