Later this year, Bloober Team’s remake of Silent Hill 2 will finally grace our screens, for better or worse (probably the latter, in my opinion). A 13 minute-long gameplay demonstration was shown off last week, which looks… ok, but to be honest if you ask it’s going to have a tough time going up against Hollowbody, a Silent Hill 2, Ghost in the Shell, and Blade Runner inspired survival horror game with the scariest setting anyone has ever faced: Britain.
Ok, I admit it sounds like I’m being a touch sarcastic there (because I am), but the game really is set in Britain, or at least fictionalised, futuristic version of it, and it genuinely does feel quite unnerving. In one part that’s definitely because the Steam Next Fest demo slapped me right down in the middle of a street in a vaguely familiar looking, but somewhat ruined city that feels a touch too close to home. In the other, there’s some kind of growth, I want to say, spreading everywhere that I felt sick just looking at, desperately hoping it wouldn’t suddenly move and touch me.
Hollowbody puts you in the role of Mica, an “unlicensed black market shipper who will stop at nothing to find her missing partner,” or so says the game’s description on Steam, whose design and rendering could easily have been lifted from a PS2 horror game that probably costs way too much on eBay. And a PS2 game Hollowbody very much is, complete with tank controls and a fixed camera angle that robs you of some of your agency just like the classics do.
